Bill Gates isn't budging from his longstanding position as the richest person on earth. With a net worth of $87.4 billion, Gates is $20 billion richer than the next-wealthiest person — Spanish fashion titan Amancio Ortega — according to Wealth-X data from our new ranking of the 50 richest people in the world.
Gates made his billions building juggernaut software maker Microsoft, but his main venture these days is giving it all away through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which he and his wife set up in 2000 as a vehicle for managing their charitable causes, like eradicating infectious diseases and hunger.
The Financial Times wrote that "through the stroke of pen on cheque book, Gates probably now has the power to affect the lives and well-being of a larger number of his fellow humans than any other private individual in history."
How did the world's wealthiest man get to where he is today? Gathered from 20 years of interviews, these quotes show how Gates went from computer geek to software titan to history-shifting activist all while building a multibillion-dollar fortune.
Original reporting by Drake Baer and Steven Benna.
On the journey so far
"It's pretty amazing to go from a world where computers were unheard of and very complex to where they're a tool of everyday life. That was the dream that I wanted to make come true, and in a large part it's unfolded as I'd expected. You can argue about advertising business models or which networking protocol would catch on or which screen sizes would be used for which things. There are less robots now than I would have guessed."
On why Microsoft succeeded
"Most of our competitors were one-product wonders ... They would do their one product, but never get their engineering sorted out.
"They did not think about software in this broad way. They did not think about tools or efficiency. They would therefore do one product, but would not renew it to get it to the next generation."
On collaborating with Apple early on
"We had really bet our future on the Macintosh being successful, and then, hopefully, graphics interfaces in general being successful, but first and foremost, the thing that would popularize that being the Macintosh.
"So we were working together. The schedules were uncertain. The quality was uncertain. The price. When Steve first came up, it was going to be a lot cheaper computer than it ended up being, but that was fine."
See the rest of the story at Tech Insider