Difficult to see how publicizing this stuff could be beneficial for Mr. Allen. At that level, and sitting on top of a multi-billion dollar fortune, it almost never behooves you to say anything negative about anybody -- least of all one of your former partners. I also think complaining about not getting a bigger share of MS stock, when you've got 14 billion in the bank...not exactly the stuff of which Jedi are made.
He isn't doing it to benefit himself. He probably doesn't care whether you like him or not, and he definitely doesn't need your money or respect.
I guess Paul just wants the world to know that the image of Gates as our benevolent patron of philanthropy is itself revisionism, lest anyone forget that Bill Gates was one of the least loyal and trustworthy friends a person could ask for.
It doesn't surprise me that HN sides with the victor in cases like this, but I would argue that any serious business person should watch and learn carefully from the lessons of two close friends who changed the world and ended up disliking each other.
People change with time, and are not necessarily the same as they were in the past. Forming a collective of ones entire life and cherry-picking various moments simply gives you highlights, both good and bad. They don't speak to what the person is right now.
Probably your best bet to gage someone is to look at what they've been doing recently, going back maybe no more than ~5 years. Here you'll see someone whose learned from their past mistakes, likely acting differently due to life lessons, and are essentially the most authentic "version" of a person they currently are.
You are absolutely right, but just because he has changed and the world has forgiven him doesn't mean we should forget his past self. There are still lessons to be learned. And, his philanthropy doesn't justify his past bad behavior.
Yeah, I completely agree. I'm sure he doesn't need my or anybody else's money or respect. But I wonder if the message he's trying to get across is the one that's actually getting across. Looking at it from a gaming standpoint, can his play here can ever have a positive expectation?
By what measure? If Paul Allen wants people to remember that Bill Gates used to be a dick, and people read his book and do so, maybe that's all the positive expectation he needs. Even if it hurts his own reputation maybe it is worth it to him.
I don't doubt Allen's claims, but years and experience can change a man. The person Paul was complaining about, probably doesn't exist anymore except in distant memories, albeit rather painful ones. People can change for the better.
I have always thought the relational dynamic between Jobs and Woz was instructive for similar reasons.
(Not that these two founders aren't friends anymore, but I think it's pretty obvious that it isn't what it was)
"least loyal and trustworthy friends a person could ask for": citation?
Are you referring to the discussion Gates and Ballmer had about diluting Allen? That seems to be a way to dilute a founder who was slacking off. The word partnership is used several times; this may imply that everybody was 100% vested already. If so, this is the only thing they could do to somebody who wasn't pulling his weight.
Are you seriously asking for a citation to show that Bill Gates is (was?) a ruthless person with questionable ethics? Forty years of ripping off other people's software, berating and humiliating his own team, buying and shutting down competitors, and impeding progress in the name of vendor lock-in, plus the newly-published "insider" memoir of his co-founder isn't enough for you?
I've met Bill Gates, so I'll stick with my personal opinion. You're entitled to yours.
The parent claimed "least loyal and trustworthy friend".
Where have you supported that claim? If you've "met" BG, I invite you to post some already-known anecdotes etc about his conduct as a friend, which is exactly what I asked about.
That comment was based on Allen's account of Ballmer and Gates plotting to dilute him – a dick move by any measure, esp. after Allen showed his good faith on a number of occasions.
Gates and Allen were friends at when they went to school together. I went to the same school some years after them, and drew my own opinions based on first and second hand experiences with both of them.
No matter what you believe about the quality of their friendship, there's a teaching lesson for co-founders in their story.
Heartless as it sounds, it is absolutely fair to think about how to protect the business and yourself in the event that a fully vested founder were to be unable to do the duties one has reasonably assumed they would do.
Ownership shares are not like salary (imho): they're not just for past work, but also for future contributions.
Without specifics on to what extent exactly they were planning to dilute him, I am not prepared to condemn BillG. YMMV.
