- Yes, I believe in the Internet.
I believe it'll get increasingly popular,
and we're doing some neat, new things
to take advantage of that.
When you have the level
of success that we've had,
when you have a business
that's important as this
with this many competitors,
you're going to have people
saying some nasty things.
The lives all over the world should be
treated with the same
value that we treat lives
here in the rich world.
If you ask people across
the United States,
"Is the future going to
be better than the past?",
most say no.
- He's an American entrepreneur,
author, investor, and philanthropist.
In 1975, he co-founded Microsoft
which went on to become
the world's largest PC software company.
He's currently the richest
person in the world
with an estimated net worth
of $84 billion dollars.
He's Bill Gates, and here's my take on
his top 10 rules for success, volume two.
Rule number two is my personal favorite,
and stick around all the way to the end
for a special bonus clip.
As always, as Bill is talking,
if he says something that
really resonates with you,
please leave it in the comments below
and put quotes around it
so other people can be inspired as well.
Enjoy.
(inspirational music)
- You really have to believe
the Internet's going to be mainstream,
a lot of people are going
to get out there and use it,
and that they're going to be willing
to pay for some content.
- [Charlie] Is that the
operating idea that you have?
- Each of these businesses
is an entrepreneurial business.
The overreaching theme is that yes,
I believe in the Internet.
I believe it'll get increasingly popular,
and we're doing some neat, new things
to take advantage of that.
- You've got a lot of cash on hand.
Yes?
- Right.
- [Charlie] All right (laughing).
It puts you in an enviable position.
You can experiment with a
lot of entrepreneurial ideas
and see what sticks and what flies.
- We're in business to make money.
- [Charlie] The other thing is providing
such a cash flow for you.
- [Bill] Well, it all
belongs to the shareholders.
- [Charlie] Yes.
- We're not dilettantes.
- [Charlie] No, I know.
- We are business people, and
it is true that if you find an idea
that requires three or four years
of improvement and patience
and really sticking with it
that we're very good at that.
Take Windows, which we bet our company on.
Everybody who doubted that would succeed,
IBM did not support us in that.
It took longer than we expected,
over four years before finally
graphical interface got popular
and now people take it for granted.
It's part of every personal computer,
and you just expect it to be there.
That was one of the grand
successes of the company.
In the same way we're
betting on the Internet,
that our tools there will be popular
and that a few of these content plays
that we've decided to get involved in,
that the scale and the users
will make those into great businesses.
Well, certainly every product we do
is absolutely as capable
as it can possibly be.
There's no holding back.
The people at Microsoft
come into work everyday
building the best products they can,
and they're very proud.
Go into schools and see how
kids are using this stuff.
Go and ask people about
how their jobs have changed
because of the personal computer.
- [Interviewer] Sure.
- We're sitting there
listening to our customers
saying how they'd like
to make things better.
We do absolutely our best job.
In fact, that's why we've been successful.
Anybody who holds back in this business
isn't going to be around for long because
this is a business where
you always have to be
moving at a very rapid pace.
- You have, for years, ever
since you were a little boy,
I hear, have been called a nerd.
Do you care?
Does it hurt you?
- Well, nerd means a lot of things.
I'm somebody who can
sit and read a book about
science for hours on end.
I don't mind being labeled as somebody
who finds that interesting.
- [Barbara] There is hardly a day
in which something is not
written about Microsoft.
It has become almost a frenzy.
You are being called the evil empire.
Forget being called a nerd.
You are now being called
arrogant, greedy, the Devil.
You've read all this stuff
or heard that this has been said.
What do you say about all of this?
- Well, it's a very competitive business.
- That's all?
- [Bill] Oh no, absolutely.
When you have the level
of success that we've had,
when you have a business
that's important as this
with this many competitors,
you're going to have people
saying some nasty things.
You have to learn a little bit
not to take it too personally.
- You went to Harvard and you dropped out.
Have you ever thought how
your life could be better off
if you had gotten your Harvard degree?
- [Bill] Well, I'm a weird dropout
because I take college
courses all the time.
I love learning company
courses and things,
so I love being a student.
There were smart people around.
They fed you.
They gave you these nice grades
that made you feel smart.
I feel it was unfortunate
that I didn't get to stay there
but I don't think I missed
any knowledge because
whatever I needed to learn
I was still in a learning mode.
People who have been successful are often,
not always, pretty fanatical about
the thing they're trying to do.
I remember one industry panel
where there were about seven
people and the debate was
would the computer interface
be this character-mode thing
or would be it be graphic user interface?
At the time, the graphic user
interface stuff was so slow
it was laughable.
Writing software for it was so bad.
It was Windows 1.0.
The people on the panel
were saying, "No, no.
"This is kind of a stupid thing."
I would say, "No, believe me.
"This'll be great."
One of the guys on the panel said,
"Hey, Bill is wrong,
"but Bill works harder
than the rest of us.
"Even though it's the wrong solution,
"he's likely to succeed."
That was the best compliment I ever had.
