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Winning is finding joy in things.#

Richard Feynman

I started going on regular long hikes in the mountains around Seattle with a group of boys when I was about thirteen. We met in the Boy Scouts. We did a lot of hiking and camping with the troop, but soon we formed our own little group to go on our own adventures—we called it exploring. We wanted more freedom and adventure than what the Scouts offered.

Usually, there were five of us—Mike, Rocky, Reilly, Danny, and me. Mike was the leader; he was a few years older than the rest of us and had more outdoor experience. Over the next three years, we hiked hundreds of miles together. We traversed the Olympic National Forest to the east of Seattle and the Glacier Peak Wilderness to the northeast, hiking along the Pacific coast. We often hiked for seven days or more, relying solely on topographic maps to navigate through old-growth forests and rocky beaches, trying to time our runs with the tides. During school breaks, we would go on long trips, hiking and camping regardless of the weather, which in the Pacific Northwest often meant spending a week in soaking wet, itchy military surplus wool pants and with cracked toes. We didn’t do technical climbing. No ropes or harnesses or vertical cliffs. Just long, hard hikes. And aside from the fact that we were teenagers, deep in the mountains, far from help, and before the advent of cell phones, it wasn’t dangerous.

Over time, we became a confident, tight-knit team. After a full day of hiking, we would decide on a campsite, and without much talking, we would each take on our tasks. Mike and Rocky would probably set up the roof tarp for the night. Danny would gather dry firewood from the bushes, while Reilly and I would strike a match and light some sticks to start a campfire for the night.

Then we would eat. Cheap food packed in our backpacks was enough to sustain us on our journey. Nothing tasted better than that. For dinner, we would chop up a chunk of lunch meat and mix it with hamburger helper or a bag of beef stroganoff. In the morning, we might drink Corning instant breakfast powder or a powder that turned into scrambled eggs when mixed with water, or at least that’s what the package claimed. My favorite breakfast was Oscar Mayer smoked sausage, a “all-meat” sausage that has since disappeared. We cooked most of our food in a frying pan, and then we ate from the empty #10 coffee cans each person carried. Those cans served as our buckets, our stew pots, and our oatmeal bowls. I don’t know who among us invented the hot raspberry drink. It wasn’t a great culinary innovation: just add instant jelly powder to hot water and drink. It served as both dessert and a sugar boost for the morning before a day of hiking.

That said,

In the 1970s, attitudes toward parenting were more relaxed than they are today. Kids generally had more freedom. By the time I was a teenager, my parents had accepted my differences from many of my peers and had come to terms with the fact that I needed to carve my own path in the world. This acceptance had been hard-won—especially for my mother—but it would become a key factor in shaping my future.

Looking back now, I’m sure each of us was looking for something beyond friendship and a sense of accomplishment on those trips. We were at an age where kids test their limits and try on different identities, sometimes feeling a yearning for something greater, even transcendent. I began to feel a strong desire to figure out what my path in life would be. I wasn’t sure which direction it would take, but it definitely needed to be something interesting and meaningful.

During those years, I spent a lot of time with a different group of boys. Kent, Paul, Rick, and I all went to the same school—Lakeside, which had set up a way for students to connect to a large computer via telephone lines. It was rare for teenagers to have access to computers at that time. The four of us loved this machine, spending all our free time writing more complex programs and exploring what we could do with this electronic device.

On the surface, the differences between hiking and programming seemed vast. But they both felt like an adventure. With two groups of friends, I was exploring new worlds, going to places that even most adults couldn’t reach. Like hiking, programming suited me because it allowed me to define my own standards of success and seemed limitless, unbound by how fast I could run or how far I could throw. The logic, focus, and endurance required to write long, complex programs came naturally to me. Unlike hiking, among that group of friends, I was the leader.

By the end of my sophomore year,

• In June 1971, Mike called me to arrange our next trip: a 50-mile hike in the Olympic Mountains. The route he chose was called the News Survey Trail, an area explored by a group sponsored by a newspaper in 1890. Was he referring to that trip that nearly starved us and had our clothes rotting on us? Yes, but that was a long time ago, he said.

• Eighty years later, it was still a tough hike; there had been a lot of snow that year, so it was a particularly daunting challenge. But since the others—Rocky, Reilly, and Danny—were all ready, I would never back down. Plus, a young Boy Scout named Chip was eager to join. I had to go.

• At that time, someone had lent Lakeside a PDP-8 computer made by DEC (Digital Equipment Corp.). This was in 1971, when I was deep into the budding world of computers and had never seen anything like it. Until then, my friends and I had only used those massive mainframe computers shared with others. We usually connected to them via telephone lines, or they were locked in a separate room. But the PDP-8 was designed to be used directly by one person and was small enough to fit on a desk beside you. It was probably the closest thing to a personal computer at the time, even though it weighed 80 pounds and cost $8,500. To challenge myself, I decided to try to write a version of the BASIC programming language for this new computer.

Three and a half years later, I was a sophomore in college, still uncertain about my path in life. Paul was one of my friends from Lakeside, and he suddenly burst into my dorm room with news about a groundbreaking computer. I knew we could write a version of BASIC for it; we were already ahead of the game. The first thing I did was recall that painful experience on the Lo Pass Trail and retrieve the evaluator code I had written from memory. I typed it into the computer, thus planting the seed for one of the largest companies in the world and launching a new industry.

In time, there would be a big company. Eventually, there would be billions of computers running software programs, with lines of code stretching into the millions. There would be wealth and competition, along with constant worries about how to stay at the forefront of the technological revolution.

Before that, there was a deck of cards and a goal: to beat my grandmother.

In my family, the quickest way to win favor was to be good at games, especially card games. If you were confident in Rummy, Bridge, or Canasta, we would respect you, which made my grandmother, Adele Thompson, a household legend. As a child, I often heard the saying, “Grandma is the best at card games.”

Gami grew up in rural Washington state in the railroad town of Enklewick. It was less than fifty miles from Seattle, but in the year she was born, 1902, it was another world. Her father was a railroad telegrapher, and her mother, Ida Thompson—whom we called Lala—eventually made a decent living baking cakes and selling war bonds at the local lumber mill. Lala also played a lot of Bridge. Her partners and opponents were the socialites of the town, the wives of bankers and lumber mill owners. These people might have had more money or higher social standing, but Lala made up some of the difference by easily defeating them at card games. This talent was passed on to Gami and to some extent to her only daughter, her only girl.

My immersion into this family culture began early. When I was still in diapers, Lala started calling me “Trey,” which is the poker slang for three. This was because I was the third living Bill Gates in the family, after my dad and grandpa. (Actually, I’m the fourth, but my dad chose to call himself “junior,” so I was called Bill Gates III.) Gami had me playing “Fish” by the time I was five. Over the next few years, we would play thousands of hands. We had fun, both for entertainment and to pass the time. But my grandmother also played to win, and she always managed to do so.

I was fascinated by her mastery at the time. How did she get so good? Was she born that way? Was she pious, perhaps a gift from God? For a long time, I had no answers. All I knew was that every time we played, she would win. No matter the game, no matter how hard I tried.

