SUCCESS STORY

Gates to Success

By Kurt Jarvi | Computer Science Major

Lakeside School was a prestigious private school on the northern side of Seattle. Dozens of notable people have sprouted from this distinguished and highly esteemed school, but none of them stood out as much as William Gates III. His father was a lawyer and his mother was on the board of regents for the University of Washington, both being very influential in their areas of work. They sent William, who would later go by his shortened name Bill, to Lakeside in hopes of him receiving a good education and becoming successful in life. Little did they know that he would go on to be one of the richest people in America, his wealth surpassing that of even entire countries (Wallace 276). This beginning at Lakeside School started a long chain of opportunities that led to his success and the rise of Microsoft. Bill Gates was successful not just because of his family background, but because of the opportunities presented to him throughout his life.

Unknowingly, Bill’s success started with his humble beginnings at Lakeside School. The school had just acquired a new computer, a Teletype Model 33. He was attracted to it immediately, often spending more time on the computer than he would in his classes. “I was twelve years old when I first got to use a computer… …But that definitely fascinated me when I was first exposed.” (Gates, “Chairman of Microsoft”). Through this, he met Paul Allen, who would later on become the co-founder of Microsoft with Gates. They were a great team, and often missed classes to work on the computer. The energy bill for this computer was enormous, and in just a few weeks Bill and Paul had surpassed the school’s year-long energy budget. (Wallace 27) He started a programming group to create beneficial code for other people, and they even wrote code for Lakeside School itself. Lakeside soon caught a lot of publicity for the technology initiatives they had started, and several companies started coming to them for business. Little did they know, a huge opportunity was coming up that would change their life, as well as the lives of almost every American in the future. For him and Allen, success was knocking on their door.

These important details in Bill’s early life would come in handy down the road. Others, like a woman named Caroline Sacks would not be so lucky. Caroline was the daughter of a successful father and mother, and got excellent grades all throughout her high school career. Up until college, that is. She decided to take on one of the most prestigious schools in the country, Brown College. Brown was an Ivy League college, and she decided on that school to bolster her resume later on. The school challenged her, though, far more than she would have hoped. By being around these hundreds of other creative minds, the bar had been raised for her. By being a little fish in a big pond, she soon got overwhelmed by her schoolwork and the rigorous academia (Gladwell, “David And Goliath” 74–81). Bill Gates, though, took full advantage of the things he could do compared to other students. He was one of the few students in his entire school who used the computer, and he stood out among the rest. In his early years, Bill was a big fish in a small pond, and nobody knew computers like him.

Bill wasn’t just smart, though. He was crafty and innovative, and sometimes he did things that got him in trouble. This worked out for the best though, when he got a very important job with an up and coming company. Soon after they had exhausted the computer lab’s resources, they received a new computer system from the Computer Center Corporation, a business that was interested in the school’s newfound geniuses. This new computer was massive, taking up nearly the entire room. For fear of them using up the school’s budget again, Lakeside put restrictions on their computer usage time (Wallace 46–49). To no avail, though, Bill hacked into the computers and disabled the restrictions. This was a scary time for Bill, as he was banned from the computer room altogether for over a year. The Computer Center Corporation, though, saw this as a gutsy and creative move on Gate’s part and offered him a job finding bugs in their system. Bill knew that what he did wasn’t without any risks, but in the end it opened up a whole new world into the computer business. For the rest of his time at Lakeside School, he worked hard with the CCC to establish dominance in his field and secure himself as a capable programmer. His hard work and gutsy nature opened up one of the biggest opportunities of his life, and it was this attitude that would later bring him to founding Microsoft.

After the Computer Center Corporation went out of business in 1970, Bill started working with another interested company, Information Sciences Inc. (ISI). ISI saw potential in Bill and Allen and brought them both onboard. Around this time, him and Paul got accepted into Harvard. Again, though, Gates surpassed their every expectation and also went on to create his own business called Traf-O-Data, making over $20,000. After seeing this success, the company MITS sought out Gates. He told them he could port the computer language BASIC to their system, and they aptly agreed. What they didn’t know was that Gates knew nothing about BASIC, he merely said that get them interested. He went on and did it anyway, though, and ported BASIC to microcomputers, which would later be a founding language for Microsoft Windows microcomputers years later. Gates couldn’t see it yet, but from all of these opportunities he was gaining the knowledge and experience to create something groundbreaking. He already had knowledge using current technology, creating new software, and managing a business startup.

This head start would be crucial to Bill’s success down the road. Bill Joy was another man who was following a very similar path to Bill Gates. He went into college looking to get a degree in math or biology, but then discovered that his college had a department dedicated to computers. He fell in love instantly, and like Bill Gates, spent most of his time there. Also like Gates, he was going to one of the only schools in the country that allowed students to access computer systems such as these. Often times, professionals don’t gain ground and credibility as well as proficiency with their expertise until they have logged over 10,000 hours in that field. Both Joy and Gates used this to their advantage to get their 10,000 hours in as soon as possible, and become pioneers in their areas of study. For Bill Joy, it was Sun Microsystems and the Java programming language. For Bill Gates, it was Microsoft and Microsoft Windows.