Just by working day and night,
I could send the industry
in some direction.
I was fanatical in that
period of time, that is,
I didn't believe in vacation.
I didn't believe in weekends.
It turned out that worked for me that
we got our company going at a speed
that allowed it to make mistakes faster
than other people were and
kind of see those mistakes.
- [Charlie] Do you worry
about Linux as a competition
for operating systems?
- [Bill] Yes.
We've competed against various forms
of Unix over the years,
and Linux is growing in popularity
and definitely a competitor.
- How threatening a competitor?
- It's a competitor we
take very seriously.
I think, you know, part
of Microsoft's success
is that we don't underestimate
the importance of the work
that other companies are doing.
We look out.
We think, "Are there
aspects of that that are
"best practices?"
For example, online supports
and the community things that are done
around Linux are done very well.
We're thinking about it and
making sure that our innovation
will make sure that our
value and our leadership
stays in front.
First I met Warren.
We were talking about
getting together and doing
something again.
He pulled out his calendar,
and the pages were so blank.
I said, "Wow,
"you've managed to avoid getting tied in
"to a lot of kind of
meaningless activity."
Warren said, "Yeah, you
have to be good at saying no
"and picking the things that
really make a difference."
That's one of many things
I've learned from Warren,
but that's one of my favorites
so I can blame it on him
whenever I'm turning things down.
- You have made
a significant contribution
in the fight against AIDS in Africa.
You have funded, to a large degree,
vaccines and vaccine research.
Give me a sense of where that's directed
and what success you think
we're making and your
own particular interest
in public health in the world.
- Well, this is a real passion for me.
- [Charlie] I know.
- I'll give a succinct answer.
People, I think, don't
have a full awareness
how four billion of the six
billion people on this planet
don't have basic health needs met.
The death rate of infants,
the epidemic infectious diseases
that are just a way of
life in most of the world
don't exist in the developed world,
yet the research isn't going on
for the medicines that would
get rid of these diseases.
Even diseases like tuberculosis,
where for a few hundred
dollars lives can be saved,
that's not being done.
Vaccines aren't being moved
from the rich world to the poor world.
AIDS is the most extreme where
the prevention measures
that could prevent this
from becoming a huge epidemic
in countries like India and Nigeria
and many countries where it's not
in huge percentages today.
- [Charlie] It hasn't reached
the proportions of Africa.
- [Bill] The right things, I think,
are not being prioritized.
The foundation that my wife and I have
have taken as its top priority
these world health issues,
the research, getting the vaccines out.
It's been fascinating to learn about this
and to try to say that all these lives,
the lives all over the world,
should be treated with the same value
that we treat lives
here in the rich world.
- [Charlie] Just to sum up in a sense,
what you have learned
from your own involvement,
from funding it in terms of
more money than had ever been applied,
is that it can make a difference.
- Absolutely.
Millions of lives
can be and should be saved
through these efforts.
We can make a difference,
and we can encourage
others to get involved.
- [Charlie] That was my last question.
Is that happening?
As you fund these efforts,
is it becoming a kind of
wedge that other governments
and other foundations and other sources
are following suit or matching?
- We've seen a good start, I would say.
The vaccine fund we put together,
we put in $750 million now.
Governments have agreed
to put up $500 million
in addition to that.
In the AIDS area,
some of the things we've backed
have been able to
attract additional money.
Having said that,
this is a cause that somehow
deserves more visibility
because when you talk to people about this
and they hear about malaria or AIDS,
they really do care
and they think their
government's doing more.
When I'm not working,
a lot of my creativity is
going into what could be done
to show people that their
money would be well-spent,
it would make a difference,
and try and make sure
that world health gets more priority.
- [Charlie] Then you can save lives.
- That's what it's all about.
If you ask people across
the Unites States,
"Is the future going to
be better than the past?",
most say, "No.
"My kids will be worse off than I am."
They think innovation won't make the world
better for them or their children.
Who's right,
the people who say innovation
will create new possibilities
and make the world better
or the people who see a
trend toward inequality
and a decline in opportunity
and don't think innovation
will change that?
The pessimists are wrong, in my view,
but they're not crazy.
If innovation is purely market-driven
and we don't focus on the big inequities,
then we could have amazing
advances and inventions
that leave the world even more divided.
We won't improve public schools.
We won't cure malaria.
We won't end poverty.
We won't develop the
innovations poor farmers need
to grow food in a changing climate.
If our optimism doesn't
address the problems
that affect so many of
our fellow human beings,
then our optimism needs more empathy.
If empathy channels our optimism,
we will see the poverty
and the disease and the poor schools.
We will answer with our innovations,
and we will surprise the pessimists.
Over the next generation,
you Stanford graduates
will lead a new wave of innovation.
Which problems will you decide to solve?
If your world is wide,
you can create the future we all want.
If your world is narrow,
you may create the future
the pessimists fear.
I started learning in Soweto
that if we're going to make
our optimism matter to everyone
and empower people everywhere,
we have to see the lives
of those most in need.