When Christian Science rapidly expanded to the West Coast in the early 20th century, both sides of my family became devoted followers. I believe my mother’s parents drew strength from Christian Science, embracing the belief that a person’s true identity lies in spirituality rather than materiality. They were strict adherents. Because Christian Scientists do not track age, Grandma never celebrated her birthday and never revealed her age or even the year she was born. Despite her own beliefs, Grandma never imposed her views on others. My mom did not adhere to that faith, nor did our family. Grandma never tried to persuade us to take another path.

Her beliefs may have played a role in shaping her into a person of extreme principles. Even then, I could understand that Gami followed a strict code of personal fairness, justice, and integrity. Living a meaningful life meant living simply, giving time and money to others, and most importantly, using your mind—to stay connected to the world. She never lost her temper, never spread gossip or criticism. She wouldn’t play tricks. She was usually the smartest person in the room, but she would carefully nurture others to shine. She was essentially a shy person, but inside was a confidence that manifested as a Zen-like calm.

Two months before my fifth birthday, my grandfather, J.W. Maxwell Jr., died of cancer. He was only fifty-nine. Following his Christian Science beliefs, he refused modern medical intervention. His last years were filled with pain, and Gami, as his caregiver, suffered too. Later, I learned that Grandpa believed his suffering was in some way due to Gami’s actions, some unknown sin in the eyes of God that was now punishing him. Nevertheless, she remained steadfast by his side, supporting him until the end of his life. One of my deepest childhood memories is of my parents not allowing me to attend his funeral. I was barely aware of what was happening, only knowing that my mother, father, and sister got to say goodbye while I stayed home with a babysitter. A year later, my aunt Lala died in Gami’s home.

From that point on, my aunt poured all her love and attention into my sister Kristi and me, later joined by my sister Libby. She was with us throughout our childhood and had a profound impact on our future growth. Before I could even hold a book, she read stories to me, and for many years afterward, she told me classic tales like “Gone with the Wind,” “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” and “Charlotte’s Web.” After my grandfather’s death, my aunt began teaching me to read on my own, helping me sound out words in “Nine Friendly Dogs,” “What a Beautiful Day,” and other books around the house. After we finished all those books, she would drive me to the Northeast Seattle library to borrow more. I knew she read a lot and seemed knowledgeable in various fields.

My grandparents built a large house in the upscale Windermere neighborhood of Seattle, big enough to accommodate grandchildren and family gatherings. Grandma continued to live there after Grandpa passed away. Some weekends, Kristi and I would spend the night there, taking turns sleeping in Grandma’s room. The other would sleep in a nearby bedroom, where everything from the walls to the curtains was light blue. The shadows of streetlights and passing cars would cast shapes in that blue room. I felt scared sleeping there, always glad when it was my turn to stay in Grandma’s room.

Those weekend visits were special. Her house was only a few miles from ours, but time spent there felt like a vacation. She had a swimming pool and a mini-golf course built by my grandpa, and we often played in the yard next door. She also allowed us to watch TV, which was a strictly controlled activity in our own home. Gami was willing to try anything; thanks to her, my sisters and I became avid gamers, turning anything—like Monopoly, Risk, and Concentration—into a competitive sport. We would buy two puzzles and race to see who could finish first. But we knew her preferences. Most nights after dinner, she would deal cards and then proceed to beat us soundly.

We played games like Cat and Mouse, Goldfish, Hearts, and my favorite game, Sevens. We also played her favorite, a complex Goldfish game she called “Coast Guard Hearts.” We played a little Bridge. We went through a book by Dr. Hauer in order, playing various popular and less popular games, including Hearts War.

Meanwhile, I was studying her. There’s something in computer science called a state machine, which is part of a program that receives input and takes the best action based on a series of conditions. My grandmother had a finely tuned card-playing state machine; her mental algorithm worked through probabilities, decision trees, and game theory. I might not have been able to articulate these concepts clearly, but slowly I began to intuit them. I noticed that even in unique moments in the game—a set of possible moves and probabilities she might never have seen—she would usually choose the best action. If she lost a good card at some point, I would later see her sacrifice it for some reason: to win at a later moment.

We played and played, and I lost and lost. But I was observing, always improving. All along, Gami was gently encouraging me. “Think smart, Trey. Think smart,” she would say as I weighed my next move. The implication was that if I used my brain and stayed focused, I could find the right card to play. I could win.

One day I did.

I was born on October 28, 1955, the second of three children. My sister Kristi was born in 1954, twenty-one months older than me; my sister Libby was born nearly ten years later. As a baby, I was called the “happy boy” for always wearing a bright smile. Not that I never cried, but the joy I expressed seemed to overshadow all other emotions. Another notable trait of mine in early childhood could be described as excessive energy. I rocked. Initially on a rubber horse for hours and hours. As I grew older, I didn’t give up this habit, rocking while sitting, standing, or whenever I felt the need to think deeply. Rocking was like a metronome for my brain. It still is.

My parents realized early on that my thinking rhythm was different from other kids. Kristi was an obedient child, easy to play with other kids, and excelled academically from the start. I was nothing of the sort. My mom worried about me and warned my teachers at Acorn Kindergarten to have certain expectations. By the end of my first year in kindergarten, the principal wrote, “His mother has prepared him well, as she seems to feel he contrasts sharply with his sister. We completely agree with her conclusion, as he seems determined to make us feel his indifference to every aspect of school life. He does not know or care how to cut, put on his coat, and is perfectly happy to ignore it.” (Interestingly, one of Kristi’s early memories of me includes always having to get me into my coat and then lying on the floor so she could calmly zip it up.)

In second grade at Acorn Academy, I was a “recently aggressive, rebellious child,” a four-year-old who liked to sing alone and take imaginary journeys. I fought with other kids and “felt frustrated and unhappy most of the time,” the principal reported. Fortunately, my teachers were excited about my long-term plans: “We feel very accepted by him because he includes us in his planned moon trip,” they wrote. (I was ahead of Kennedy by a few years.)

The hints that educators and my parents noticed when I was very young foreshadowed what was to come. I would channel my strong desire to solve Gami’s card skill puzzle into an interest in anything that captured my attention, ignoring the mundane. The things that attracted me included reading, math, and immersing myself in my thoughts. The things that bored me included the routines of daily life and school, handwriting, art, and sports. And almost everything my mother told me to do.

My father was known as the gentleman giant, standing six feet seven inches tall, with a calm and polite demeanor you might not expect from someone who was often the tallest person in the room. He dealt with people straightforwardly and purposefully, a trait that shaped his image and suited his profession as a lawyer (later becoming the first head of our charitable foundation) advising businesses and boards. While polite, he was not shy about making his demands. As a college student, what he wanted was a dance partner.

In the fall of 1946, he was part of a wave of veterans participating in the massive G.I. Bill, a generous government program that allowed millions to receive an education they might not otherwise have been able to afford. To my father, the only downside was that the male-to-female ratio on the University of Washington campus was heavily skewed. This meant there were few opportunities to find a dance partner. At some point, he asked a friend for help. Her name was Mary Maxwell.

