Networked : Bill Gates

• Name : William Henry Gates III

• Age : 60 years old

• Date of Birth : 28 October 1955

• Nationality : American

• Occupation : Technology Advisor Of Microsoft, Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, CEO of Cascade Investment, and Chair of Corbis

"It's fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure." (Gates, 2005) Networked can be defined as interact with other people to exchange information and develop contacts, especially to further one's career. The entrepreneurs have several people who they know and help them in order to be successful in their career. One of the entrepreneurs that can be related to networked trait is William Henry "Bill" Gates III(Bill Gates) who is the founder of Microsoft Corporation.

          Microsoft is a multinational computer technology corporation which is founded on April 4, 1975 together with Paul Allen in Albuquerque. Gates contacted Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), the creators of the new microcomputer, after reading the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics that demonstrated the Altair 8800. He intended to inform them that he and others were working on a BASICinterpreter for the platform. This is because they wanted to gauge MITS's interest which actually they have not written the code yet.

            MITS’ president, Ed Roberts, agreed to meet them for a demonstration for the project. The demonstration, held at MITS's offices in Albuquerque, was a success. This resulted in a deal with MITS to distribute the interpreter as Altair BASIC. Gates and Allen named their partnership "Micro-Soft" and had their first office located in Albuquerque. That was the first Gates step up stone to achieve success.

           

            Later on, International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) approached Microsoft regarding their personal computer, the IBM PC in July 1980. Microsoft was proposed to write the BASIC interpreter by the computer company. IBM representative need an operating system and then they were referred to Digital Researched but then the discussion went poorly, and they did not reach a licensing agreement. Gates solved the problem smoothly to keep the partnership with IBM.

            With the networked gained by Gates through Microsoft, he managed to keep the company on going thus make Microsoft as one of the gigantic software company in the world. This achievement also leads Gates to become one of the most successful entrepreneurs.