Why Is Bill Gates The Richest Man In The World?

[Tohami]

I’m so excited today as I’m going to share with you one of the top success secrets that is going to change your life forever.

Yes, I mean it. This secret is going to change your life on condition that you put it in action.

First, let me ask you this question:

In your opinion, why is Bill Gates the richest person in the world?

Think a little bit.

“He is intelligent”
“He has a product that runs the world!”
“He is genius”
“He is lucky!!!”
“He is the owner of Microsoft!”

If your answer is like those stated above then allow me to tell you…

NO

NO

NO

Absolutely NOT.

I’m not too harsh.

I just want to direct your focus on an extremely important concept that will guarantee your success in any endeavor.

Listen…

Simply put, Bill Gates is the richest person in the world because…

***… Bill Gates is the most valuable person in the world!

He is extremely valuable. He is serving the whole world. I can claim that he is everywhere all over the planet.

He is adding an irreplaceable value to the world.

Bill Gates is serving the world like no other one is doing. And that is why he is the richest person in the world.

The ultimate secret of everlasting success and wealth is the power of … SERVICE.

*** Success is about service

The more you serve the more you succeed.

The more value you add to yourself and to the world the more you become wealthy and successful.

Focus on the activities that will increase your value.

Ask yourself: “what is the most valuable usage of my time right now?”

How valuable are you right now?

What actions should you take to increase your value just 1%?

Your little efforts to increase your value compounded over time will yield a great harvest.

Focus on adding more value to yourself and others. This will give you a great head start on leading a highly successful, wealthy life.

My friend, you can make a difference.

I believe in you.

[Will Edwards]

Hi Mohamed

Nice post - I know that the subject of Bill Gates will always provoke split opinion, but broadly, I agree with you; Bill did learn something of value and put it into practice.

By the way, if you would like to read the book that is generally credited as being the one that started Bill's career, you can get free access here ...

Master Key Course by Charles F Haanel

You have a nice site there too & I wish you well with it!

[norbert]

It seems to me like everybody's talking about focusing on serving others recently. This is what I'm trying to do most of the time. I am sure it will pay off in the long run. Here are some quotes that I've collected on the topic.

[escapee]

In business sense , it's the "blue ocean" strategy (a repackaged old business concept) that Bill gate pursued decades ago . It's a really simple concept that would lead to potential extraordinary success but majority of us prefer to do things that the crowd does (eg: like opening a new cafe shop just next to a cafe shop , or getting a degree in certain field because everybody does it)

The Blue Ocean Strategy is a business strategy regarding the capturing of uncontested market space, thereby making competition irrelevant

I think Steve's blog is a pretty good example of blue ocean strategy . I see that many all of us are so hungry for that fleeting moment of inspiration to keep thriving forward, and Steve is there at the right time to act as a passionate provider.

[Baltar]

I agree with the idea that providing value is the best way to become wealthy, but Bill Gates is not the best example you can use. It's widely known that Microsoft achieved its success through unscrupulous business practices. In the simplest terms, their strategy has always been to try getting away with doing something illegal or bordering on illegal. This allows them to make tons of cash, and if they get caught they just pay off some lawsuits or fines and still have plenty left over.

[StevenA]

Originally Posted by Baltar

I agree with the idea that providing value is the best way to become wealthy, but Bill Gates is not the best example you can use. It's widely known that Microsoft achieved its success through unscrupulous business practices. In the simplest terms, their strategy has always been to try getting away with doing something illegal or bordering on illegal. This allows them to make tons of cash, and if they get caught they just pay off some lawsuits or fines and still have plenty left over.

I think it still depends on how you look at things, though. You could either see Microsoft as a company who cuts corners or you could see them as a company who tries their hardest to lower cost in order to get their product to as many people as possible. It really comes down to a matter of values. It seems that at least in the past, they valued a more widespread product than a slightly improved one. A lot of people look at businesses and other people with contempt because their values clash. I think that none of them are necessarily better than the other, though.

I guess someone's view of the law could also effect how they look at Microsoft's practices.

[moviestar]

Yes, exactly!

Originally Posted by Baltar

I agree with the idea that providing value is the best way to become wealthy, but Bill Gates is not the best example you can use. It's widely known that Microsoft achieved its success through unscrupulous business practices. In the simplest terms, their strategy has always been to try getting away with doing something illegal or bordering on illegal. This allows them to make tons of cash, and if they get caught they just pay off some lawsuits or fines and still have plenty left over.

It doesn't matter how Microsoft achieved its success. The important moral from here is that they made something of value. Something that people WANT.
People just waited for someone to take the idea of windows, or DOS or whatever and transform it into a product that they can buy. People wanted this, thus Microsoft and Bill earned big bucks.