My father always claimed that his request for an introduction was not a clever way to get my mom to date him. But that’s exactly what it was. He said, “Come on, let’s go out.” Then, the story goes, two years later, they were married.

I always loved hearing this story because it perfectly showcased my parents’ personalities. My dad: cautious and pragmatically unrepentant, sometimes even in matters of the heart. My mom: sociable and unhesitating in pursuing what she wanted. It’s a clever story, a distillation of the whole narrative that highlights not just the differences in appearance but ultimately will influence the kind of person I would become.

My objective conclusion about our relationship is that we had a lot in common, which was a very good thing. We had similar desires for social and family life. I think we both wanted a very close marriage, meaning we hoped the two of us would become one. Although our social and family backgrounds were different, I think we could understand the issues that arose from that because, as individuals, we were quite similar. We both enjoyed working through ideas, thinking, and learning… we both yearned for the same things—to achieve success in the world as honestly and fairly as possible. While we placed a high value on success, neither of us would consider it worth it to unfairly push someone else down. We wanted our children to have the same fundamental values. Perhaps our “means” would differ, but I tend to think we could present a consistent stance that complemented both viewpoints… you know, Bill, if you truly love me, I would do anything for you.

My mother’s confidence and ambition likely came half from the Maxwell family and half from Gami. Gami, besides being good at cards, was an excellent student among high school graduates, a basketball prodigy, and a voracious reader who sought a broader life away from her hometown. She met my grandfather at the University of Washington. In 1946, my mom followed suit and entered the University of Washington, receiving full support from two ambitious parents and the general expectation from the family that she would excel.

Two years later, life in Bremerton, better job prospects, and a more vibrant life drew them back to Seattle, and within months of my birth, we moved into a newly built house in a place called Winne Ridge in North Seattle, where there was an elementary school, a children’s park, and a library within walking distance. The whole community was still under construction when we arrived. I have a film my dad shot after we moved in: you can see a lawn that hasn’t been seeded yet, and my sister riding her tricycle on a sidewalk that looks almost liquid clean. Across the street was the outline of an unfinished wooden house. Watching that film, I marvel at how everything was so new, as if the whole community had just been built for kids like us.

There was a loud bang, and then the house shook. My mom had just said goodbye to Kristi, me, and the babysitter; she was about to go out to meet my dad for dinner. When the house shook, she froze, her hand still on the doorknob. At that moment, we saw the roof of the carport fly past our house through the backyard window, crashing into the yard and knocking down the neighbor’s fence.

My mother guided us into the basement, where we huddled near a pile of canned food and other nuclear attack supplies. In 1962, a nuclear bomb seemed more likely than the tornado that disrupted that Friday night: a tornado, the first on record in Seattle. It formed in our View Ridge neighborhood, landed on our street, then crossed our yard and continued across Lake Washington, pulling up a hundred-foot-high column of water. The whole thing was over in fifteen minutes. Miraculously, no one was hurt. Aside from uprooted trees and broken windows, most of the damage in our community was limited to our carport. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer sent a reporter and photographer. My mother pasted the accompanying photo (of a neighborhood child standing on the crushed structure) into a scrapbook along with other childhood memories.

My dad wanted to throw a barbecue party, inviting friends over to see the pile of wood scraps, metal pipes, and asphalt shingles that used to be our carport. No way, my mom said. She was still shaken. Who knows what would have happened if she had opened that door earlier, and we would have been affected too. And no decent family would celebrate something like that. It would be in poor taste. It didn’t fit my mom’s vision of how the Gates family should present itself.

My sister Kristi and I (and later Libby) were part of a large group of children born in the post-World War II era of prosperity and optimism. It was the height of the Cold War, and the civil rights movement was underway. A few weeks after the tornado, Kennedy clashed with Khrushchev over Soviet missiles in Cuba. On the last day of that crisis, when the world avoided nuclear annihilation, I was in our living room playing with a gift for my seventh birthday. Within a year, a quarter of a million people marched on Washington, and Martin Luther King said he dreamed that one day our nation would become a place where all people were equal.

The awareness of these historical events gradually crystallized in my mind, just a few names and words I heard while my parents watched CBS Evening News. At school, teachers showed us chilling films about Hiroshima and mushroom clouds. We practiced ducking and covering. But for kids living in View Ridge, that broader world felt abstract. A destroyed carport was probably the most dramatic event in our lives. Families like ours had a strong sense of confidence. Our parents and all the other parents around us had experienced the Great Depression and World War II. Anyone could see that America was thriving.

Like other places across the country, Seattle was rapidly expanding into the suburbs. Fields and forests were being cleared to build homes and shopping centers. This transformation had already begun in our city during the war, with local company Boeing becoming a major manufacturer of fighter planes. When I was born, Boeing was just launching its first viable passenger plane, and in the coming years, the act of flying would go from mysterious to routine.

From my bedroom window, I could hear the sounds of baseball bats hitting balls from the neighbor’s house across from View Ridge Park. When I started attending View Ridge Elementary School in 1960, the school had just added a new building to accommodate over a thousand students; soon, the city would need to build a second elementary school nearby. On a hill ten blocks from our house, the Northeast branch of the Seattle Public Library had the largest selection of children’s books in the city’s library system. When the library opened a year before I was born, a line of kids stretched from the door all the way down the street. It became a kind of club throughout my teenage years, for a long time my favorite place in the world.

It was a community of families made up of businessmen, doctors, engineers, and lawyers, many of whom were World War II veterans who, thanks to the G.I. Bill, found a way to go to college and live better lives in North Seattle than their parents had. It was a white, middle-class community. If I had been born Black in Seattle in 1955, I wouldn’t have lived in Winne Ridge. Our community and others around it had enacted racial covenants in the 1930s that prohibited “non-whites” from living in the houses there (except for family help). Although these terrible restrictions were technically terminated by the Supreme Court in 1948, Seattle remained segregated for a long time, with people of color forced to live primarily in the industrial south of the city.

In 1962, when I was in first and second grade, I often walked up a small hill to Winne Ridge Elementary with Kristi, who set the standard for my teachers’ expectations of me. Kristi was a rule follower. In the backseat of our car, she constantly monitored the speedometer, and any time my dad sped, she would remind him. At school, she was a serious student, friendly to teachers, completed her assignments on time, and most importantly, excelled academically.

Unlike others, as my mom had warned my preschool teachers. In the early years of elementary school, I read a lot of books alone at home. I taught myself how to learn, enjoying the feeling of quickly absorbing new knowledge and entertaining myself with chapter books. However, at school, I felt slow. I found it hard to maintain interest in what we were learning; my thoughts often wandered. When something caught my attention, I might suddenly stand up, wave my hand wildly, or shout out answers. I didn’t mean to create chaos; my mind just easily shifted into a state of unrestrained excitement. At the same time, I felt out of place among the other kids. My late October birthday meant I was younger than most of my classmates, and I really looked it. I was small and thin, with an unusually high-pitched voice. I was shy in front of other kids. And I had a rocking habit.

