Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer became inseparable friends while studying at Harvard.
Bill Gates’ 50-year career has made one thing clear: he has a good nose for business, even if he sometimes fails to make the right decisions. This has kept him in the world’s top ten richest men for almost four decades.
In his biographical book “Source Code: My Beginnings “, the billionaire recalls his biggest risk: signing a contract with Steve Ballmer and offering him a piece of the Microsoft pie.
Reunited in the corridors of Harvard
In the book, Bill Gates recalls his years at Harvard University in the autumn of 1976, where the billionaire struck up a close friendship with the man who would succeed him at the helm of Microsoft two decades later.
Gates met Ballmer through a mutual friend in an economics class at Harvard. “Steve looks a lot like you,” his friend told him. Unlike other maths students, Gates was struck by his new friend’s personality. “Steve had incredible energy and a unique ability to motivate people,” wrote Gates.
He didn’t know it at the time, but this combination of skills made Ballmer the ideal candidate to help take Microsoft from a small start-up to a global corporation.
At the time, Ballmer was already a sports manager. He ran the university football team, oversaw advertising for the student newspaper and was president of Harvard’s literary magazine. In his book, Gates describes how he remembers attending football games and watching Ballmer “expend as much energy walking back and forth and jumping up and down” as the other players.
The two quickly bonded and became inseparable, talking about the future, the power of business and how to revolutionise the world. Of course, in between their big plans, they also developed their own strategy for success: skipping economics classes, studying at the last minute just before an exam… and passed it triumphantly.
In his biography, the billionaire says that the charismatic Ballmer was responsible for expanding Gates’ social circle while he was studying at Harvard and for introducing Bill Gates to the Fox Club. As the billionaire describes in his book, the club was famous for “black parties, secret handshakes and other archaic rules and rituals” that the Microsoft founder would have avoided if it had not been for his glamorous friend Ballmer.
Stivai, come to Microsoft
In 1980, Bill Gates made a decision that changed the direction of Microsoft and the technology industry. Gates needed a strategist, a partner who could lead the sales department and sell the product, while he concentrated on the technology. This is where B. Gates remembered Ballmer’s good social skills.
Initially, the young Microsoft founders were prepared to offer up to 5% of their new company to recruit Steve Ballmer as a director. Eventually, because of Ballmer’s undoubted negotiating skills, Gates agreed to give him 8,75 % of Microsoft.
Years later, Gates reflected on this decision: “Giving Steve the shares was one of the best decisions I ever made. The success of Microsoft in the decades that followed proved the wisdom of this decision and cemented the company’s position as a leader in the technology industry.
“The founder of Microsoft understood the importance of having someone like Ballmer who had a vision for his business that complemented his own. “We needed someone who could help us grow as a business,” Ballmer explained in his memoirs. Gates. This decision reflected Gates’ long-term vision and his willingness to sacrifice immediate benefits for greater future profits.
Ballmer’s accession had a major impact on Microsoft’s trajectory, besides showing the energy that won Gates over, whether by sweating on stage or by making Gates lose his shame to boost sales.
Ballmer’s years at the helm of Microsoft cannot be regarded as the most brilliant for a company that failed to jump into the mobile phone market.
Ballmer has returned to his passion
Leaving the world of technology with an 8.75% stake in Microsoft, catapulted to financial success by the hand of Satya Nadella, Steve Ballmer was able to devote himself body and soul to his passion: basketball.
He bought the NBA team Los Angeles Clippers, making him the 11th richest man in the world according to the Forbes millionaires list. Steve Ballmer has a net worth of USD 121.3 billion, ahead of his friend and mentor Bill Gates.
