" Creating Wealth "

  Bill Gates Investments

2010: Bill Gates is No.1 with $54 billion, For the 17th year in a row, Bill Gates has been named as the richest person in world. He is having diversify investment in Stocks, Bonds, Investment company etc, Its almost like a mutual fund. The Microsoft Corp. founder’s wealth was estimated at $54 billion, up from $40 billion in 2009. The collective net worth of the 400 billionaires rose by 8% this year, to $1.37 trillion. Wealth rose for 217 members of the list, while 85 saw a decline. With a fortune estimated at $45 billion Warren Buffett, remained No. 2 on the list. On Forbes’ list of the 400 richest Americans, Software tycoon Larry Ellison was in third place and Wal-Mart heir Christy Walton was fourth.

2009:Despite losing $18 billion in the past year, Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates reclaimed the title of richest man in the world, with a total net worth of $40 billion for 2009.

Warren Buffett is No. 2, with $37 billion.

Second Half 2008:$57 Billion, Microsoft founder is back in business, After market meltdown, He is world richest man  again, estimated wealth valued at $57 Billion, Billionaires like Warren Buffet wealth is currently valued at $50 Billion, Six month ago Warren Buffet net worth was over $62 Billion. Berkshire Hathway have fallen 15% since  Feb, Buffet no longer the World's richest man. Its easy to get best affiliate program to generate high payout than maintaining No.1 position even for a year.

First Half 2008:$58 Billion: Harvard dropout and Microsoft visionary no longer the world's richest man.Blame Yahoo, Microsoft shares have fallen 15% since the company boldly attempted to merge with the  search engine giant to better fight Google for Internet dominance. Gates is preparing to give up  day-to-day involvement in the company he cofounded 33 years ago to spend more time focused on his  philanthropic endeavors.

 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has $38.7 billion in assets, donates to causes  aimed at bringing financial tools to the poor, speeding up the development of vaccines (for AIDS, malaria,  tuberculosis), bettering America's lagging high schools. Sells 20 million Microsoft shares every quarter,  proceeds going to private investment vehicle Cascade; more than half of net worth now outside of  Microsoft. Company spent $6 billion to land Web ad firm Aquantive last May. Would-be rival to Apple's  iPod, the Zune, not yet a hit. Believes Microsoft's far-flung bets, including 10-year affair with internet  based television, may soon pay off; says next 10 years will be the "most interesting" in software  history.

  

2007 NW : 59 Billion Dollars

After numerous delays, Microsoft visionary released latest operating system, Vista, in January. Last June announced his retirement from company he cofounded 31 years ago. The Harvard dropout who promised "a computer on every desk and in every home" now focusing time and talents on tackling diseases (hepatitis B, AIDS, malaria) in Africa, boosting America's lackluster high school graduation rate and helping women abroad start small businesses. This summer bridge buddy Warren Buffett pledged majority of his Berkshire Hathaway stock to Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation over the next 20 years, potentially doubling foundation's endowment. Looks like he is tired of being world's richest man again & again.
Source: Forbes

"Fans need to know facts"

Interesting facts of Bill Gates


Birth date: October 28, 1955

Education: Public elementary school. Entered private Lakeside School at age 12. Dropped out of Harvard Univ ersity junior year.

 

Native City: Seattle, Washington

Little known fact: His family called him "Trey," in reference to the III after his name.

Hobbies: Bridge, golf, reading, philanthropy.

Claim to fame: Leader of the computing software's industry.

Net worth: Bill's all-time high net worth is $88.82 Billion. Visit Bill Gates Net Worth Page.

Preferred foods: Cherry Coke and spray cheese

Annoying traits: Compulsive rocking, glasses that won't stay perched on bridge of his nose.

Family: wife, Melinda; daughter, Jennifer, born 1996; son, Rory, born 1999. 

  Bill Gates Wealth index

•   earns approx 6 Billion Dollars in a year or
•   earns approx  500 Million Dollars in a month or
•   earns approx 16,660,000 Dollars in a day or
•   earns approx  14614 Dollars a minute or
•   earns approx  243 Dollars a second.

History Of William Henry "Bill" Gates III

Bill Gates was the founder and first chairmen of Microsoft:

Bill Gates came from a family of entrepreneurship and high-spirited liveliness. William Henry Gates III was born in Seattle, Washington on October 28th, 1955. His father, William H. Gates II, is a Seattle attorney. His late mother, Mary Gates, was a schoolteacher, University of Washington regent, and chairwoman of United Way International.

It was during the spring term of 1968, at Lakeside Prep School that Bill Gates first used a computer. Though computers were still too expensive to buy, the school held a fundraiser and acquired computer time on a DEC PDP-10 owned by General Electric. This cost them several thousand dollars but the school expected this to last them a whole year. However the schools did not count on the enthusiasm of several young students.


