Archive for October, 2008

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Bill Gates

Monday, October 6th, 2008

Bill Gates

William Henry Gates III is currently the world’s third-richest person, with a current net worth of around $58 billion USD. Out of all of the billionaires on the Forbes and Fortune magazine’s lists, it is William Henry Gates III, better known as Bill Gates, who is the most world-famous. And, also unusual for a top world billionaire, he is what you might call a one-trick pony. He made his fortune from microcomputer software at the exact moment when the world adopted microcomputers, and that is that. One company, one product.

Bill Gates was born on October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington, United States. He was the son of two already highly affluent parents; his father, William H. Gates, Sr. (the only one in the family line not to have the number), was already a career business lawyer who co-founded Preston Gates & Ellis LLP, and his mother, Mary Maxwell Gates, was a career banker who was serving on the board of directors for First Interstate Bank. Furthermore, his grandfather, William H. Gates II, was the president of a bank himself, and there are many other affluent business persons in the Gates family tree.

Although it was his father’s wish that he become a lawyer, Bill Gates did not at first seem to start out with much motivation to create his own career. Though he attended and graduated Lakeside, an exclusive preparatory school, he only briefly attended Harvard University before dropping out. Despite this, he holds an honorary degree from Harvard anyway, in recognition of his business success.

Bill Gates’ first brush with computers happened almost accidentally, in 1971. His best friend from Lakeside, Paul Allen, happened to be interested in programming, and founded the Lakeside Programming Group, a hobby club within the prep school. The hobby club attracted new members who would tinker with the big, mainframe machines – PDPs among them – of the time, playing with assembly, Lisp, and BASIC code and using teletypes and even punched cards. Eventually Gates and Allen joined another hobbyist computer club, called the “Homebrew Computer Club”, which had an open-source BASIC program interpreter which they had written. This put them in the right place at the right time when a new computer company, called Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MIPS) approached the club offering to buy their BASIC interpreter. Gates and Allen acted for the club and sold the program to MIPS. The rest of the club was not happy with this outcome, reasoning that it was everyone’s open source program and Gates and Allen had no right to sell it.

The feud between them eventually fueled Bill Gates’ famous “Open Letter to Hobbyists” in 1976, and this set a precedent for Gates to hold all free and open source software in contempt and to swear to stamp it out wherever he could. The feud between Microsoft and the open source community still goes on today, in the form of the rivalry between Microsoft and Linux, as well as with BSD and Apple, whose Mac OS software is also based on BSD. Nevertheless, the pair of Gates and Allen formed Micro-Soft Corporation and continued to hire programmers and sell more software. Microsoft, as the company eventually came to be called, essentially grew up alongside the microcomputer revolution, when old mainframe machines and time-shared systems gave way to stand-alone personal computers that could fit on a desktop.

It was Bill Gates’ family connections that paved the way for the next big break, when his mother, Mary Maxwell Gates, served on the board of the United Way charity at the same time as John Akers, the CEO of IBM. Akers mentioned to Mrs. Gates that the company was looking for an operating system for the new personal computers, and Mrs. Gates naturally recommended her son. Bill Gates, upon being approached, had to hire a scab programmer by the name of Tim Paterson to quickly write the QDOS (literally “Quick and Dirty Operating System”) operating system, which was a clone of the then-existing CP/M operating system. IBM bought the license rights to QDOS and yet through the nature of an unusual agreement between IBM and Microsoft, Microsoft continued to own the system and IBM had to pay them every time it sold a computer. The concept of proprietary software was born, since before this time the normal practice was that software had been given away for free, because computers themselves were so expensive as to prohibit additional costs. Gates continued this business plan by buying up other software products and companies, then incorporating the software into its own programs to be sold as part of its offerings.

QDOS became DOS, DOS became Windows 3.0, Windows became Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP, and Vista, and Microsoft grew into the richest software company in the world. In 1986, at the age of just 31, Bill Gates became the youngest billionaire in history at the time. In 1990, Windows 3.0 enjoyed sales of over $1 billion, a historical record for a software product. In 1993, United States president George H.W. Bush presented Bill Gates with the National Medal of Technology, an act which would foreshadow his son George W. Bush’s presidential act of pardoning Microsoft from its antitrust and monopoly convictions. Gates became the richest person in the United States in 1994 and the richest person in the world in 1995, although since relinquishing that title to Warren Buffett and Carlos Slim Helú.

While other billionaires have shown a great deal of struggle and fortitude to get where they are today, Bill Gates seems to have simply fallen into his success. To his credit, he does not take himself too seriously to this day, appearing in public in the relaxed, casual manner of any “computer geek”. Nevertheless, although he has now, at the age of just 52, stepped down as CEO of Microsoft, his personal fortune is still vast and he has stated that he has many more ambitious plans in store.

