Bill Gates was a genius with an entrepreneurial mind. Do you think his parents taught him to program the machine that he had access to? He is a self-taught programmer and a high-school entrepreneur and as a kid he read encyclopedias front to back.
I know another child entrepreneur, self-taught programmer who read encyclopedias front to back as a kid... elon musk.
My point is that if you can teach yourself to program, and program THAT WELL, at that time, then you are going to teach yourself a lot of other things.
Yes, a person with drive might achieve that. That said, it'd probably be massively less likely. Out of the 100 million kids in India born into poverty, probably 1 in a 100 would make it to a blue collar job, 1 in 10k to a white collar job, 1 in 100k to a professional, 1 in 1M to be a millionaire, and 1 in 100M to be a billionaire. I'm fudging the data but would I be massively wrong?
I believe Gates would only have a few percent of his current wealth if he was just born a few years later or a few years sooner. Note that, with this belief, he's still amazingly rich.
I don't begrudge him his wealth even though a bulk of ti comes down to luck. Someone had to end up with the desktop OS monopoly.
If you believe Gladwell, no. It's a combination of crazy work ethic and being born in the right place and time. Now whether or not we should believe Gladwell is being debated elsewhere... :-)
He wouldn't be Gates if he was born into another situation.
So the person born in the current Gates' situation would prolly have achieved what Gates did - given that Gates is who he is because he won the ovarian lottery.
So the person born in the current Gates' situation would prolly have achieved what Gates did - given that Gates is who he is because he won the ovarian lottery.
If he had a twin brother he's be, say Larry Ellison or Warren Buffet?
No doubt knowing that daddy is there for you if you fail and that Harvard will take you back is a huge relief and fall back strategy but Gates did make some amazingly good decisions. Some forty years later his company is worth close to $300 Billion and makes over $20 Billion in profit, year after year.
The question is: Could Gates have achieved what he did had he not been born into a similar situation?