[Baltar]

There are two ways to become successful. One is to provide more value than the competition and thus gain market share, and the other is to destroy the competition by any means other than trying to make a better product or service. That way people have no choice but to buy from you, and this is what Microsoft had done over the years. Having no competition means you don't have to try making a better product, and consumers suffer as a result.

I agree that in the beginning they certainly did provide the right product at the right time. They bought an exclusive license to QDOS from a company called SCP for $50,000, changed it around a bit to conform to what IBM wanted, and licensed it as MS-DOS to IBM for the IBM PC line. Although even then they later got sued by SCP for not disclosing their partnership with IBM when they bought QDOS, and Microsoft settled with them for $1 million. Still, this in my opinion is a perfectly fine way to go. That is, buy something from one company and resell to another one for much more if there's such an opportunity. Though if MS agreed to settle with SCP for that much money (remember this was 1981 and a million bucks was worth more than it is now) I can't help but think that their contract with SCP didn't allow them to do what they had done.

Later on they had done much more unscrupulous things, such as forcing all PC makers to only ship computers with DOS/Windows or lose their license to sell computers with DOS/Windows. They also deliberately targeted Netscape Communications and eventually destroyed them by shipping Internet Explorer with Windows. I believe they either didn't allow PC makers to ship Netscape with Windows or penalized them for it in some way. This was the subject of the anti-trust suit brought against Microsoft by the US government which MS lost. MS also lost an anti-trust suit in Europe a few years ago, and paid a fine of $613 million. Lack of competition in the browser market caused stagnation for years -- Internet Explorer was at version 6 from 2001 until a few months ago, and most of the IE 7 improvements can be attributed to new competition from Firefox.

The point is that if there had been true competition between Windows and other operating systems, Microsoft would not have been so successful. They simply never made anything of high quality. I think there's a very good chance that Linux will cause a downfall of Windows because it's an excellent competitor. Microsoft is incredibly scared of Linux because there's nothing for them to destroy -- no single company owns Linux. What MS is trying to do right now is scare people off from using Linux by saying that Linux infringes on MS software patents, and MS is threatening to sue those who use Linux. They recently made a partnership with Novell (who owns SuSE Linux) and then said that only those who use SuSE Linux are safe from being sued. Looks like they're getting desperate..

But don't take my word for it, Wikipedia has a long article called Criticism of Microsoft. There are endless examples of illegal and unethical things they had done.

In the 1990s, Microsoft adopted exclusionary licensing under which PC manufacturers were required to pay for an MS-DOS license even when the system shipped with an alternative operating system. Critics allege that it also used predatory tactics to price its competitors out of the market and that Microsoft erected technical barriers to make it appear that competing products did not work on its operating system. An investigation by the United States Department of Justice on August 21, 1993 resulted in an opinion stating that this behavior was illegal; in a consent decree issued on July 15, 1994, Microsoft agreed to a deal in which, among other things, that the company would not "tie" other Microsoft products into its operating system.

[Baltar]

Originally Posted by moviestar

It doesn't matter how Microsoft achieved its success. The important moral from here is that they made something of value. Something that people WANT. People just waited for someone to take the idea of windows, or DOS or whatever and transform it into a product that they can buy. People wanted this, thus Microsoft and Bill earned big bucks.

I do agree that at the beginning, Microsoft did provide true value that didn't exist in the marketplace, regardless of how they managed to acquire DOS. But once they gained power they switched their focus to maintaining their dominance in other ways. So while I do agree that initially Gates became wealthy through good business decisions, my point is that the reason he's the richest man in the world right now is not because he provides exceptional value right now.

[Doku]

Originally Posted by Tohami

In your opinion, why is Bill Gates the richest person in the world?

Simple: He had the ability to fail.

He was a multi-milionaire the day he was born. This allowed him to take major risks, and not really care if he succeeded or not. If he failed, he still had millions to fall back on. Most of us don't have those options, and are forced to be much more conservative.

[Baltar]

Originally Posted by Doku

Simple: He had the ability to fail.

He was a multi-milionaire the day he was born. This allowed him to take major risks, and not really care if he succeeded or not. If he failed, he still had millions to fall back on. Most of us don't have those options, and are forced to be much more conservative.

Nobody's born a multi-millionaire. Sure, his parents might've been multi-millionaires but you're assuming they gave him access to a lot of their cash. Do you have any reliable sources to back this up? From brief research I can't find any hard data about how much money he was given by his parents, but the figures I've heard were not very high.

Whatever the case might be with Gates though, I simply don't buy your argument. There are plenty of people who started with nothing and became extremely wealthy, like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak for instance. Michael Dell is another one. And what about the Google founders?

[John Hill]

Well said Tohami, nice post, I couldn't agree more.

I believe in the idea that what you give is what you get back, serve the world and the world will serve you.

My own small contribution is at the link below.

John