Jobs' actual cheating through a straightforward lie to Woz wrt how much they got paid for Atari's contract job they did is FAR worse than a planning conversation BillG had. IMHO. http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/hackers/steve-wozniak/
He wants to be acknowledged. Everybody knows Bill Gates and sees him as the smart and great computer guy, while Mr. Allan is an unknown. It's like 2 brothers where the lesser talented uses all his life to proof he's just as good and therefore never gets to create something.
Who destroyed Lotus, WordPerfect, Borland and Netscape? Who swore under oath that the browser is part of the operating system, and couldn't be removed? Why are 9 out of 10 desktop computers running Windows? I think only one man gets the credit. :-)
Hopefully, he can ruthlessly solve a few of the long-running problems in the world.
I don't see Gates as the great computer guy. I look at him as a ruthless evil genius that made Microsoft what it is. Of course that's partly because he's also a "great computer guy".
To make an analogy with Apple, if anything, his role at Microsoft was more like that of Steve Jobs, rather than that of Steve Wozniak; he provided the vision, he made the business calls that made Microsoft. Bill Gates does have a different style than Steve Jobs and doesn't have the same distortion field and attractiveness, but his speeches at Ted are great nonetheless (which makes me think he was bored at Microsoft :)).
This is a very interesting article. I am myself working on a project and considering good friends to be co-founders in that. But based on what Paul Allen is mentioning here and based on few other stories of startups which made it big like Facebook, few thoughts came to my mind:
1) Is it that to make it really big, to the likes of Microsoft, Facebook a founder has to play games and trick his own friends in a way that the founder owns majority of stake in the company. I am not necessarily saying it is bad, it is just a observation and want your opinion. It is totally possible that one of the co-founders is so passionate about the idea that he works hard by twice or thrice as much as other cofounder and in the process somehow manages to get hold of major equity. What do you think? Is it necessary to be evil to make it big? Does your passion blind you somewhere in the process where one cannot distinguish right from "not so much right"?
2) I dont see and havent heard about Steve Jobs being great friends with Steve Wozniak. So is Bill gates with Paul Allen. Facebook Mark Z and other cofounders have some fights between them too. Given this and stories from similar or smaller companies, it makes me think, is it possible to have a good and healthy friend ship like relationship with your co-founder after a period of time? Or with the turn of events in the company it is bound to happen that the relationship will go sour?
What do you guys think?
Another example: the beetles. Perhaps one of the greatest creative partnerships of all time, churning out two records a year for 7 years, and then were sick of each other and broke up.
The story is part of a very good publicity campaign for his book, which has been written as a memoir. He wants his legacy to be remembered as 'Paul Allen' rather than 'that other guy'.
What is the risk for somebody with 14 billion in the bank to call out other when he/she feels they've been wrong (regardless of whether it's perception or reality). Allen could have called Gates they antichrist and he'd still have people lined up around the block to take his VC money or sit in the owner's box of Trailblazers game with him. 14 billion is definitely "FU" money.
Companies buy reputation all the time (branding, association ). Doing things is not enough. People must also know about what you did and that takes publicity.
> At that level, and sitting on top of a multi-billion dollar fortune, it almost never behooves you to say anything negative about anybody -- least of all one of your former partners. I also think complaining about not getting a bigger share of MS stock, when you've got 14 billion in the bank...not exactly the stuff of which Jedi are made.
At that level, money is more about points than bucks. He's not upset he can buy fewer baseball teams, he's upset that his status was being lowered and he was being disrespected and treated as prey/
As far as the former partners go, Cringely claims Allen has been dissociated financially for a long time:
> Maybe that�s just the sort of fiduciary discussion board members have to have, but it didn�t go over well with Paul Allen, who never returned to Microsoft, and over the next eight years, made huge efforts to secure his wealth from the fate of Microsoft. He sold large blocks of shares on a regular basis no matter whether the price was high or low. Then in October and November of 2000, just as he was finally leaving the Microsoft board, Allen did a series of financial transactions involving derivative securities called �collars,� that are a combination of a right to buy and a right to sell the stock at different prices such that both his upside and downside financial potential are limited. By the end of 2000, though Allen technically still owned 136 million Microsoft shares, his wealth was for practical purposes separate from that of Gates, Ballmer, and the rest of Microsoft.
