[canucker2016]

Paul Allen, a high school friend of Bill Gates, read an issue of Popular Electronics. Paul showed Bill the article about a new minicomputer.

They cold-called the New Mexico company to push their non-existent BASIC interpreter. Bill took a leave of absence from Harvard and the microcomputer software business took off with the help of Harvard's computer resources.

see https://archive.org/details/197501PopularElectronics/page/n2...

You don't sink the shots that you never shoot - Bill Gates saw an opportunity and took a big shot from downtown.

But that was in 1975. He's made more shots than not since then.

[Gud]

That is absolutely true. But his upbringing gave him a near limitless amount of arrows in his quiver. You honestly don't think that was a huge advantage he had?

It's easy to "take a big shot" when you have all the support in the world.

[s1artibartfast]

Easier than without support, but not easy. Not everyone born to means goes on to found wildly successful companies.

Environment matters a tremendous amount. In common scientific terms, there is almost nothing that is not environment. DNA, development, parenting, personality can all be framed as environmentally derived.

Sometimes these factors come together to give people huge advantages, both in situation and support, but also talent, knowledge, and personality.

I think the lesson we should take away from this is the importance of good environmental influences in producing good outcomes.

[Gud]

I agree with you except for one thing.

I wouldn’t argue that Bill Gates was a good outcome.

The world needs more Bill Joys.