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J. K. Rowling

Monday, October 6th, 2008

J. K. Rowling

Joanne “Jo” Rowling writes under the pen name “J. K. Rowling”, and, as of 2008, has a personal net worth of just over $1.1 billion USD. The public knows her best as the author who gave the world the character Harry Potter. Though she makes her living telling stories of magical fantasy, her own story is no less amazing.

Joanne Rowling was born July 31, 1965, in South Gloucestershire, England, to parents Peter James and Anne Rowling. Together with her sister Dianne, the family moved to the village of Winterbourne, England, when Joanne was four. She was educated at St. Michael’s Primary School, and the settings and faculty of the place is said to have been her inspiration for many of the characters and places in the later Harry potter novels. Her secondary school was Wyedean School and College, and then she moved on to the University of Exeter where she acquired a BA in French and Classics.

Her first career was as a teacher. She moved to Porto, Portugal, to teach English as a second language. In 1992, she married Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes, with whom she had one child, Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes, in 1993. The couple separated in that same year. She moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, to be near her sister Dianne, and fell on hard times as a single mother with no support. She is probably the only billionaire in the world to have received public welfare. Throughout this period, she suffered from clinical depression, which was also spurred by the tragic death of her mother from multiple sclerosis.

Her one outlet was writing. Even as a young child, she had had a vivid imagination and had written stories to read to her sister. Throughout her early adulthood, she was working on her first novel, often writing it in cafes after a long walk during which her infant daughter would fall asleep. She even used her grief over her mother and her depression as material to draw writing inspiration from.

She finished the manuscript of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” in 1995 and began shopping it around to publishers. Ironically, her book was rejected, by an astonishing twelve publishers, before the lucky thirteenth publisher gave her her chance after a year of struggling. That was Bloomsbury Publishers, a small publishing house in London, England, who had recently branched out into children’s books. The editor at Bloomsbury advised Rowling to get a day job, because “she had little chance of making money in children’s books”. The book was at last printed in 1997.

This little book went on to sell an estimated 120 million copies worldwide, as well as winning too many awards to list in this article. Rowling received a grant from the Scottish Arts Council to allow her to continue writing. She began to publish a new novel in the series every year from 1998 to 2000, and every couple of years since. The series is now up to seven novels, each of them getting longer than the last.

To say Harry Potter took the world by storm is still putting it lightly. Each of the novels has their own movie either released or scheduled, the series has its own lines of merchandise and video games, and the mere brand of Harry Potter is worth $15 billion USD. Rowling is the highest-earning novelist in history. The series has been translated into 65 languages, making her one of the most-translated authors in history. Fans camp all night to keep their place in line when a new novel is released. Finally, the word “muggle”, which in the Harry Potter universe means a mundane person not gifted with magical powers, has entered the Oxford English Dictionary with that definition. No less an accomplished novelist than Stephen King has praised the series. Meanwhile the fame of her series has actually inspired a backlash from religious groups seeking attention, and has prompted others in the United States to proclaim that Joanne Rowling singlehandedly revived literacy there.

What is the inspiration that Joanne Rowling can provide us with? Certainly, she has followed her own muse and faithfully followed it, but even those of us without such an equal inner guiding voice can take this away with us: Follow your dream.

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Ingvar Kamprad

Monday, October 6th, 2008

Ingvar Kamprad

Ingvar Kamprad is currently the world’s eighth richest billionaire, at an estimated net worth of $31 billion USD. Even though you might not recognize the name, you’ll most definitely recognize the brand name of the home-furnishings retail chain he founded – IKEA! He is also the wealthiest person of European descent.

You could hardly ask for humbler beginnings than that of Ingvar Kamprad. He was born March 30, 1926, on a small farm called Elmtaryd, near the village of Agunnaryd in Ljungby Municipality in the province of Småland, Sweden. This is where the acronym “IKEA” comes from; it’s the first initials of his name, plus ‘E’ for Elmtaryd and ‘A’ for Agunnaryd.

Kamprad began his entrepreneur ambitions at a young age, by buying matches in bulk from Stockholm and selling them to the local community from the back of his bicycle. Later he expanded into also peddling fish, Christmas tree ornaments, seeds, pencils, and ball-point pens. His father took note of his son’s enterprising spirit, and gave him an allowance as a reward. Encouraged by this boost, Kamprad expanded his inventory ever further until he was selling wallets, watches, jewelery and stockings. Eventually he retired the bicycle to stay home and conduct his sales through mail order. It was at this time that he founded his company and named it IKEA.