He, Paul Allen and several other students (of which many became Microsoft programmers) became addicted to the computer, spending all day and all night writing programs and reading all the material they could get their hands on. Soon this began to take its toll on their education. Homework was being handed in late, classes were being skipped and all the schools computer time was used up in a few weeks.


In autumn 1968, the Computer Centre Corporation opened in Seattle, offering computer time at good rates. A deal was soon struck between Lakeside Prep School and the Computer Centre Corporation that allowed the
school to continue to provide computer time for their students.He and his friends wasted no time in exploring

the new machine and soon started causing problems. They caused the system to crash several times and broke the security system. They even got banned for several weeks after changing into the file that recorded how much computer time they were using and altered it. In late 1968 the Lakeside programming group was formed consisting of him, Paul and two other students from Lakeside Prep School. They wanted to apply their new computer skills to the real world. They got this chance when the Computer Centre Corporation struck a deal with them. In exchange for unlimited computer time, He and his friends searched the computer for bugs and weaknesses in the system. "It was when we got free time at C-Cubed (Computer Centre Corporation) that we really got into computers. I mean, they I became addict. It was day and night,". The Computer Centre Corporation went out of business in March 1970. The Lakeside programmers now need a new source of computer time. Their next chance came from Information Sciences Inc. who hired them to create a payroll program. In exchange for this they would be given free computer time and royalties from the software, giving in them a source of income for the first time. Traf-O-Data was his and Allen's next project creating software to help measure traffic flow. They earned Wealth of approximately $20,000 from the company in total, which latest untill he left for college. In the autumn of 1973, He started university at Harvard. However like at Lakeside Pre, his heart was not in his studies. In 1975 he dropped out of Harvard and Microsoft was formed. William (Bill) H. Gates is chairman of Microsoft Corporation, the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. Microsoft had revenues of US$44.28 billion for the fiscal year ending June 2006, and employs more than 71,000 people in 103 countries and regions. On June 15, 2006, Microsoft announced that effective July 2008 he will transition out of a day-to-day role in the company to spend more time on his global health and education work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. After July 2008 he will continue to serve as Microsoft’s chairman and an advisor on key development projects. The two-year transition process is to ensure that there is a smooth and orderly transfer of his daily responsibilities. Effective June 2006, Ray Ozzie has assumed his previous title as chief software architect and is working side by side with him on all technical architecture and product oversight responsibilities at Microsoft. Craig Mundie has assumed the new title of chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft and is working closely with him to assume his responsibility for the company’s research and incubation efforts. Born on Oct. 28, 1955, He grew up in Seattle with his two sisters. Their father, William H. Gates II, is a Seattle attorney. Their late mother, Mary Gates, was a school teacher, University of Washington regent, and chairwoman of United Way International. He attended public elementary school and the private Lakeside School. There, he discovered his interest in software and began programming computers at age 13. In 1973, He entered Harvard University as a freshman, where he lived down the hall from Steve Ballmer, now Microsoft's chief executive officer. While at Harvard, Gates developed a version of the programming language BASIC for the first microcomputer - the MITS Altair. In his junior year, He left Harvard to devote his energies to Microsoft, a company he had begun in 1975 with his childhood friend Paul Allen. Guided by a belief that the computer would be a valuable tool on every office desktop and in every home, they began developing software for personal computers. He foresight and his vision for personal computing have been central to the success of Microsoft and the software industry. Under his leadership, Microsoft's mission has been to continually advance and improve software technology, and to make it easier, more cost-effective and more enjoyable for people to use computers. The company is committed to a long-term view, reflected in its investment of approximately $6.2 billion on research and development in the 2005 fiscal year. In 1999, He wrote Business @ the Speed of Thought, a book that shows how computer technology can solve business problems in fundamentally new ways. The book was published in 25 languages and is available in more than 60 countries. Business @ the Speed of Thought has received wide critical acclaim, and was listed on the best-seller lists of the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and Amazon.com. His previous book, The Road Ahead, published in 1995, held the No. 1 spot on the New York Times' bestseller list for seven weeks. He has donated the proceeds of both books to non-profit organizations that support the use of technology in education and skills development. In addition to his love of computers and software, He founded Corbis, which is developing one of the world's largest resources of visual information - a comprehensive digital archive of art and photography from public and private collections around the globe. He is also a member of the board of directors of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which invests in companies engaged in diverse business activities.