After all of this hard work, Bill decided it was time to make the next step. Harvard was pressing for Gates to leave their college or face consequences, because he couldn’t run Traf-O-Data from his college dorm room. Him and Allen decided to drop out of Harvard along with their friend Steve Ballmer, who would become the CEO of Microsoft after Bill left. They started their company on November 26, 1976 under the name Micro-Soft, which was short for “microcomputer software”. Getting a large scale computer at Lakeside School marked the start of the amazing opportunities Bill would get. He then went on to do business with the CCC, ISS and MITS, all while creating his own software and managing a business of his own. Bill would never be where he was today if even one of these opportunities hadn’t come up.

Late in 1980, IBM came to Microsoft with interests regarding their new computer. They were building a personal computer for the general consumer to use, but they didn’t have an operating system that would run on their computer. In response, Bill teamed up with IBM to find an operating system. Later that year, Microsoft would find a system called QDOS and buy it out, renaming it MS-DOS (Micro-Soft Disk Operating System) and shared it with IBM (”Bill Gates Biography”). This leap forward was the final step into the framework for Windows, which would become one of the most successful computer software products on the market, ever. Bill knew how computer hardware worked from his time at Lakeside, learned to create his own software there and at Harvard, and then went on to modify QDOS and release it as MS-DOS for IBM. He was on the verge of creating a masterpiece.

Bill Gates wasn’t just incredibly smart. He was clever and cunning, and he saw things that many people often missed. He approached the computer age with a new enthusiasm and saw it as the future, bringing forth a vision of what the future would be like. Brownsville, New York is a prime example of where people handling a situation differently can lead to success. Brownsville had a staggeringly high rate of youth crime, which any other city would have attempted to solve by tightening up the police presence in the city. Instead, Brownsville Youth Justice Board proposed something different. They decided to find the families of those likely to commit crime, and befriend them. They wanted to give the community a positive outlook on the police force, and make them a friend. This drastically different approach decreased crime rates tremendously over the next several years, going from over three hundred and fifty robbery arrests per year to under two dozen per year after three years. In the same way, Bill took the ideas behind computers and flipped them upside down. Originally intended as a business oriented computation machine, he completely changed the idea of what a computer should be. Instead, he got people to look at them as machines to be used for personal productivity, and that changed our culture.

All in all, Bill had a vision for where he wanted to see Microsoft to go. He wanted more than to just sell computers, he wanted to make them cheap enough for everyday people to have. His goal was to have “a computer on every desk and in every home that could run Windows software at an affordable price.” According to Bill, “Microsoft was the first software company where we wrote software for personal computers.” (“Chairman of Microsoft”) They were taking something that was meant for math and machinery work and making it personal, and they were one of the first people to do so. Bill was a successful business man in this regard, and not just because of his vision. He has a deep and intimate knowledge of the software he was using, because he was a programmer himself. He wasn’t just a businessman, he was a part of the team. This advantage helped him skyrocket to success just a few years later with his launch of Windows, and kept him on track to become one of the most valuable people in America.

Bill took a lot of opportunities and built upon them to make himself successful, which was critical for him to become as wealthy as he is today. Not all people are so willing to take risks, though. Christopher Langan was a man born in San Francisco who grew up facing incredible difficulties, such as having three different fathers throughout his childhood and enduring an unending poverty. Yet, when it came to education Chris was near the top of his class. He was a big fish in a small pond. All of that was true until his mother failed to turn in his financial aid, forcing him to leave Montana State University. He searched for other colleges for a while, but he lacked the drive for success and instead went into the workforce where he decided he was content. (Gladwell, “Outliers: The Story of Success” 91–94) This was the kind of drive that Christopher Langan lacked, that Bill Gates succeeded with. Bill was courageous when it came to making decisions, and worked towards a common goal. His childhood and teenage years gave him the opportunity to succeed, and like Bill Joy he made the most of it. Like Caroline Sacks, he was a big fish in a small pond, going on to strive to be the best at what he did where he had no competition to put him down. Where people fear opportunities and break down when there is resistance, Bill put forth even more effort and eventually came on top. Overall, Bill Gates took the road that few people dared to follow, and that brought him to where he is today.

Works Cited

“Bill Gates Biography”. Academy of Achievement. 26 Feb. 2010. Web. 13 May 2015.

Gladwell, Malcolm. “David And Goliath”. New York: Little, Brown and Company. 2013. Print.

Gladwell, Malcolm. “Outliers: The Story of Success”. New York: Little, Brown and Company. 2008. Print.

Corporate Valley. “Bill Gates Exclusive Interview — Chairman of Microsoft”. Online video clip. YouTube, Corporate Valley, 14 January 2013. Web. 8 April 2015.

Wallace, James. “Overdrive: Bill Gates and The Race to Control Cyberspace”. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997. Print.

Youth Justice Board. “Looking Forward: Youth Perspectives on Reducing Crime in Brownsville and Beyond”. New York: Youth Justice Board/Center for Court Innovation, 2011. Print.