Inasmuch as Cringely reported essentially the same anecdote as in the _Vanity Fair_ excerpts, I'm inclined to take him at his word when he writes about Allen's finances.
It's an interesting type of discrimination at play here. The rich have just as much right to free speech and human emotion as everybody else. If someone feels that they have been mistreated, it is not appropriate to belittle their concerns based on their net worth. Whether their net worth is very low, or very high.
At that level, and sitting on top of a multi-billion dollar fortune, it almost never behooves you to say anything negative about anybody
I've never understood that. At what point do you make enough money to say whatever the hell you want, without any fear of repercussions? What's the point of having all that money if you have to worry about what other wealthy people think of you?
If you are a billionaire you buy a news network and then hire a pundit, heck a whole panel of pundits to say whatever negative things you want to say about anybody.
I feel like I've worked with people like Paul Allen (programmers). They tend to over value their own contributions and have "revisionist histories" when considering their relationship with their manager, but really it comes down to how much recognition they received.
The quote about Paul wanting significantly more shares for his contributions to SoftCard specifically ring true. SoftCard might have been a sales success, but comparing it's impact on Microsoft to Basic itself is a little off.
It's hardly fair to look back with 30 years of hindsight and say that BASIC was more important to a company than SoftCard. Obviously, we know that now, but that doesn't speak to their specific situation.
BASIC was the foundation of the company, by 1980 SoftCard was one project of many.
I don't discount the importance of SoftCard, it was actually key in the development of the relationship between IBM and Microsoft in the 80s, but even more key was the building of the relationship itself, which was largely driven by Gates.
Allen's attitude at the time reminds me of software developer coworkers who over emphasis the contributions that software development makes. I can understand Gates' reaction - Gates' job was not any easier and certainly not any less important, so why redistribute shares?
Is it just me or was Bill's reaction so cordial and professional? I loved it; thought it was great.
"While my recollection of many of these events may differ from Paul's, I value his friendship and the important contributions he made to the world of technology and at Microsoft," Mr. Gates said in a written statement.
It is exactly the kind of response I would expect from someone in his position. He has nothing to gain by reacting overly negatively, and his legacy is not exactly at stake.
It seems to me the biggest allegation here is that Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer tried to dilute his shares when he was diagnosed with cancer the first time.
I hate to seem callous here, but, that might've completely made sense. God forbid if Allen had died, the company, still pre-IPO startup whose main product was MS-DOS (pre Office or any version of Windows) would want its shares controlled by people with business interests in the company. When you are a startup you want to align incentives properly and yes, people who are unfortunately unable to contribute, even if it's through no fault of their own probably shouldn't have huge amounts of stock.
Besides that allegation I don't really know what else here is that negative on Bill Gates.
There would be nicer ways to shield the company from that. They could talk to Allen, make sure that, in the possible event of his death, they would take care of his family in case the company succeeded.
In all my commercial ventures, my partners were also my friends. I would never, ever even entertain doing something like this to a perfectly healthy partner, much less one with a serious health problem.
Targeted dilution of individual shareholders seems extremely shady. Almost seems like it should be illegal.
As noted by someone else, they should have simply retained first option to buy any portio of Allen's shares in the case where his shares would change hands. Actually that should probably apply to all major insiders.
Intentionally trying to dilute his shares, if this did indeed happen, is tantamount to stealing in my eyes.
I agree that you shouldn't screw a friend over obviously. But, there does need to be some way to make sure equity of an early stage company is in the hands of the people who are most incentivized for its success. Ideally Gates would offer a contract where he could buy shares from Allen to make sure he and his family was taken care of. But- I do understand the logic of trying to ensure key stakeholders in the company are leading it.
I dunno. It looks like Allen's contributions as a co-founder back in the DOS days were very significant. I think he deserved at least a face-to-face, open and honest discussion.
