Bill Gates: A Modern-Day Hero and Philanthropist

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When people think of a hero they think of Superman, Batman, or Spiderman, but what they should think of are people that make difference. Bill Gates has made a huge difference in today’s world; he is an extremely successful entrepreneur, an active philanthropist, and a very motivated person in general. With this motivation he has and will accomplish anything he puts his mind to. He was CEO of Microsoft and became the richest man in the world.

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He also created one of the most credible and generous charitable organization in the world. As a positive influence on today’s world, Bill Gates has proven himself as person with his good work ethic, positive attitude, and great accomplishments. To become one of the most influential people in the world, Gates had to have the work ethic and determination to get there. With great work ethic he started, as a child, with debugging computers for local people in his town (“Gates, William Henry, III” 1).

This also started his love for computers, and as he researched and started figuring computers out he became more skillful with them. After he started debugging computers, he began to dabble in writing software programs, his first program that he and his friends made was a computerized payroll system for his high school (“Gates, Bill” 1). He and his friends then proceeded to make more complicated programs, such as Traf-O-Data, which was a traffic counting program that Gates and his partner Paul Allen sold to the city they lived in for $20,000 when they were just fifteen years old (“William H.

Gates” 1). Another activity that Gates and his friends used to enjoy was going through their local software company’s garbage, looking for discarded software programs. When they found these programs they would find the mistakes in them and fix them, all the instructions on how to fix them went into a 300 page manual and they sold the manual back to the software company (“Gates, Bill” 1-2).

After Gates graduated high school, with a perfect 800 on the SAT, he went to Harvard law school in 1973 (“Gates, Bill” 2) (“Gates, William Henry, III” 1). In 1975 his friend Paul Allen came up to him while Bill was in college and showed him a Popular Mechanics article about a $350 microcomputer, Gates read this article and was convinced that he wanted to be in the computer industry (“Gates, William Henry, III” 1). As a sophomore in college he and Paul Allen made the computer language BASIC compatible to microcomputers, this took much skill and he was the first to do it (Leaders of info 2). He did this for a company called MITS (Leaders of info 2). This shows his motivation to do well in the world, and to be successful. With this new success in the BASIC software, he dropped out of Harvard and went to pursue his new career (“Gates, Bill 1).

He went to Albuquerque, New Mexico with Paul and they both founded a new company called Microsoft to mass produce their new software (Leaders of Info 2). As a new company he and his partner did very well within the first 18 months, working constantly and diligently. By the time 18 months went by, he and his partner had made over a few hundred thousand dollars (Leaders of Info 2). They made this money by selling their software to big companies such as Apple and Commodore as well as many little companies (Leaders of Info 2). A very important part to Gates’ success that would also show his great intelligence and hard working abilities is when IBM came to his company in 1980 with a request for software for their new microcomputer. It was a very short deadline and a complicated process, but with Gates’ hard work the project was a success, he called this new software MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System) (“Gates, William Henry, III” 2).

In 1982 alone Microsoft made $16 million, and by 1984 over 2 million computers, many different brands, had this MS-DOS software in it (Leaders of Info 3) (“Gates, William Henry, III” 1). Having great success with the MS-DOS software Bill received the Howard Vollum Award in 1984 from Reed College in Portland, Oregon (“Gates, William Henry III” 2). The fact that he was becoming so successful showed his superb work ethic and motivation. Bill Gates was on his way to the top, he was proving himself and further becoming a role model with his success and determination. With his new MS-DOS software Bill Gates was at or near the top, and he stayed there for many years. In 1986 he decided to take the company public and since he owned 45% of the stock, at $35.50 a share, and while the stock went up he had more and more money, eventually making him a billionaire in 1987, when the stock hit $90.75 (Leaders of Info 3). He was the youngest billionaire ever and very successful a person.

He is a prime example of a role model and a successful business man. He did not stop at becoming a billionaire though, he wanted to be more, and he wanted to be the greatest. He had to keep producing top quality software programs, so he created Microsoft 3.0, and it took the industry by storm, soon Microsoft had 25 million users, making it the most popular graphical operating system out there (Leaders of Info 3). As his success grew he became the greatest, the richest man in America in 1997 with a net worth of $37 billion, and eventually the richest in the world in 1998 (“Gates, William Henry, III” 1) (William H. Gates 1). Even though he was the greatest he pushed himself harder and harder, with the determination to be even greater, and by 2007 his net worth was a staggering $57 billion (William H. Gates 1).

His great accomplishments show that he is a positive influence; he made it to the top and wasn’t done there. He created success in his life with his hard work and his ability to push himself to be the best he could possibly be, this alone could be a positive influence on anyone’s life, and it was, but he wasn’t done he wanted to be known for more. With his good heart and extensive success he started up a charity foundation, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This foundation was started in 2000, after combining the Gates Learning Foundation and the William H. Gates Foundation, so Bill and his wife could give back to the people who need help the most (“Bill Gates Biography” 2).

This foundation focuses on three main aspects of life in developing countries; agriculture, world health, and education (Armstrong 1). It is the largest charitable foundation, controlling roughly 37 billion dollars (“Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation” 1). Most of the money goes towards vaccines, the foundations goal is to find a vaccine for AIDS, but other than that they give vaccines for; malaria, tuberculosis, Rota virus and pneumonia (“Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation 1) (Armstrong 1). In 2008 Bill retired from Microsoft in order to be more involved in the foundation, and he has devoted much of his money to the cause (Gates, Bill 1). This shows how generous and caring he is; he donated much of his money to save millions of lives so to make the world a better place.

People look up to him for many things, but this is the most noble and beneficial, which turns an influential person into a quintessential role model for millions of people. Bill Gates, a positive person and role model, has done much for this nation and world with his motivation, ability to learn, and positive attitude. He is one of the most successful people alive because of all that he has achieved, and all that has done. As a child he was just as motivated, with his software engineering and business savvy, as he is as an adult today. He has achieved so much, the status of entrepreneur, business man, and philanthropist. He continues to surprise the world with his accomplishments and will not stop; he is someone to look up too, a modern day hero.