Bill Gates is the chairperson and chief software architect of Microsoft Corporation, the worldwide leader in software services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. Bill strongly believes in hard work. He believes that if you are intelligent and know how to apply your intelligence, you can achieve anything. From childhood Bill was ambitious, intelligent and competitive. These qualities helped him to attain top position in the profession he chose.

Bill Gate's parent considered the possibility of sending him to private school. This materialized in the form of Lakeside. It was a place that was known for its tradition for fostering intellectual excellence. It was at Lakeside that Bill Gates first encountered a machine called the computer. While at Lakeside, he befriended his classmate called Paul Allen. Bill went on to Harvard for further studies with Paul Allen constantly urging him to start a technology company with him. While Gates was at Harvard he encountered an easy-to-learn programming language called BASIC developed at Dartmouth College for teaching purposes. While he was a student at Harvard, he co-authored with Paul Allen the original Altair BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800. Bill Gates then dropped out of Harvard without graduating. Every great idea needs to be seized in a moment otherwise the idea and the moment is both lost. In 1974 Allen came across the picture of the Altair 8080 and the headline - World's First Microcomputer Kit to Rival Commercial Models. He saw this on the cover of Popular Electronics at a magazine vending stall. Allen realized that this was the moment they were waiting for; he purchased the magazine and rushed to meet Gates in his dorm. Upon reading the article Paul Allen and Bill Gates realized that the home computer market was about to explode and that someone would need to make software for the new machines.

In the late 1970s, IBM was planning to enter the personal computer market with its IBM Personal Computer (PC). IBM needed an operating system for its new computer, which was based on the newly developed, 16-bit architecture of the Intel x 86 processor families. Bill Gates did not take up the arduous task of developing the operating system. Instead he approached a company called Seattle Computer who had developed the operating system. Without revealing the IBM connection, Bill Gates purchased the OS on behalf of Microsoft.
Microsoft managed to purchase the OS from Seattle Computer at a dirt cheap rate of $50,000. Microsoft subsequently licensed the operating system to IBM and collaborated with other computer manufacturers to include its own version, called MS-DOS, with every computer system sold. Microsoft has subsequently dislodged IBM as the official behemoths of the software industry. It is ironic that IBM did the initial hand holding to steady Microsoft.

In the 1990s' the flavour of the day was the Internet. A browser was required but it was already developed by Netscape. The Internet programming language was already written by Sun Microsystems. It seemed that Microsoft had missed the bus but Gates changed all that with a series of bold acquisitions. In 1996, Gates came across a $45 CD Rom that put a lot of things together to make something that looked like a browser.

Microsoft refined it further and christened it Internet Explorer 1.0. It was licensed from a company called Spyglass. Today they have become the number one developer of web browsers. Microsoft wanted a presence in the email space. This led to the acquisition of Hotmail, a concept developed by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith.

Bill married Melinda French in 1994 and they have three children. It was with Melinda's constant support that Bill accomplished his long-cherished dream of starting a foundation aimed at helping the poor and the needy. Together they started the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and it has been endowed with more than $35 billion. Some years ago, he visited Chicago's Einstein Elementary School and announced grants benefiting Chicago's schools and museums and donated a total of $110,000, a bunch of computers, and provided Internet connectivity to number of schools. Secondly, Bill Gates donated 38 million dollars for the building of a computer institute at Stanford University. Gates plans to give away 95% of all his earnings when he is old and gray.