Philanthropy is also important to him. He and his wife, Melinda, have endowed a foundation with more than

$28.8 billion (as of January 2005) to support philanthropic initiatives in the areas of global health and learning, with the hope that in the 21st century, advances in these critical areas will be available for all people. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has committed more than $3.6 billion to organizations working in global health; more than $2 billion to improve learning opportunities, including the his Library Initiative to bring computers, Internet Access and training to public libraries in low-income communities in the United States and Canada; more than $477 million to community projects in the Pacific Northwest; and more than $488 million to special projects and annual giving campaigns. He was married on Jan. 1, 1994, to Melinda French Gates. They have three children.He is an avid reader, and enjoys playing golf and bridge.

Failure is a stepping stone to success

Failure is a stepping stone to success

The first time you tried to walk, you fell down. If you’re like me, the first time you tried to swim, you almost drowned. You’ve already failed many times, although you may not remember.

Did you hit a baseball the first time you swung that bat? The best baseball players, the ones with .300 averages, failed 70 percent of the time.

Every baseball fan knows that Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs, but they probably won’t be able to tell that he struck out 1,330 times. R.H. May failed in seven different business endeavors before his store in New York caught on. English Novelist John Creasy got 753 rejection slips before he published his 564 books. Jonas Salk worked for fifteen years before he found vaccine for polio. That was fifteen of continuous failure for one success.

The next time I feel like quitting, I remember this story.

At age 22 he failed in business. At age 23, he ran for state legislature and lost. At age 24 he failed in business again. At age 26, his sweetheart died and he was broken-hearted. At age 27, he had a nervous breakdown; he eventually regained his health running for Congress at age 34, and was defeated. At age 39, he ran for Congress again, and lost gain. At age 46, he ran for senate and lost. His ticket lost when he ran for vice-president at age 47. At age 49, he ran for senate again, and was defeated. At age 51, he ran and was elected to the Office of President of the United States. His name was Abraham Lincoln.

Some of the world’s greatest pioneers – people whose ideas and achievements propelled towards progress and civilization – were failures themselves. Perhaps the most prominent example of our times is Bill Gates, founder of the computer titan Microsoft. Gates, a Harvard dropout, is now among the world’s foremost billionaire and industry leaders.

Just make up your mind that if you try anything worthwhile, you will fail at first. Learn something and try again.

The Prophet Muhammad (saw) was compelled to quit Makkah and stayed at Madinah – the city that took its place in history of the spreading of Islam with lightning speed. Now, look at the benefit to mankind. He had to struggle against tremendous odds for a third of his lifetime. He had difficulty even to convince close family members and friends. He was vilified in Makkah, chased out in Taif, and had to escape to Madinah his enemies wanted to kill him. He lost and won battles, was seriously wounded and was betrayed by some of his own followers. But we know he succeeded. He succeeded because of his tenacity and his patience. He did not just pray for divine help but for 23 long years, he worked hard and when he died as all mortals must die. He had set Islam on such a firm footing that 1.3 billion people still adhere to Islam.

Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal was imprisoned, severely tortured and flogged, yet he emerged triumphant becoming the Imaam of the Sunnah.

Imam ibn Taymiyyah was put into prison; he came out even more accomplished scholar. Imam As-Sarakshi was kept as a prisoner at the bottom of a deserted well and he managed therein to produce twenty volumes on Islamic jurisprudence.

Success and failure have the root – the desire to achieve but avoiding failure is not the same as achieving success. Failure is determined by what you allow to happen, success what you make happen.

There will be a plenty of times when we’ll face the death of our dreams. When failures, disappiontments, and criticisms come, we need the will and faith to keep going. We learn far more from our failures than our successes because failures show what doesn’t work. So failure is just one step closer to ultimate successes.

5 Secrets for Turning Failure Into Success

Success Hinges on Your Failures

 

What if, starting today, the word 'no' didn't stop you anymore?
What if every time you heard the word no, you became stronger, more powerful, and more resilient?
What if the greatest success strategy in the world was not to go for yes, but to go for no?
Well, it is.
The word 'no' doesn't have to debilitate you. In fact, it can empower you to achieve a whole new level of greatness you never dreamed possible. You might think this is just a sales strategy. It is a sales strategy. But it's a life philosophy too.
Whether we define ourselves as salespeople or not, we are all engaged in the sales process. We all must overcome fears of failure and rejection to be successful and achieve what we want.
Here are my top five secrets to help you turn failure into success immediately!

1) Change your mental model of "success" and "failure".

Most people operate with the following mental model:
SUCCESS ⇔ YOU ⇔ FAILURE
They see themselves in the middle, with success on one end and failure on the other. They do everything they can to move toward success and away from failure. But, what if you reconfigured that model?
YOU ⇒ FAILURE ⇒ SUCCESS
Instead of viewing failure as something to be avoided, turn it into a "stepping-stone" on the path to success and gratification. In other words: Success is the destination. Failure is how you get there.
To achieve significant success in today's world, failure is not just a possibility. It's a requirement. We must see success and failure for what they truly are. They're not opposites, but instead opposite sides of the same coin.

