The gates that Bill Gates opened, while his closes.....

I remember when one of my fathers cousin (an NRI) came down to my house
when I was just about to turn 10 years, he then told me of the man
called "Bill Gates”. Little did I know of him, little did I wanted to
know, little did it make sense to me.

All
my schooling I knew that when there came a question of who was the
"Worlds Richest Man", I knew the answer. When I was 14 years old - I
was at a barber shop when I read a news article which said "If Bill
Gates converted every dollar of his into 1Re coins, he could build a
ladder to the moon", how fascinated I was reading this? How could
someone earn so much money?

And this continued till about when I was 20 years, when entrepreneurship began to dawn on me and this question came to my mind.

Is
it the money that Bill Gates has, that I have to be fascinated about,
or the "intent" and the "change" he brought to the system that is to be
admired about? I most certainly know the answer now, because I realize
"money" is just a consequence of a "thought process" of trying to bring
in a new lease of life in the industry they are in.

I would not
like to repeat the story of how Bill Gates made it to the big stage,
but would like to throw few references to the man's story nonetheless.
Also remember that we are not discussing Microsoft, we are discussing
Bill Gates-the man.

1) Daring to take it against the IBM?

When
Bill Gates made the first appearance before the IBM, for presenting the
DOS (Disk Operating System) he never had anything written before him
and named it instantaneously.

For every starter there is nothing
to loose everything to gain and hence the loss out of risk would be
very minimal when you are starting out.

2) Meeting up for Hotmail with Sabeer Bhatia.

The
man knew what was happening in and around the world - he was very quick
to pounce upon anything new, even it was disgraceful of what Apple
claims to the UI of Macintosh that Windows has, Gates was over
everything when he knew who was doing what instead or relaxing on the
revenues that were generated out of licensing Windows and its versions.

The
meeting was eventful when Sabeer Bhatia asked the world's richest man
to "come to him" to bargain , Gates never let his ego come in , he let
Bhatia ( a BITSian with MSc(Physics) drop out)
do the talking and take the bargain from him.

Entrepreneurs never sleep over glory; they always hunt to maximize shareholder's value.

3) Multi Dimensional to the core:-

I
remember reading somewhere, Jack Sams - the IBM executive that met Bill
Gates when he was 23 to strike a deal for DOS - said "After I had
talked to Bill for about 15 to 20 minutes, I realised that Bill was a
better programmer than I was,Bill was a better engineer than I was and
at last I realised that Bill was a better lawyer than the lawyer I
had." All this at the age of 23.

It is very vital to atleast
understand,if not think beyond the box for an entrepreneur , he knew
about royalty rights better than IBM did at the same point of time and
that made him the man he is today.

4)Surviving Moments of Shame:-

In
a court room in Washington DC - one of the most celebrated lawyers
David Boies , prosecuted the case of the "Illegal/Un-ethical monopoly
of the Software Market by the Microsoft" - it was by far the biggest
legal battle Microsoft had fought , same was with Bill Gates.

To
give you hints into how it was being done - Netscape was a browser
ruling the roost in the mid-90s,when Gates saw it as a potential threat
he released the IE for free and urged all manufacturers who shipped
Windows as the OS had to have pre-loaded IE , there by killing the
revenues of companies in that line.

The court ruled that
Microsoft was not innocent. Microsoft was split; Gates lost about $30
Billion dollars. Gates came back strongly recovered about $19 billion
over the next year.

Not being in the lows for long is what Bill Gates is made of - so should every young entrepreneur.

5) Philanthropy and Gates

Understanding
that neither firms nor entrepreneurs exist in isolation is a key thing
to show the humane nature of a successful business man. Gates
understood this well and he understands that he is a part of a society
which has a set of needs. Gates has also expressed his intent to
support the $100/laptop campaign through the William H Foundation which
started in 1994 on the lines of Carnige and Rockfeller which later
through his wife Melinda Gates became the Melinda & Gates
Foundation in 2000 and through this Gates meeting Warren Buffet became
a phenomenal meet.

Gates will leave Microsoft to work on
Philanthropy full time - which denotes that each one lives his life and
the ultimate objective of it is to “make the world we live in a better
place ".

June 27th, 2008 will go down into the annals of history
for years to come - the man is still there ... his mark is there ... he
goes to do another magic this time all towards humanity.

All
this I would not say unless there is a Indian implication here - in the
clash of the titans between India and China - there will be an edge
that India will have - that is the kind of creative entrepreneurs and
managers India can produce and all would have to take a leaf of out of
Bill Gates' Story - yes the man himself.

Gates, I can say I lived at a time when Bill Gates lived.