The days continued in the same way, year after year. On Christmas Eve, my mom would prepare matching pajamas for everyone in the family. The next morning, we would all gather in the hallway in our new pajamas and then go into the living room one by one in order of age. (Doing things in age order was a strict family tradition.) Then, in order from oldest to youngest, we would open our stockings. We always knew what we would find: an orange and a silver dollar for the kids, and for my mom, always a bouquet of red carnations from my dad. Then, even with a pile of gifts to open, we would pause for breakfast first: scrambled eggs and ham Danish from the nearby bakery. Finally, we would open the presents. After Kristi, I would open one with everyone, and then we would cycle through, starting with Grandma until the youngest.

The gifts tended to be practical and fun, never expensive. You could always find things like socks and shirts, maybe the latest bestseller.

As the holidays drew to a close, after the last decoration was put away and the final thank-you note was sent, my mom would pull out pen and paper to start preparing for the next Christmas. Even if occasionally my sisters and I would roll our eyes at these traditions—we’d still be wrapping gifts late into the night, still in our pajamas—if any one of them were skipped, it felt like a loss. Christmas remained one of my and my sisters’ favorite memories.

A few days after I finished second grade, my mom and grandma packed me and my sister up, and we drove off to begin our first big vacation. Kristi and I always called it the Disney trip, but it was much more than that. For my mom, it meant a thousand opportunities for her children to learn during the thousand-mile journey.
On a June morning in 1963, we set off at exactly 8:15, the time my mom had recorded. The first stop of the entire trip was Los Angeles, taking four days. That week, my dad had to work, and he would fly to meet us when we arrived at Disneyland, then drive home together.

Mom had recently bought the most advanced typing technology of the time. Her IBM Selectric used a metal ball the size of a golf ball that could provide different fonts and styles of writing. You could switch it out for whatever font and style you wanted, even choosing cursive, which I thought was the coolest thing. Before the trip, my mom prepared a travel journal for my sister and me, two pages for each day, where we would record what we saw and learned. She provided us with a title in mechanical cursive, letting us list the cities we traveled to and the approximate mileage we drove each day. Below, she printed categories to fill in. It looked something like this:

At the bottom, she set up a section for writing a description of the day’s journey. For that task, we would not lack data. Mom’s usual energy had set a detailed itinerary for each day, leading us through two state capitols, Oregon’s lava forest, several universities, the Golden Gate Bridge, Hearst Castle, San Quentin Prison, the San Diego Zoo, a beeswax demonstration, and a host of other stops.

While my mom drove, Grandma read us a novel about Man O’ War, a thoroughbred that broke speed and endurance records and was one of the most winning horses in history. While listening, my sister and I kept an eye out the car windows, mentally noting things to fill in our travel journals: apple orchards, adobe buildings, trucks loaded with Douglas fir logs, oil wells. Each night at the motel, Kristi would record what we had seen by category. She wrote carefully, knowing my mom would later correct grammar and spelling errors in red ink. I, on the other hand, jotted down my extra observations in a smaller notebook, trying to write them neatly.

When my dad met us in Los Angeles, we told him the amazing story of that horse bred and raised to win. At some point in the future, I would feel that my mom was also pursuing a similar mission, alongside her children.

One day, Mrs. Rona took me down the hall to the library and told the librarian I needed a challenge. Was there a task she could give me?

The library was small, typical of what you would find in a 1960s elementary school library, meaning there were no computers, just books and periodicals. There were lots of National Geographic magazines, popular series like The Black Stallion, a set of old encyclopedias, and basic science books. The room probably had thirty shelves from floor to ceiling and a waist-high card catalog, which was our internet. The librarian, Blanche Caulfield, had been my first-grade teacher, known for her energetic story times. She made these big thick felt boards to serve as backdrops for Mole and Toad in “The Wind in the Willows” or any story she was going to read that day.

She immediately set me to work. She said there was a pile of missing books that might be on the shelves but in the wrong places. Could I find them? It was a typical tedious job suited for keeping kids occupied. But I loved it. You needed a detective-like person, I told her. That’s exactly what I need, she replied. I took the cards for the missing books and roamed the shelves until I found each one.

Where do they go? I asked, staring at a stack of books I had found. She explained that nonfiction books were cataloged according to a range of numbers from 000 to 900. To remember the Dewey Decimal Classification, she told me to remember a simple story about a caveman gradually posing more complex questions, starting with “Who am I?” (which is 100: philosophy and psychology) all the way to “How do I leave a record for others?” (900: history, geography, and biography).

About six months later, in June 1964, my sister Libby was born, and we moved into a new house. At that time, we were told Crumpet was happily living on a nearby farm.

At my new school, the librarian said she didn’t need an assistant. Eventually, my parents decided it would be better for me to finish fourth grade at the original school and study in the library with less disruption. So much was changing in the family, and I’m sure they knew it was wise to let me stay in the comfort of books a little longer.

Good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning! This was the song my mom sang every morning after I started fifth grade. The song came through the intercom connecting the downstairs bedroom to the upstairs kitchen, where she was making breakfast. I’m not sure the size of our new house warranted the need for an intercom, but for my mom, it was a tool for efficiency, allowing her to wake us up in the morning, prepare us for church, and call us to eat—without interrupting whatever else she was doing. A call from the intercom meant to come upstairs immediately.

The eastward journey was in some ways a celebration and a benefit for Kristi and me. My sister was starting at Roosevelt High School in the fall, and I was going to a new school too. My parents decided to send me to an exclusive all-boys private school in North Seattle—Lakeside School. This decision was not easy for them. They both grew up in public schools—my mom was a Roosevelt graduate—and believed in supporting the public education system. The $1,400 tuition was a significant expense for my dad’s salary. But they could see I needed more challenges and lacked motivation. Maybe Lakeside would inspire me, they thought. At first, I hated the idea. I heard that the older students were required to wear jackets and ties and to address teachers as “Sir.” When I went to take the entrance exam, I considered deliberately failing. But once I started the test, I couldn’t help myself. My self-esteem overcame me, and I passed.

My seventh-grade life felt first impacted by Lakeside School’s name. The campus was not near a lake but was quietly situated in North Seattle, a twenty-minute drive from my home area. That day, as I sat in my mom’s Ford SUV going there, it felt far from home.

Founded in 1919, Lakeside was established as a college preparatory school for boys from some wealthy families in Seattle. Initially located on Lake Washington—hence the name—but in the 1930s, it moved to cleared land to build a larger collegiate-style campus. During the six years I spent there, the school would abandon its more conservative preparatory school traditions, abolish the uniform requirement, hire female faculty, and merge with a girls’ school—but when I started in the fall of 1967, every teacher except the librarian was male and white. We had assigned seating at lunch. During school, I fell in love with classic works of adolescence like “The Catcher in the Rye” and “A Separate Peace,” books that described iconic East Coast prep schools. Lakeside was modeled after those places, with manicured green lawns and brick buildings with porticos. It even had a bell tower.