That's completely fair. I agree with that. But, we don't know if this was a discussion between the two (Gates and Ballmer) with the intent of discussing it with him afterward.
I think you are right. In my opinion you have to handle each situation separately. So you dilute because it's best for the company, and then you also (assuming you have the means) take care of your friend monetarily and help lighten the medical expense load for him.
Cringley's account is very critical of Gates and Balmer, particularly on the subject of getting control of Paul Allen's shares in Microsoft should the worst happen. While this seems very cold-blooded it was probably a reasonable course of action given the circumstances - look what happened to CraigsList when one of the founders sold out to eBay.
Exactly, everything should be done above board -- when an unexpected event happens and the outcome is unknown it doesn't hurt to have a contingency plan if stuff doesn't work out.
Cringely wrote a piece in 2006 about Allen progressively distancing himself from Gates, Ballmer and Microsoft. It certainly raises questions about Gates' character.
The article makes it out as if Paul Allen is some sort of unlucky, dabbling entrepreneur post-Microsoft:
Many of his business investments, like the cable company Charter Communications, software company Asymetrix Corp. and set-top box maker Digeo Inc., have either flopped or fared poorly for him.
Admit it, you're more likely to read the book now than you would have been...
He obviously wants his book to be successful (though not for monetary reasons) so it would make senese to write about something controversial - in this case putting Bill Gates in negative light is obviously the easist way to get attention.
I always thought that Gates was the key business guy and Allen the key technology guy, Gates made the money and Allen made the product. Once the product was out Allen was no longer required, the ball was in Gates court and he sold the shit out of it. Am I wrong in this view?
Cringely's article, as well as Allen's accomplishments outside of Microsoft make that questionable. Gates may have had more business savvy, but it seems pretty evident that Allen was in no shortage of it either. To put it another way, I don't think Allen was to Gates what Wozniak was to Jobs.
Gates was/is very much a tech guy. Here is a quote from his Wikipedia article
At 13 he enrolled in the Lakeside School, an exclusive preparatory school. When he was in the eighth grade, the Mothers Club at the school used proceeds from Lakeside School's rummage sale to buy an ASR-33 teletype terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric (GE) computer for the school's students. Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC, and was excused from math classes to pursue his interest. He wrote his first computer program on this machine: an implementation of tic-tac-toe that allowed users to play games against the computer. Gates was fascinated by the machine and how it would always execute software code perfectly. When he reflected back on that moment, he said, "There was just something neat about the machine." After the Mothers Club donation was exhausted, he and other students sought time on systems including DEC PDP minicomputers. One of these systems was a PDP-10 belonging to Computer Center Corporation (CCC), which banned four Lakeside students—Gates, Paul Allen, Ric Weiland, and Kent Evans—for the summer after it caught them exploiting bugs in the operating system to obtain free computer time.
okay, may be Paul could have made a couple of billions more. but lets keep in mind that all that fortune was made for him after Paul left the company.
Now he writes the this book trashing his old friend and partner who actually made him rich? To me it looks like this is more of an ego issue for Paul rather than letting the world know truth about Bill.
"I'm not sure Bill would ever have dropped out of Harvard if it wasn't for Paul," Mr. Yoffie said, referring to Mr. Allen's role in encouraging Mr. Gates to leave college to start Microsoft. "I don't know whether Steve Jobs, without Wozniak, would have ever gotten things together."
Many companies built personal computers. Only one built the Mac. Jobs would have found someone else. Being able to make things is not as common a skill as knowing how to make things great.
My impression was that Woz developed apple 1(which gave apple some funds) by himself(with jobs only encouraging/pushing) and developed a very large of the apple II(which made apple a multi million dollar company) and then not much else. which was one of the first personal computers and was transformational(helping introduce personal computers into the world including a wide variety of clones. Jobs was the team head who designed the first mac(which was transformational in its own way-one of the first gui ) personal computers). At least according to foklore.org a decent number of the brilliant people working for apple on the mac and other projects were there in a significant part because they fell in love with woz's work.