If we have optimism without empathy,
then it doesn't matter how much
we master the secrets of science.
We're not really solving problems.
We're just working on puzzles.
I think most of you
have a broader worldview
than I had at your age.
You can do better at this than I did.
If you put your hearts and minds to it,
you can surprise the pessimists.
We're eager to see it.
- You're obviously going
to go down in history,
history books already set kind of thing,
but what's the greatest misunderstanding
in your relationship and about each other?
What would you say would be
this idea of cat fight,
which of the many?
- We've kept our marriage
secret for over a decade now.
(audience laughing)
- [Kara] Canada.
That trip to Canada.
(audience laughing)
- I don't think either of us
have anything to complain about in general
and I know that the projects,
like the Mac project, was
just an incredible thing,
a fun thing where we were taking a risk.
We did look a lot younger in that video.
- We did.
(audience laughing)
- [Kara] You looked 12 in the first one.
(audience laughing)
- That's how I try and look.
- [Steve] He was 12.
(audience laughing)
- No, it's been fun to work together.
I actually kind of miss some of the people
who aren't around anymore.
People come and go in this industry.
It's nice when somebody sticks around.
They have some context of all the things
that have worked and not worked.
The industry gets
all crazy about some new thing.
There's always this paradigm of
the company that's successful
is going to go away
and stuff like that.
It's nice to have people
seeing the waves and waves of that and yet
been willing, when it counted,
to take the risk to
bring in something new.
- [Walt] Has it been important?
One last question and
then we'll go to the--
- I've got an answer for that too.
- No, he didn't answer us
because he just said this--
- I'm sorry, what?
- I have an answer
for that too.
- Oh, I'm sorry.
- He only talked about
his secret gay marriage.
- Okay, yeah.
I thought that was your answer.
- No, that wasn't my answer.
When Bill and I first met each other
and worked together in the early days,
generally we were both the
youngest guys in the room,
right, individually or together.
I'm about six months older than he is but
roughly the same age.
Now, when we're working at
our respective companies,
I don't know about you, but
I'm the oldest guy in the
room most of the time.
That's why I love being here.
(audience laughing and applauding)
- [Walt] Happy to oblige, happy to oblige.
- I think of most things in life
as either a Bob Dylan or Beatles song,
but there's that one line
in that one Beatles song,
"You and I have memories
"longer than the road
that stretches out ahead",
and that's clearly true here.
- [Kara] It's sweet.
- [Walt] You know what?
I think we should end it there.
Let's just end it there.
- I might have a little tear right here.
(audience laughing)
- [Walt] Thank you.
Thank you very much.
- [Kara] Thank you so much.
- Sure.
(audience applauding)
- Thank you guys so much for watching.
This was an experimental video
doing a volume two of a top 10 rules
so I'm curious to figure out,
did you guys like this?
Do you want me to do more like
this in the future or not?
Leave it in the comments below.
Let me know.
I also am curious to figure out
which of the rules did you like the best.
What is most applicable to your life
or to your business right now?
What immediate change
are you going to make
after watching this video?
Leave it in the comments,
and I'm going to join in the discussion.
Finally, I want to give a
quick shout-out to Tuan Nguyen.
Thank you so much for picking up 10 copies
of my book Your One Word
and sharing it with some of
your friends and clients.
I really, really, really,
really appreciate it.
Thank you guys again for watching.
I believe in you.
I hope you continue to believe in yourself
and whatever your One Word is.
Much love.
I'll see you soon.
- Even in the early days,
if you said, "A computer on
every desk in every home",
and you'd say, "Okay, how many homes
"are there in the world?
"How many desks are there in the world?
"Can I make $20 for every home,
"$20 for every desk?"
You could get these big numbers,
but part of the beauty
of the whole thing was
we were very focused on the here and now.
"Should we hire one more person?
"If our customers didn't pay us,
"would we have enough
cash to meet the payroll?"
We really were very practical
about that next thing
and so involved in
the deep engineering that we
didn't get ahead of ourselves.
We never thought how big we'd be.
I remember when
one of the early lists of
wealthy people came out.
One of the Intel founders was there.
The guy who ran Wang Computer Factory,
Wang was still doing well.
We thought, "Boy, if the
software business does well,
"the value of Microsoft
could be similar to that",
but it wasn't a real focus.
The everyday activity of
just doing great software
drew us in.
Some decisions we made,
like the quality of the people,
the way we were very global,
the vision of how we
thought about software,
that was very long-term.
Other than those things
we just came into work everyday,
wrote more code,
hired more people.
It wasn't really until
the IBM PC succeeded
and perhaps even until
Windows succeeded that
there was a broad awareness
that Microsoft was very unique
as a software company
and that these other companies had been
one-product companies,
hadn't hired people,
couldn't do a broad set of things,
didn't renew their excellence,
didn't do research.
We thought we were doing
something very unique,
but it was easily not
until 1995 or even 1997
that there was this wide recognition
that we were the company that
had revolutionized software.