The school was divided into middle school grades seven and eight and high school grades nine through twelve. In the lower campus, seventh and eighth graders generally didn’t interact much with older students. We middle schoolers spent most of our time in one of the oldest buildings on campus—Moore Hall. The older students had more freedom; they were undoubtedly the rulers of the school. Sports were a big deal at the school, which was bad news for me. The football team had a long winning streak, and the rowing team had beaten a prestigious East Coast school in the national championships, bringing fame to the school.

There were about fifty boys in my class, almost all white. Their fathers held the kind of jobs you would expect at a private school in the Pacific Northwest. They were lawyers, doctors, bankers, executives at lumber companies, Boeing engineers—Seattle’s elite. One dad owned a steakhouse that would develop into a national chain. Another would found a significant health insurance company. We were not a diverse mix, but I still felt different from many of the other kids. Many seemed self-assured, especially those whose older siblings were at Lakeside, who seemed to already know how to act. In the first few weeks, I watched as others quickly found their places, signing up for football, the newspaper, drama, choir, or various other activities. Unlike me, many came with social networks. They knew each other through ski clubs, tennis clubs, or family connections.

Today, any business purchasing a computer system can expect its operating software to have undergone thorough testing for reliability, security, and stability. But that was not the case in 1968. Companies like DEC and its competitors IBM and GE made money off hardware—the chips, tape storage drives, and processing units that made up the actual computer, all housed in refrigerator-sized boxes and connected devices. In contrast, software was just an afterthought, valued so low it could be given away for free. Even when customers rented or purchased a computer, the operating system (the software that controlled the computer’s primary functions) typically required extensive additional testing and debugging before it could be used for everyday work.

DEC reached an agreement with C-Cubed to help improve their software. As long as the new partner found and reported bugs, DEC would waive their monthly rental fees. In industry terms, this was called guarantee testing, which usually involved customers ensuring their new computer systems operated as promised for a certain period. C-Cubed viewed this as an opportunity to delay paying for usage as long as possible.

The deal arranged by Ms. Rona gave us kids open access to their system, with the only stipulation being that we had to document when the machine crashed or acted strangely. Ironically, breaking it was a good thing. They preferred to have teenagers discover problems rather than paying customers. Moreover, submitting more bugs meant they could avoid paying rent for longer. C-Cubed needed monkeys with hammers.

After Ms. Rona sought our help, her company’s transformed car dealership became our second home. In December 1968, Kent, Paul, Rick, and I spent hours at the C-Cubed store writing and debugging programs, drafting error reports. The new year came and went, Saturdays turned into afternoons of work, and then extended into the evenings. While other kids at Lakeside were studying or playing sports, going to church, or sleeping, we were at C-Cubed, using expensive, high-performance computers for free. Fortunately, that year was one of the snowiest winters in Seattle history—over five feet of snow—which gave us school breaks, and I spent those days at C-Cubed.

We knew they would eventually kick us out. Like kids scrambling for candy that had fallen from a broken piñata, we had to grab as much as we could before it all disappeared. One night that winter, while sitting in my bedroom, I thought to myself: Why am I wasting time here instead of being in front of the computer?

One night while rummaging through a dumpster, we found a thick stack of documents filled with lines of numbers and concise commands like ADD, SUB, PUSH, and POP. We brought it inside and spread it out on the table. Jackpot! This was part of the instruction set for the PDP-10 operating system. Those instructions—the source code—were forbidden to us. What we discovered was mysterious, just lines of code we needed to reverse-engineer to figure out what they did. But that crumpled, coffee-stained piece of paper was the most exciting thing we had ever seen.

The reason I wanted to learn it.

The printed output was written in machine language, the most basic code a programmer could use. Machine code allowed you to write programs that ran faster than anything created in high-level languages like BASIC, but it was laborious, requiring the user to define every step the computer must take to perform a task explicitly. For example, in BASIC, telling the computer to display “Hello” only requires one command (PRINT “Hello”), while in machine code, the same task might take twenty-five lines of character-by-character instructions. For a novice, this code was nearly unfathomable, a secret language only true experts could speak, and that’s precisely why I wanted to learn it.

The better my programming skills became, the more I wanted to do something practical—write a program that might actually be useful to someone. A few years earlier, I had the same impulse when I realized that no matter how cool the bridges or rockets I drew, I couldn’t build one in the real world. This was different. With a computer, I felt I could create anything I could imagine. At home, my mom cooked from recipe cards she kept in a small wooden box. I borrowed four or five cards, took them to C-Cubed, and designed a simple BASIC program that generated my mom’s meatloaf recipe when prompted with “meatloaf.” In programmer’s terms, it was a trivial program, but it taught me about DATA statements and the READ command.

In the worldview I was gradually forming, the logical thinking and rational reasoning required by math were skills that could be applied to mastering any subject. Intelligence had levels: no matter how good you were at math, your ability to learn in other subjects (biology, chemistry, history, even languages) would be equally strong. My model, while simple, seemed validated in school; I felt I could link students’ math abilities to their broader academic achievements in other subjects.

That summer on Hood Canal, I decided to test my theory—on myself. For the first time in my life, I was going to apply myself to school.

Lakeside made you buy all your books. The school had a small bank branch downstairs in Bliss Hall where your parents would deposit money. Throughout the year, you would write checks for books and other school expenses (like our computer time). At the bookstore—a table parked in front of the basement classroom—you would tell Joe Nix your courses, and he would disappear behind the shelves for a few minutes, returning with a stack of books for you to write checks for. Joe was the night custodian—a beloved figure who always brought his German shepherd—and he also served as the school’s clerk. When I showed him my course schedule during the first week of school, he greeted me with a bright smile. Filled with new determination, I conceived a plan I believed would be a huge success.

He looked over my list of courses—Ancient and Medieval History, English, Latin, Biology, and Honors Algebra—and I told him I wanted two copies of each book. He paused, clearly confused by the request, then turned and picked up the books. To this day, I’m still not sure if my parents noticed they paid double.

After we were kicked out of the C-Cubed castle, Paul successfully persuaded us to enter the computer room at the University of Washington, where we honed our programming skills all summer. He didn’t tell Kent or me about his strategy because he later confessed that we looked too young to pass for college students, and he was afraid our presence would jeopardize our privileges. By the middle of the school year, he made up for it by bringing us back to C-Cubed. By then, the company’s relationship had cooled, and they asked Paul to help with some programming work.

That’s how, after a six-month break from computers, I began working with Paul at C-Cubed and continued developing my war simulation. I gradually got parts of it working. I would print out the program, mark the errors, input new code, and print it again. Eventually, those punched computer paper extended over fifty feet. When we got the bad news, some functions were running quite smoothly: C-Cubed was going to shut down. This startup had only been around for a little over a year and had failed to sign many big clients. Their initial predictions for computer usage demand hadn’t materialized. Worse, Boeing, Seattle’s largest employer, was in serious trouble. The airline’s orders had dropped, and Boeing had borrowed heavily to develop its first jumbo jet (the 747), leading to layoffs in the tens of thousands. These ripple effects dragged Seattle into an economic recession, affecting many businesses. Within a year, someone had posted a famous billboard on Highway 99 that read, “Will the last person leaving Seattle turn out the lights?”