In 1948, Ingvar Kamprad first added furniture to his catalog of products. The trouble with this is, even though he wasn’t trying to sell it from the back of a bicycle anymore, furniture was still bulky and expensive to mail out. So by 1955, he was selling his own furniture, which he would sell in a flat pack with assembly instructions. Kamprad just happened to have dyslexia, and himself had difficulty following complex directions. From this sprang his inspiration: he would make the assembly instructions easy to understand, even for him to use, and make the furniture components as easy to handle as possible.

After doing business from home for a number of years, he opened the first IKEA store in Sweden in 1958. From there, he expanded outside Sweden to Norway in 1963 and Denmark in 1969. Throughout the 1970’s, he continued to expand his chain of stores into other countries, including Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Australia, Hong Kong, Canada, and Singapore.

Ingvar Kamprad, famous for his micro-managing style, continued to apply his “keep it simple” philosophy to running an international retail business. The IKEA stores were planned from the ground up to be distinctive and efficient. The color motif is always blue with yellow accents, which are also the national colors of the Swedish flag. The store layout naturally takes customers through a showroom first, where they can see the furniture models assembled and on display, and then a warehouse section where customers can grab a cart and buy the furniture. In keeping with his vision of simplicity, he chose names for different furniture models so customers wouldn’t have to keep track of complex inventory numbers.

Today, IKEA furniture stores have expanded to virtually every developed country in the world. Notably, they are one of the few stores to keep a chain outlet in both Israeli and Islamic Middle Eastern countries. In addition, the store still maintains a bustling catalog business to reach parts of the world without a retain outlet.

Ingvar Kamprad himself has a world-wide reputation for his thrift – so much so that it’s difficult to sort out the facts from the apocrypha. He takes the subway to work, drives a 15-year old Volvo otherwise, flies economy class when he travels, and writes memos to his employees instructing them in such minute matters as using both sides of a piece of paper.

It cannot be denied that Ingvar Kamprad is a visionary genius. His improvements and innovations can be seen in every step of his business, from furniture design down to customer service. By applying his own principles of both frugality and accessibility, he has made a connection with customers who are also frugal and would prefer to be as self-sufficient as possible.

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Hiroshi Yamauchi

Monday, October 6th, 2008

Hiroshi Yamauchi

Hiroshi Yamauchi is a name which should be well-known to anyone who likes video games. He is the former president of Nintendo Co., Ltd., just recently having stepped down from that position in 2002 after a reign of 53 years. He has a net worth of $7.8 billion USD as of 2008 and is both the richest person in Japan and the 149th richest person in the world.

Hiroshi Yamauchi was born November 7, 1927 in Kyoto, Japan. He attended preparatory school, but his studies were interrupted in his teen years by the outbreak of World War II. Although he was too young to enlist, he was sent to work in the factories. After the war in 1945, Hiroshi went to Waseda University to study law, but fate was not done with him yet.

Even most video game fans might be stunned to know that Nintendo is over 100 years old, and that its original product was playing cards! Nintendo was founded in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi as a playing card company called Nintendo Koppai, which produced Hanafuda cards, which are used in many popular games the same way the Western poker deck is. The card business was actually doing alright, and it was this company of which Hiroshi’s grandfather, Fusajiro Yamauchi, was president.

In 1949, when Hiroshi was just 22 years old, Fusajiro Yamauchi suffered a stroke. Since he was president of Nintendo an had no clear successor, his own son having abandoned the family, Fusajiro Yamauchi summoned Hiroshi and literally appointed him from his deathbed to be his successor.

The change of leadership did not sit well with the company’s staff. Hiroshi Yamauchi had to quell a strike by the employees, and ruthlessly asserted his authority by firing anybody who didn’t agree with him. After this, he changed the company’s name to Nintendo Karuta, and moved it to a new headquarters building. He had an epiphany in 1956 on a visit to the United States, and saw that playing cards just weren’t going to lead to a promising future. Thus, he changed the company’s focus to general family games and toys. So Hiroshi basically threw out everything but the company stationary when he took over.

The most successful branch of the toy business was a mechanical arcade game to be played with a light gun, called Kousenjuu. The influence of this game can still be noticed in games such as “Duck Hunt”. The toy business was doing quite well, when in 1974 Nintendo bought the rights to market the Magnavox Odyssey home video game system in Japan. Nintendo started making other electronic games in the 1970’s and had some success but they were still many steps from fame. Finally, the era of quarter-operated video game arcades arrived in 1980, and Nintendo at last became a household name.

Nintendo’s first claim to fame is the arcade game “Donkey Kong”, released in 1981. It was the first to show what would become Nintendo’s official mascot, Mario. The game’s massive popularity world-wide led to sequels in the series, including Mario Brothers, Donkey Kong Jr., Super Mario Brothers, and many others. Nintendo came to rule the arcade, but their own home video game systems were doing dismal business. Then in about 1983, the great arcade game market crash happened, when consumers worldwide just got bored with the stale technology of then-existing game technology. Nintendo was ready at home for them.

