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A Microsoft company photo in 1978, with COURTESY OF MICROSOFT |
Paul Allen After Gates went off to Harvard, Allen drove his rattletrap Chrysler cross-country to continue their childhood collaboration. He eventually persuaded Gates to become that university's most famous modern dropout in order to start a software company, which they initially dubbed Micro-Soft (after considering the name Allen & Gates Inc.), to write versions of BASIC code for the first personal computers. Over the years they would have ferocious fights, and Allen would, after a Hodgkin's disease scare, quit the company and become estranged. But Gates worked hard to repair the relationship and eventually lured Allen, who is now one of the country's biggest high-tech venture-capital investors, back onto the Microsoft board. "We like to talk about how the fantasies we had as kids and the neat things we dreamed about actually came true," Gates says. |
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Steve Ballmer "He's the smartest guy I've ever met," says Ballmer. When Microsoft began to grow in 1980, and Gates needed a smart non-techie to help run things, he lured Ballmer, who had worked for Procter & Gamble, to Seattle as an equity partner. As with Allen, the relationship was sometimes stormy. "Bill brings to the company the idea that conflict can be a good thing, that you always have to challenge people," says Ballmer. "Bill knows it's important to avoid that gentle civility that keeps you from getting to the heart of an issue quickly. He likes it when anyone, even a junior employee, challenges him, and you know he respects you when he starts shouting back." |
Steve Ballmer is the social goad, whose marketing skills let Gates play visionary DAVID BURNETT-CONTACT |
Nathan P. Myhrvold is the intellectual goad, F. BARYLKO-SIPA
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Nathan Myhrvold If Ballmer is Gates' social goad, his intellectual one is Myhrvold. Myhrvold runs Microsoft's advanced research and occasionally moonlights as a chef at Rover's, a small French restaurant in Seattle."There are two types of tech companies," he says. "Those where the guy in charge knows how to surf, and those where he depends on experts on the beach to guide him." Myhrvold describes a typical private session with Gates. Pacing around a room, they will talk for hours about future technologies such as voice recognition, then wander onto topics ranging from quantum physics to genetic engineering. "Bill is not threatened by smart people," he says, "only stupid ones." |
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Warren Buffet The Omaha investor whom Gates demoted to being merely the second richest American seems an unlikely person to be among his closest pals, and says he probably should have bought more than 100 shares of Microsoft. A jovial, outgoing 66-year-old grandfather, Buffet only recently learned to use a computer after Gates talked him into playing his beloved bridge with his friends via the Internet. As multibillionaires go, both men are unpretentious, and they enjoy taking vacations together. Buffett says he likes Gates' humor. As an example, he cites the time they visited the Forbidden City together and were shown huge ancient scrolls that were silently rolled and unrolled by women trained for the task. "There's a $2 fine," Gates whispered, "if you return a scroll not rewound." |
Warren Buffett in 1993 JOHN ABBOTT |