When writing my Harvard application essay, I condensed my entire computer background into six hundred words, expressed in neat cursive on my mom’s Selectric typewriter. Starting with our “productive arrangement” with a local company (C-Cubed), through salaries, course schedules, and our automatic traffic counter, I recounted excerpts from the Lakeside programming group. As for my teaching experiences, I admitted, “Of all the things I’ve done, this has been the hardest. Usually, some students develop a strong interest in computers during class and continue to work with them… On the other hand, some students leave thinking computers are more mysterious than when I first entered the classroom.”

If the admissions officer reading my essay got to the end, they might have been surprised by my conclusion: “Working with computers has proven to be a great opportunity to have fun, make some money, and learn a lot. However, I do not intend to continue focusing on this field. What I am most interested in at the moment is business or law.”

In fact, I knew that a career in computers—especially software—was a possible path, even the most likely one, if microprocessors produced cheap, general-purpose computers like Paul and I hoped. But by the fall of 1972, it was still an unknown. For now, to satisfy my curiosity and as a backup plan, I wanted to explore new worlds.

I believe you know that Paul and I were once again moving forward on the path (which proved to be a long one) completely equal and somewhat enthusiastically. I really want to thank you for the special friendship you showed when we were both facing difficulties. I really hope that sooner or later we both realize the absurdity of our positions. Your willingness to move everything I left in the apartment back to my house was an extension of the personal consideration you showed throughout the summer. I hope I can do the same, even though overall it was a very nice summer… Your friend, Trey.

On a dark Sunday morning in December 1969, a U.S. Army truck drove into Harvard University’s campus. Soldiers in camouflage uniforms unloaded large crates containing parts of DEC mainframes dismantled during the Vietnam War, a gift from the U.S. Department of Defense. These parts were as big as refrigerators and were opened and connected together in Harvard’s Aiken Computation Laboratory to form a PDP-10, the same model I had been programming for five years before enrolling in the fall of 1973.

The nighttime delivery successfully avoided the anti-war protesters who had been agitating against the university’s involvement in defense-related research. The students shouting slogans were not entirely wrong: at that time, the military was likely the largest customer of the computer industry, and the Cold War fears of the Soviet Union had poured massive public funding into universities to develop automated systems for missile guidance, submarine control, and detecting intercontinental ballistic missile launches.

When I arrived in Cambridge for freshman orientation a few weeks later, the government’s significant investments in defense technology had already changed the Boston area. DEC and dozens of other companies had emerged from MIT’s projects to develop computers and other military technologies. Before Silicon Valley became the U.S. high-tech center, Route 128, sixty miles around Boston, had held that title.

A few weeks after I first walked into Harvard’s Aiken Computation Laboratory, I got a glimpse of the legacy of government funding. I went there to meet the lab director. In the hallway, I saw a massive machine labeled Mark I, the prototype computer developed by Howard Aiken, after whom the lab was named. Aiken was a naval commander in the 1940s who had collaborated with IBM to develop the Mark I for calculating missile trajectories. It was later used in the Manhattan Project. The Mark I was a breakthrough at the time, a huge calculator made of wheels and electronic relays, a fifty-foot-long machine that could perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division faster than a human. When I first laid eyes on the Mark I, it was just a part of the original machine, a non-operational museum exhibit.

Across the hall, I could see a PDP-10 in the room referred to as Harv-10 by the Aiken Laboratory. DARPA, the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, was funding the Aiken Laboratory so that Harvard’s engineering faculty and students could use the system to experiment with new programming methods to make software faster, more reliable, and cheaper. The agency also installed a connection that linked the Harv-10 to the ARPA network, later better known as ARPANET. The Aiken Laboratory was one of dozens of computer centers across the country that began testing email and other new communication protocols that would form the basis of the internet.

The next day at MITS, they were ready with a machine that had 6K of memory and a paper tape reader. Paul entered his bootstrap code, which took some time: each byte had to be entered by setting eight data switches. Then he started the paper tape reader. Our BASIC program took about seven minutes to input into the computer. Finally, it reached the end of the tape and began running the program, and… nothing happened. It didn’t work.

With that step, the first software for the first personal computer was born.

Paul, sipping fruit juice at a celebratory dinner at Aku Aku, said, “I don’t know who was more surprised, me or them!” He recalled that when our software combined with their computer to calculate 2 + 2, the president of MITS was astonished. “Oh my God, it printed out four!”

Paul was amazed that our little program worked flawlessly on its debut. At the same time, Ed and MITS’s chief engineer, Bill Yates, were also shocked that their machine was actually doing something.

Inspired by the Altair and its Intel 8080 processor, HP engineer Steve Wozniak bought a MOS Technology 6502, the cheapest microprocessor he could find, and quickly built his own computer prototype. Like many members of the Homebrew Club, Wozniak was motivated by the passion for engineering and building something to share with the club. Until his friend Steve Jobs saw the prototype. Jobs had just returned from a seven-month trip to India, which he later said he took to find himself. Within a year, he shed his sandalwood robe, grew his hair long, and convinced Wozniak that their computer hobby could become a business. Soon, they named the company Apple and began selling their first computer—the Apple I.

While MITS computers continued to sell well, only a small fraction of customers paid for the BASIC software. In the fall, Ed Roberts wrote a column in MITS’s newsletter, “Computer Notes,” gently chastising customers for not paying for the software. I thought his tone was too lenient. One winter night, I wrote down my feelings on a piece of paper in my dorm room and sent it to a writer at MITS named Dave Bunnell, who edited “Computer Notes.” Dave forwarded my letter to some computer magazines and the Homebrew Computer Club newsletter, and then published it in the February 1976 issue of “Computer Notes.”

Is it fair? It is unfair to retaliate against MITS for the problems they might encounter with pirated software. MITS does not make money from selling software. The royalties, manuals, tapes, and all operating costs barely break even. Pirated software hinders the development of quality software. Who can work professionally for free? Which hobbyist can spend three person-years programming, finding all the bugs, documenting the product, and distributing it for free? In fact, no one else besides us was investing significant money in amateur software. We had already written 6800 BASIC and were working on 8080 APL and 6800 APL, but had little motivation to provide this software to hobbyists. To put it bluntly, the result of piracy is theft.

What about those who licensed to resell Altair BASIC? Are they making money off toy software? Yes, but those who reported us might ultimately suffer. They tarnished the reputation of hobbyists and should be kicked out of any club gatherings they attended.

The two main goals we wrote down were (1) to scale and build a reputation and (2) to make money. That letter marked the next phase of a collaborative effort to establish ourselves as an independent company. We all agreed that at least for the next two years, Microsoft would be our primary focus.

Microcomputers quickly became popular.

