Business the Bill Gates Way - BV Business Center

“Even in an environment
like Lakeside, where
smart kids tended to
command respect, anyone
as smart as Gates got
teased by some of the
others.”
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF BILL GATES 8
According to one classmate who is now a prominent Seattle architect:
“Gates most associated with the kids in the computer room. He was socially
inept and uncomfortable around others. The guy was totally obsessed with
his interest in computers ... You would see
him playing tennis occasionally, but not
much else. Initially, I was in awe of Gates
and the others in the computer room. I
even idolized them to some extent. But I
found that they were such turkeys that I
didn’t want to be around them. They were
part of the reason I got out of computer
work ... They had developed very narrowly
socially and they were arrogant, and I just didn’t want to be like that.” 3
Sour grapes, perhaps? But clearly, Gates and his cronies were exceptional
even by Lakeside standards. By his junior year, Gates was something of a
computer guru to the younger Lakeside hackers. He would often hold court
in the computer room for hours, telling stories about infamous computer
hackers.
Gates and some of his computer friends formed the Lakeside Programmers
Group, which was dedicated to finding moneymaking opportunities to use
their new-found computer programming skills. But already, a pattern was
emerging. As Gates observed later: “I was the mover. I was the guy who
said ‘Let’s call the real world and try to sell something to it.’” He was 13
years old at the time.
The remarkable technical rapport with Allen, two years his senior, seems to
have developed at this time. Allen’s role in the Microsoft story, and