Nintendo released the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985. It was revolutionary. The games were in color, they had music, they had attractive design, they were innovative, and the Nintendo system was both cheap and “plug n play”. It quite literally singlehandedly saved the home video game market. Nintendo consoles have sold to a worldwide audience, always being one of the top three console systems, ever since. Nintendo also practically invented the portable hand-held game market with the GameBoy, since before that time portable games were severely limited to calculator-style technology. Nintendo has not strayed very far from the video game market ever since.

Hiroshi Yamauchi is quite the accidental hero. If you had told him, at age 22, that this drop-out law student who had to go work in a playing card factory would eventually become the king of a computer game empire, he might have quite rightly looked at you like you were crazy. Hiroshi Yamauchi has been vigilant in spotting opportunities throughout his career with the Nintendo company, and stands today as an example of a person who had greatness thrust upon them, and rose to that challenge.

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Hassanal Bolkiah

Monday, October 6th, 2008

Hassanal Bolkiah

His full title is “Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’izzaddin Waddaulah, Sultan of Brunei”, and he is the 17th richest billionaire in the world, with a net worth of $23 billion USD. He is the total controller of the finances of the Nation-State of Brunei. His holdings are vast, including the assets of Brunei Shell Petroleum. Basically every drop of petroleum pumped out of the ground or refined within the border of Brunei belongs to him.

The Sultan was born July 15, 1946, in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei, to Omar Ali Saifuddien III, the 28th Sultan of Brunei, making Hassanal the 29th.

Brunei is a tiny country. If you take the largest land mass of Indonesia (an island archipelago in the sea between China and Australia) which is the island of Borneo, and split it, the top half of that is the nation of Malaysia. If Malaysia were a piece of cheese and a mouse took a single nibble out of it, that’s Brunei, on the north coast facing China. It has an area of 2,226 square miles or 5,765 square kilometers, which makes it smaller than the United States state of Delaware. The population is an estimated 381,371, less than the population of Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA. Brunei Darussalam gained its international independence from the United Kingdom in 1984.

Brunei is an absolute monarchy, and the Sultanate maintains full executive authority as both head of state and head of government. The country effectively operates under martial law since the 1960’s. While the Sultan is advised by an appointed legislative council and there has been some attempt at allowing elections and having an appointed parliament, the government is still basically whatever the Sultan says. Hassanal Bolkiah inherits the Sultan title in a dynasty that has stood since the 15th century since Muhammad Shah, the first Sultan of Brunai, of the years 1405–1415.

Crude oil and natural gas production account for nearly half of Brunei’s Gross Domestic Product, which was last tracked as $6.84 billion in 2003. Brunei is the third-largest oil producer in Southeast Asia, averaging about 180,000 barrels per day. It is also the fourth-largest exporter of liquid natural gas in the Asia-Pacific region. The labor division of Brunei works out to about 48% government and services, 42% production of oil and gas and related services, and 10% agriculture and fishing. So essentially, as the price of oil goes, so goes the fortunes of Brunei.

The chief oil and gas production company in Brunei is Brunei Shell Petroleum, operated in a joint venture of equal shares between the Brunei Government and Shell oil. It also operates the country’s only refinery, with a distillation capacity of 10,000 barrels per day. Brunei’s natural gas is produced by the Brunei Liquefied Natural Gas plant, most of the output of which is sold to Japan.

The government of Brunei is so closely tied to the fortunes of the fossil fuels market that the citizens jokingly refer to their economic state as “Shellfare”, indicating that they are provided with welfare from the sale of oil. Citizens of Brunei pay neither personal nor corporate taxes, and get free education and medical services as well as subsidized food and housing. The country is basically considered wealthy and though it lacks a great deal of infrastructure, it’s citizens enjoy a relatively high standard of living.

As for the Sultan himself, he seems to be fun to live under. He built Jerudong Park, an amusement park larger than Hong Kong Disneyland, out of his own pocket and it’s free to visit and ride the rides. The Sultan himself collects cars – we’re talking anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000 cars, a collection totaling $4 billion USD. The car collection includes 500 Rolls-Royces, giving it a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records, and other notable cars in his collection include a Porsche Carrera GT, a Lamborghini Diablo Jota, a Porsche 959, a Bugatti EB110, a Lamborghini Murcielago LP640, a Maybach 62, a Jaguar XJR-15 and six Dauer 962’s.

Hassanal Bolkiah, 29th Sultan of Brunei, lives today with his three wives and twelve children at  his own palace, the Istana Nurul Iman, which holds the world’s record for the largest palace at 200,000 square meters of luxuriously furnished living space. If you’re in the neighborhood, do drop by for a visit, and be sure to ask him if he can give you a ride.

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