This was the headline of a summer 1976 issue of Business Week, about a year after we signed our contract with MITS. I loved the story because it was not the typical publication reported by industry news or computer enthusiast newsletters, but rather focused on readers in our corner of the computer industry. I thought the readers of Business Week were investors and executives—most of whom did not yet own computers but might be inclined to buy one if they were easier to use.

With a blue ballpoint pen, I marked what I thought were the key paragraphs: “Today, the home computer industry is beginning to resemble the mini-mainframe computer industry—complete with a dominant competitor. The IBM of the home computer world is MITS, which was founded seven years ago by engineer H. Edward Roberts in his garage in Albuquerque, New Mexico.” The article noted that MITS had sold 8,000 Altair computers the previous year, generating $3.5 million in revenue. The article pointed out that although there were competitors, Altair’s early lead made it the industry standard.

As I read, I thought: Even if MITS is the IBM of the moment, it won’t last. One reason is that if IBM decides to make personal computers, it could easily replace MITS as the IBM of the moment. I knew Ed Roberts was also worried that major electronics companies would join the competition. To Ed, the most frightening company was Texas Instruments. In the early 1970s, MITS was the first to introduce programmable calculator kits that engineers and scientists used. Once that market reached a certain scale, big companies like Texas Instruments would introduce ready-made low-cost alternatives that would nearly wipe out MITS. Ed was very concerned that the same thing would happen again with personal computers.

TI was using its own processors, which meant we would have to write a new version of BASIC from scratch. This would take at least two people months of work. Monte was once again willing to spend the summer in Albuquerque, but since Rick had left, we needed to hire another programmer. After we signed the agreement with TI, I called Bob Greenberg, who had taken a few math classes with me at Harvard, and I knew he was considering a position at the time. He told me, “I’m the person you’re looking for.”

Whether we had enough cash to pay him was another question. MITS had offered a small royalty but refused to pay the full amount it owed us, over $100,000.

The arbitration hearing lasted about ten days. I attended all the testimony as Microsoft’s representative. Eddie Curry played the same role for MITS. Rick, Paul, and I were also subpoenaed, along with Ed Roberts, Eddie, and various personnel from the company. Aside from Microsoft’s interests, I found the whole process fascinating. Fully exhibiting Kent’s style, I showed up every day with a large briefcase filled with all the documents I might need. I would rummage through the briefcase, pulling out documents one by one—not just to find references but to show off. I wanted to achieve the opposite effect of not bringing books in high school: Look, all these documents! They must be very well prepared!

Known as the “Big Three of 1977,” these three machines brought the personal computer revolution into the mainstream while others lagged behind. (Texas Instruments, the giant we had once been excited to partner with, never succeeded in the personal computer space.) On each of the Big Three machines, we installed a customized version of our BASIC as requested by the manufacturers. On RadioShack’s machine was Level II BASIC, on the Apple machine was Applesoft—a portmanteau of Apple and our name—and on the PET machine was simply Commodore BASIC. In a version tailored for Commodore, we included a little surprise in the code: if a PET user happened to input the command WAIT 6502,1, a word would appear in the upper left corner of their screen: Microsoft.

Microsoft was no longer dependent on MITS, and when Paul and I found it difficult to hire programmers in Albuquerque, we wrote a memo in the spring of 1978 for our ten or so employees about alternative locations. I listed possible sites like Seattle, Dallas-Fort Worth (near our big clients Tandy and TI), and Silicon Valley. Paul had a soft spot for our hometown. He was fed up with Albuquerque’s hot weather and longed for the lakes and Puget Sound of Seattle, wanting to be closer to his family. Most of our employees were open to any location (though a few wanted to stay in Albuquerque). After careful consideration, I concluded that Seattle was the best choice: the University of Washington was an excellent source of programmers, and the distance from Silicon Valley provided a higher degree of confidentiality, reducing the risk of employees leaving for competitors. Of course, it was also my mother’s first choice. Once we decided to locate in Seattle, she couldn’t help but cut out real estate ads from the newspaper, often adding her own comments (“This location is very close to the bridge—I think it’s a great possibility”).

In December 1978, during our last full month in Albuquerque, Bob Greenberg won a free family portrait as a contest prize. He sent out a memo titled “Team Spirit,” asking everyone to go to the photo studio behind the Shanghai restaurant. The family he brought was eleven of our twelve employees (one was home that day). The posed photo we took would become an iconic image of Microsoft in the 1970s, complete with wide collars, curly hair, and five thick mustaches.

Of course, there were always things to say. My mom often reminded me that I was merely a steward of any wealth I gained. She said that wealth brought responsibility and must be given generously. I regret that my mom did not live long enough to see how I tried to fulfill that expectation: she passed away from breast cancer at sixty-four in 1994. In the years following my mom’s death, my dad, who helped us establish the foundation and served as co-chair, brought the same compassion and integrity he had shown in his legal career.

For most of my life, I have focused on the future. Even now, much of the time, I am striving to achieve breakthroughs that may take years to realize, if at all. However, as I age, I find myself looking back more and more. It turns out that piecing together memories helps me better understand myself. The miracle of adulthood is realizing that when you strip away all the years and all the learning, much of your essence was there from the beginning. In many ways, I am still the eight-year-old sitting at Gami’s dining table. I feel the same sense of anticipation, a child alert and eager to understand everything.

My mother, Mary Maxwell Gates (sitting on the couch next to her grandparents, in the upper left corner), grew up in a family of bankers who loved games, sports, and community service. A natural leader, she rode the biggest tricycle in childhood photos (upper right).

My sister Libby was born in 1964, becoming the most social and athletic member of our family. As the youngest, nine years younger than me, Libby remembers growing up in a busy household filled with bustling siblings and parents.

When I was three, I appeared in the local newspaper with my mom, who was hosting a Junior League project that showcased museum exhibits to elementary school students, this time featuring a set of old medical tools.

My mother had high expectations for the family, and my parents believed in the importance of giving back to the community long before that phrase became popular.

The space race and hopes for science were part of growing up in the 1960s. No wonder I checked “astronaut” on my fifth-grade “What I Want to Be When I Grow Up” form. But “scientist” was my dream job: being someone who studied the mysteries of the world all day was perfect for me.

My grandmother, whom we called Gami, was an indispensable presence in our early lives. After my grandfather passed away, she turned her love and attention toward me and my sisters, sometimes joining us on family vacations, like this trip to Disneyland.

In the early 1960s, my parents and a group of friends began renting Cheerio Lodge Cottages on Hood Canal for two weeks every July. For a kid, it was paradise. My dad was the mayor of Cheerio, a fun director and manager of the kids, while also hosting the opening ceremony of the Cheerio Olympics. The events focused more on agility and determination than just physical prowess, but whatever the event, I always gave it my all, striving to stand on the podium at the end of the day. I was low on agility but high on determination.

Our family lived according to the routines, traditions, and rules established by my mother. As my father said, “She runs an orderly household.” Christmas. From early fall, my mom would review notes from the previous year’s holiday to see where improvements could be made. From handmade cards to our annual ice-skating party to the matching pajamas we wore on Christmas morning, we went all out. Even if occasionally my sisters and I rolled our eyes at these traditions—if any one of them were skipped, it felt like a loss. Christmas remained one of our favorite memories.

