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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Hah, the first time I met Bill Gates was at Percomp '78 in Long Beach California. This was a pretty small personal computer conference, but Microsoft was there pushing Altair BASIC. I had a Digital Group Z80 system (which I considered to be waaaaay superior to the Altair in the way that only a male high school student can project.) Bill was selling BASIC for $399, I had paid $900 for my entire system (as a kit). He offered to let me work for him and port it to the DG system, I declined. After all this guy was going nowhere, who in their right mind would pay more than half the price of their computer for BASIC right?

Looking back on that I cannot see any way in which I would have concluded differently, given the information I had available, but that experience has since given me insight to never dismiss an idea simply. I like to have solid reasoning behind my mistakes :-)

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Shows that he believed in what he was doing, and kept at it no matter what. Sounds like he got dismissed by a LOT of people seemingly (from reading posts like yours, and other articles over the years). Pretty good effort I'd say!

All I could think of after reading your post was: ouch!

Not to detract from his success, it also may have helped that he was financially independent (had a big safety net) having come from a wealthy family.

Things are different if you're worried about putting food on the table a couple of months from now.

You could also say that having a wealthy family was not an incentive to work hard. There is no rule to success.

If this really had anything to do with it, why did he keep going at all? After all, what's the point in trying to start a company if you already have a wealthy family and a safety net?

Because you want to, and not because you have to tread all the time to stay fed and sheltered.

Yeah, well, this doesn't really make any sense. But you can continue to believe this.

This theory is invalidated by Paul Allen.

They didn't have to worry about staying fed and sheltered, because they generated revenue immediately. They built a real business.

Maybe. But I was replying to the second part of paulhauggis's comment, and I still think the general point stands.

Exactly. If you look at the kids of wealthy people that don't have to ever worry about money, they don't start their own businesses.

"Money isn't the game. It's just how you keep score."

It's certainly fine to never be interested in risking everything you have to take a chance and build a company. I get tired of those that chant that mantra as though that's the only way to have happiness in life. At the same time it seems insulting to boil Bill Gates down to "Well yeah he had a big nest egg so he could take chances" Anybody who builds something real and lasting stares down devastating financial and emotional defeat once if not multiple times during that time but perseveres.

Nonsense. You are coming up with excuses for your own lot in life. Many people were given even better opportunities than Gates and had limited success. The guy is a genius, took huge risks, worked hard and had good fortune.

> Nonsense. You are coming up with excuses for your own lot in life.

Please don't make needlessly personal accusations in HN comments. This comment would be much better if it started from "Many people were given even better..."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

Much what now?

Better!

(Thanks—added.)

I think that helps but as I've mentioned before there is a notion of 'fearlessness' that you get as the risk of losing your job becomes less of a catastrophe. Paying off your house for example adds a level of fearlessness because you know you can make enough to cover insurance and taxes, having enough saved for your kids college bills adds a level because you don't worry that some screw up of yours is going to disadvantage your kids, and having enough in the bank that you could continue to live in your paid off house without consuming principal, means that you really can take a huge risk and if it doesn't work out, just try something different.

Having met Bill since that time in other contexts, it is clear to me that he had a much bigger picture in mind than my high school self could conceive of at the time. I'm not sure he forsaw all of what Microsoft became, but he saw a whole lot more in the future of microcomputers than I did.

Gates & Allen were able to generate revenue almost from day one, to cover expenses for the business.

Your theory is also decimated by Paul Allen.

Those two never had to worry about starving to death, because they made sure to generate sales from the very beginning. Microsoft was started for peanuts, they lived on peanuts in New Mexico, they drove sales, and that was that. It would not have mattered if it was two Paul Allen's coming from a middle class background, or a Gates and Allen. One thing mattered: sales.

You know why Allen wasn't afraid, despite lacking the Gates family money? He knew he had the ability to go get a well paying job at dozens of companies, he had a valuable skill.

This. Why would you start a business around a product nobody is interested in paying for? Doesn't make a lick of sense to me.

The missing element here is: there were A LOT of small companies pushing microcomputer hardware and software products in the late 70's, Gates and Microsoft were pretty much indistinguishable from the field.

Anecdota: My Father used to subscribe to the Wall Street journal during this time, and him and I observed the whole thing play out. There no indication, none what so ever that Microsoft would win out the way they did. It was all really remarkable.

I and a number of my friends thought DEC would dominate the business! After all, DEC had an enormous head start with the LSI-11, RT-11, mature compilers, etc. I had an H-11 computer.

If there ever was a computer company that squandered a golden opportunity, it was DEC.

But weren't they the first to sell software for personal computers?

(of course, DOS was their big break)

It's more sheer luck with their deal with IBM for doing an OS (which wasn't even their core business).

Fellow DG owner! Cool. I soldered my first computer together out of one of their kits, in 1977-78. I learned a hell of a lot building that thing.

I still have mine. Some day I'll get it running again (restoring the capacitive keyboard is pretty hairy, I understand).

Can you imagine what it was like to be the only kid in 11th grade (high school) who had a computer?

DG had a couple of pretty good BASIC implementations (MAXI-BASIC and Business-BASIC). They were not hurting there.

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