How Smart is Bill Gates?

Bill Gates, the Business Magician

We all assume Bill Gates is very smart and he is.  He's not a computer genius though and never was much of a programmer, but he's an excellent businessman.

He is as of this week off the Microsoft day to day payroll, but still chairman of the board.

Here is a story from "Good Morning Silicon Valley" an insiders look at the computer industry: from the bloggers standpoint.  Guess what?  The spell checker knows 'bloggers"  We've come a long way baby.

In my experience, Bill G was scary smart when it came to business matters. If you were making a presentation to him, you'd spend two weeks preparing the Power Points. 　Typically, you'd  wind up saying to yourself "I'll be OK, just so long as he doesn't ask about A or B", where A and B were obscure, intricate, 7th order business implications of your main idea.

Inevitably, you'd start your presentation, and get to about the third slide, when Bill G would say something like:  OK, I see, but what about A? And as you were starting to sputter out your answer (some variant of "I don't know"), he'd interrupt and ask "and now that I think about it, what about B?"

So he was a true whiz at business. 　But software was another story...　

I guess many people have their own Bill Gates story.  When Gates got going with DOS there were tons of good little operating systems around.  Companies like Digital Equipment and NOVA had very powerful little machines with great operating systems, but they did not run on Intel Chips.  There were even some good ones running on Intel chips.

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I had a friend that I collaborated with on a lot of big projects.  He was a zany guy and a hard worker.  He was with IBM and IBM started the personal computer business, not with technology, but with the words 'Personal Computer'.  They had the name and could produce machines.  All they needed was an operating system and they made a deal with Gates that got Microsoft going.  My friend Doug related this story to me.

"I became somehow in charge of this new thing called a PC and I had to deal with Gates. (remember Big Blue made BIG MACHINES at that time)  He got a tremendous contract with IBM that also allowed him to do things on his own. 

I had a Marketing Manager working for me named 'Sparky'.  He was from the old school and liked to plan things, way, way, way in advance.  I got so frustrated with him and his slow progress on the PC that I decided on drastic action.  One day I came into his spotless office and put my feet up on the desk and started smoking a big cigar (Doug didn't smoke). 

Sparky looked startled and asked what was up?  I said Sparky, our marketing on this PC is no good.  Sparky started to spout out the plans he and his staff were working so hard on for a breakout of the product at some future date.  Doug was very frustrated so he went over to Sparky's own fledgling PC behind his desk.  He grabbed it moved to the window and tossed it out.

He finished up by telling Sparky to try that out in the marketplace. Sparky, the damn thing won't hit the ground before somebody claims it.  Don't you know you don't need marketing, you need to make sure you don't get in the way.  Start producing some support material and get off your dead butt."

Later, I worked with Sparky.  He had no spark at all."