I joined the Boy Scouts when I was eight. Four years later, when I transitioned to Troop 186, hiking, camping, and climbing were booming in America, and Seattle was becoming recognized as a mecca for outdoor sports. Our troop made getting Boy Scouts into the mountains for hiking and camping a primary reason for its existence.

That summer in ninth grade, a senior Boy Scout invited me to join a hiking trip across the Pacific Crest Trail (now known as the West Coast Trail). This trail runs along the coastline of Vancouver Island and is known for its rugged terrain of storms, rocks, and tricky currents. The journey required taking a seaplane, wading across rivers, and climbing cliffs; it was the most challenging adventure I had experienced to date, but also the most meaningful. I fell in love with it.

Kent Evans (left in the photo) and I quickly became best friends in eighth grade at Lakeside Private School, the school I attended for middle and high school.

In the fall of 1968, Lakeside acquired a teletype machine. Kent and I became regular users, as did Paul Allen (in the middle of the above photo) and Rick Weiland (on the right). Paul and Rick were two years older than us, but we quickly became friends as we all worked to learn how to write our first programs. We called ourselves the Lakeside Programming Group.

According to my class photos, I looked younger than my actual age throughout high school (and even afterward). Working in the Lakeside Programming Group, hiking, scouting, and school, I slowly began to understand who I was and who I wanted to become.

As a tenth-grade student, I served as a legislative aide in our state capital, Olympia (as shown in the above photo), and later spent part of a summer before my high school graduation as a congressional aide in Washington, D.C. It was nearly impossible to be exposed to Congress without being deeply captivated; that experience sparked my lifelong interest in politics and government.

In my emerging worldview, I established an intellectual hierarchy: no matter how good you were at math, your ability to learn in other subjects like biology, chemistry, history, or even languages would be equally strong. After leaving Lakeside, I was convinced that my path in life would be mathematics. Harvard was the next step toward that future.

In April 1975, Paul and I came up with the name for our company: Microsoft (which we would eventually drop the hyphen). Our only product was 8080 BASIC, written during my sophomore year. Our Lakeside friend Rick (to the left in the above photo) quickly joined us in Albuquerque, where we initially worked in an old shopping mall office space. As Microsoft grew, the time I spent on the company increased; I took a second leave of absence from Harvard in the winter of 1977 and never returned. We began attracting media attention— in the photo on this page, I am doing one of my first television interviews—but it wasn’t until we hired our first employees outside our circle of friends that Microsoft felt like a real company.

Gami was always a steady voice in my ear during my early growth at Harvard and Microsoft.

My dad was my strong support and source of opinions; he recognized early on that Microsoft was becoming an important company. My mother’s understanding came more gradually. For a long time, she believed things would eventually settle down, and I would earn my Harvard degree.

My mother expected me to meet her very high standards, but she also supported and encouraged me as much as she could, sometimes by leading by example, such as when she was appointed to the United Way board in 1980. She often said that wealth meant a responsibility to give. I regret that she did not live long enough to see how I tried to fully meet that expectation.

I have written several books, but writing a memoir is a different experience for me. Looking back at the early years of my life and sifting through memories feels like it has a life of its own. What surprises me is that the deeper I go, the more I enjoy analyzing my past and what it has brought me intellectually and emotionally. I commit to continuing this journey and plan to write another memoir about my time at Microsoft and a third about my current life and work with the Gates Foundation.

While writing this memoir, I was fortunate to have Rob Guth extract, guide, and shape my memories. For over a decade, he has dug deep, talking to my friends and family, and he has become a living archive of my memories and experiences. He has a knack for discovering themes and helping me craft a compelling narrative, making this book more than just a collection of anecdotes; I couldn’t have completed it without him.

I am deeply grateful to Courtney Hodell, whose sense of story and wise advice have guided me since the conception of this book years ago. Susan Freinkel’s experience as a writer and editor has been invaluable in shaping and clarifying my story. Thanks to the researchers, writers, and experts, including Chris Quirk, David Pearlstein, Harry McCracken, Lucy Woods, Pablo Perez-Fernandez, Tedd Pitts, Tom Madams, Wayt Gibbs, and Yumiko Kono, who supported “Source Code” in various ways, laying a solid foundation for this book.

I am very grateful to the many friends who were willing to be interviewed and share their stories and memories from my early life.

Finally, I want to thank my children, Jennifer, Rory, and Phoebe. Being your father and watching you grow has been the greatest joy of my life. While writing this book, I thought about how proud your grandparents and great-grandparents would be of you for becoming such remarkable people.

Bill Gates Timeline#

• 1955
  Bill Gates was born on October 28 in Seattle, Washington, to William H. Gates and Mary Maxwell Gates.

• 1967
  Bill Gates III—nicknamed Trey (meaning “three”), because his father always added “Jr.” to his name—began attending Lakeside School, a private college preparatory school with many students from Seattle’s wealthy elite, including Paul Allen.

• 1968
  At age 13, Bill Gates wrote his first program on an old Model 33 teletype at school using the BASIC language.

• 1970
  Bill Gates and Paul Allen went into business together, with their main product called Trafo-Data, a program for tracking traffic flow.

• 1972
  Bill Gates worked as a congressional intern in the House of Representatives during the summer.

• 1973
  Bill Gates graduated from Lakeside School, scoring 1590 on the SAT, out of a perfect 1600, and entered Harvard University’s pre-law program. He became friends with Steve Ballmer, who lived in the same dorm.

• 1974
  Bill Gates worked at Honeywell during the summer. Paul Allen also worked there; he had dropped out to work.

• 1975
  An article in Popular Electronics about MITS’s Altair 8800 computer caught Bill Gates’s attention. He and Paul Allen developed BASIC software for the computer. The Albuquerque-based company hired both of them. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard during his sophomore year to work with Paul Allen in Albuquerque. They named their partnership Micro-Soft.

• 1976
  Bill Gates and Paul Allen officially registered Microsoft and dropped the hyphen from the name. Computer enthusiasts received copies of Microsoft BASIC software for free, using and distributing it without paying. Bill Gates wrote a stern letter criticizing this behavior as theft.

• 1977
  Microsoft split from MITS. Bill Gates began developing products for clients using other programming languages, including FORTRAN. Bill Gates was arrested for speeding in Albuquerque.

• 1978
  Microsoft opened its first foreign office in Japan. The company’s annual revenue reached $1 million.

• 1979
  Microsoft moved to Bellevue, Washington. The company had 25 full-time employees and generated $2.5 million in revenue that year.

• 1980
  Microsoft reached an agreement with IBM to develop the DOS operating system for the personal computer planned for release the following year. Bill Gates retained the resale rights to MS-DOS, and the agreement allowed Microsoft to sell licenses for DOS systems to other personal computer manufacturers. Steve Ballmer joined Microsoft as Bill Gates’s personal assistant.

• 1981
  Microsoft officially became a corporation, nominating Bill Gates as chairman and CEO. Steve Ballmer became executive vice president in