Bill Gates Parts Ways With Microsoft To Focus On Charity

from Red Orbit

One of the world's most successful software experts is trading computers for philanthropy. Bill Gates announced he is stepping down on Friday from his daily duties at Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), to focus on his $38 billion charitable foundation.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation -- built by his vast fortune-has been around for ten years. Gates is the world's third richest man, and he says with great wealth brings great responsibility.

The 52-year-old will trade a lifetime of developing software for a new role in finding new vaccines or to micro-finance projects in the developing world.

The CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Patty Stonesifer said, Gates won't focus on managing the organization; instead he will hire hundreds of new employees.

"He's clear that he loves the idea that he doesn't have to be the operating leadership," Stonesifer said.

Instead "he wants to do strategy and advocacy," Stonesifer said, which means he will focus on better understanding the problems the foundation is trying to solve. Which could include meeting with the leadership of government, business and non-profit groups in the near future to convince them to spend more money on world health, hunger and poverty.

His wife, Melinda Gates, also plans to spend more time at the foundation; she is currently involved in planning the new building.

As Microsoft's largest shareholder, Gates will remain chairman and work on special technology projects. His 8.7 percent stake in Microsoft is worth about $23 billion.

Gates has been Microsoft's genius programmer, its technology guru, its primary decision maker and its ruthless and competitive leader since the company got its start in 1975. Co-workers say he would famously disappear into the solitude of a country cabin to digest employee-written papers and ponder the future of the industry. Later he would emerge with manifestos, like the 1995 "Internet Tidal Wave" memo, which shifted the focus of the entire company.

Analysts and academics credit Gates for the emergence of software as a moneymaking industry. In the past, it had only been a pastime for hobbyists or a subset of the hardware sector. Gates has built Microsoft into a hugely successful monopoly. The software company has only grown stronger despite major blows in antitrust trials in both the U.S. and Europe.

Gates noticed early on in the PC revolution that software could one day have more potential than hardware. At age 13, he programmed his first computer.

"When I was 19, I caught sight of the future and based my career on what I saw. I turned out to have been right," Gates wrote in his 1995 book "The Road Ahead."

His early friendship with Paul Allen blossomed into the founding of Microsoft. They named the company for its mission of providing microcomputer software.

Gates realized the importance of successful business and charity at an early age. He was born October 28, 1955, the second of three children in a wealthy Seattle family. His father, William Henry Gates Jr., was a partner at one of the city's most powerful law firms, while his late mother, Mary, was an active charity fund-raiser and University of Washington regent.

Teachers at the exclusive Lakeside Preparatory School first introduced him to computers. The teen prodigy soon began programming in BASIC computer language on a primitive ASR-33 Teletype unit.

Gates met Allen at Lakeside. The pair were two years apart in age, but shared a fascination with computers.

"Of course, in those days we were just goofing around, or so we thought," Gates recalled in "The Road Ahead."

During his two years at Harvard, Gates became friends with a Detroit native who shared his love of math and cynical humor. He eventually convinced his classmate, current CEO Steve Ballmer, into leaving business school to join Microsoft.

Gates dropped out of Harvard and relocated with Allen to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where they established Microsoft.

In an interview with The Associated Press after he announced his transition, Bill Gates - who dropped out of college to launch Microsoft - talked about his move to spending more time at his Foundation as an opportunity to go back to school.

"There's a lot I don't know and I'm looking forward to learning all about it," he said.

His education will be guided by leaders of each foundation program, who will have more time now to relay to him what the organization has been learning through its research from the American classroom to the African farm.

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