From 1995 to 2007, the only person that remained the richest man in the world was Bill Gates. Then came in 2008, but this did not last too long as Gates made a quick return in 2009 to take back his usual place. From 2010 to 2013, Carlos Slim became the richest man and it was back to Gates from 2014 to 2016 before he was surpassed by in 2017.
Being the founder of Microsoft which has come to become one of the major sources of his fortune, Bill Gates is a businessman, investor, philanthropist, and humanitarian who has become one of the most wealthy and influential people in the world. Although he has retired from Microsoft, he is still involved in a lot of things with his wife, Melinda Gates.
Bill Gates’ Biography
The billionaire was born William Henry Gates in Seattle, Washington on 28 October 1955. While his father, William Gates Sr was a lawyer, Mary, his mother, worked as a bank executive. With that, the young Gates was raised in a family that was pretty much well to do. He is of English, German, Irish, and Scots-Irish descent and was brought up alongside two sisters attending the private Lakeside school where he had his first encounter with the computers. He taught himself basic programming which would be his first starting point.
By the time he was 17, Gates had already formed a venture known as Traf-O-Data, a system that reads data from traffic counters and comes up with reports for engineers. In 1973, Bill Gates graduated from Lakewood and he went to Harvard College having scored 1590 of the possible 1600 in his SAT. Nonetheless, instead of continuing with the mathematics and computer science that he was studying, he dropped out only two years after he began to pursue his own coding.
In 1976, Bill Gates founded Microsoft and in 1980, the company was contracted by IBM to develop a new BASIC operating system for her new computer, marking the start of what would later be the dominance of Microsoft. The 1990s saw the birth of Windows and its continuous growth which took the world of tech to a new level. However, in 2014, Bill Gates stepped down as the chairman of Microsoft at the age of 58.
Height
Bill Gates has a height of 5Feet 9Inches(1.77 m) and weighs 70 kg (154 lbs). Likewise, his hair is grey in color and has a pair of greyish blue eyes.
Foundation
Beyond just making money, what may come to be among the greatest legacy of Bill and Melinda Gates is their charity works all over the world. The couple has different charity programs including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which was founded in 2000.
Through the foundation which has more than $50 billion in assets, the powerful couple work towards improved healthcare and reducing extreme poverty among other things. Apart from Bill and Melinda, Warren Buffett is also a foundation’s trustee.
Wife – Melinda and Children
After she graduated from Duke University, Melinda French had many job offers including one with IBM in Dallas and Microsoft. While IBM was a good place, there were more opportunities for her with Microsoft as regards advancement and as such, she took that offer.
Not too long after she joined as a product manager, Melinda was approached by the company’s CEO who parked his car close to her asking if she would be free to have dinner with him in two weeks. Her simple answer to gates was that it was not spontaneous enough for her, and so an hour later he called and ask if she would be free that night and she said that was spontaneous enough.
On January 1, 1994, Bill and Melinda got married after dating for more than five years. Since then, they have remained very close, doing a lot of things including charity together.
Their marriage has been blessed with three children named Rory John Gates, Jennifer Katharine Gates, Phoebe Adele Gates.
Bill Gates Net Worth, House, and Cars
In 2021, Forbes put his net worth at a massive $124.5 billion. However, he is the fourth richest man in the world only after Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos.
Gates has been known to indulge a time or two; he has many expensive cars and properties that many can only imagine such as his house, Xanadu 2.0 which is valued at over $150 million and is among the most expensive celebrity homes. Apart from this mansion located in Washington, he also has properties in different parts of the world.
When it comes to cars, Gates has a good number of them including a Porsche 959 and a Porsche 911 supercar which he once had but auctioned for $80,000. Beyond the cars, one of the biggest toys he has is his private jet, the Bombardier BD-700 Global Express.
Social Media: Instagram, Twitter
Bill Gates is very active on social media. He has 6.4 million followers on his Instagram account and has 54 million followers on Twitter. Similarly, he has more than 22 million followers.
Bill Gates Some Quotes
- “It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.”
- “Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up. “
- “People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn’t they? People feared coal, they feared gas-powered engines… There will always be ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear. But with time, people will come to accept their silicon masters.”
- “Innovations that are guided by smallholder farmers adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and environment will be necessary to ensure food security in the future. “
- “You may have heard of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There’s another day you might want to know about: Giving Tuesday. The idea is pretty straightforward. On the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, shoppers take a break from their gift-buying and donate what they can to charity. “