2) Intentionally increase your failure rate.

If it's true that the more we fail, the more we succeed (and it is), then your immediate goal should be to intentionally increase your failure rate! With this thought in mind, you're succeeding even when you fail. Yes, this is a counter-intuitive, reverse thinking philosophy. But trust me, it works!
Intentionally increasing failure is the basis for the "Go for No" concept. "Go for No" means the more people tell you "no," the closer you will get to ultimate success. In other words, the more people telling you "no" now, the more people will say "yes" in the long term. If they actually counted the number of times they hear "no" during a typical day or week, most people would be shocked to see how low the number actually is. Go ahead and try it!

3) Set "No" goals.

Everyone sets success goals. But how about setting goals for the number of times we fail? For example, rather than a salesperson setting the goal of having two prospects say "yes" to them, they set the goal of being rejected (hearing "no") 10 times. Imagine the first two prospects they called on said, "Yes!" Rather than being done (having hit their "yes" goal), they'd actually be behind because they still have 10 "no's" to go!
The other exciting aspect of this strategy is how it keeps people "in the game" when they're "red hot." If all you have is yes goals and then you slow down (or quit) when you're successful, the hot streak ends. But if you keep going when the yeses of life are falling at your feet, the sky is the limit!

4) Celebrate your failures, not just your successes.

It's natural to be excited about our successes. Yes, you want to celebrate them. Yes, you want to give yourself a reward or even throw a party.
But, if the key to success is to increase our failures, then it only makes sense to celebrate our set backs as well. Yes, you heard right: if someone turns you down, celebrate it!
When is the last time you rewarded yourself for failing? Probably never! Instead of mentally punishing yourself for not succeeding, buy yourself an ice cream cone and say, "I'm one step closer to success!" Stop letting failure have the negative hold it has on your thoughts and emotions.

5) See courage as a "muscle".

If failure is a vehicle that can take you to success, then courage is the fuel! Courage is a muscle. And, like any muscle, you must develop and strengthen it with lots of exercise.
As the saying goes: Use it, or lose it. It's no different with courage. Use and develop your "courage muscle" by looking fear in the eye and taking action anyway. Each time you take action, the courage muscle gets stronger.
When you don't, it atrophies. And before you know it your courage is gone. But it doesn't have to be this way. All the courage you could ever want or need to achieve every goal you have is already in you, just waiting for you to take action.
So, change your mental models, intentionally increase your failure rate, set "no" goals, celebrate your failures and see courage as a muscle, and you'll significantly increase your success rate in six months guaranteed. Remember, this strategy is not just a sales strategy. It is not just for businesses. It's for every aspect of your personal and professional lives.

Thoughts on ‘Learning from failure or success’

Several weeks ago Mark Gould blogged about whether we learned better from instances of failure or instances of success. The post is interesting and I suggest you give it a read.
I don’t have any specific comments on what Mark has written beyond saying that I mostly agree with what he wrote; instead I would like to share some  thoughts stemming from my own experience and views.
Bottom line, I’m of the view that failure is a better source of learning than success. Here’s an example which typifies my position.

Mrs. Knowledgethoughts and I are expecting our first child. As part of the process, every old wives’ tale and theory comes out of the woodwork. One of my favourites is that the severeness of morning sickness is indicative of the baby’s sex. The thinking goes that if there is morning sickness the child is more likely to be a girl, if there isn’t, a boy. A quick squiz on various baby forums shows this theory to be false and also shows cognitive fallacy at play.

“It’s true for me, so it must be true”

Which works for about two posts until contrary evidence is presented.

Correlation does not imply causation, and learning only from success often stems from correlation, the same type of learning that led us into the credit crisis (these CDSs make money now so they must do so in the future). It is just as easy to find examples of failure should you only look so far, and a single instance of failure proves the theory incorrect. Success can attributed to any number of variables, and that attribution may or may not be correct. Failure forces us to confront our Cognitive Bias, our tendency to make errors in judgement based upon cognitive factors. Failure forces an adjustment of our mental model.
Our adjustments won’t necessarily be correct, but in the process we have gained two valuable pieces of knowledge:

• our mental model is not correct… yet; and
• our understanding of the situation is not perfect

The first is obviously important, because you are required to either alter your view or bury your head in the sand. Should you chose the former, you will be better off in the future. Lawyers engage in this type of thinking whenever they construct an argument. Rather than accept raw ideas, they examine ideas for flaws, seeing how they stand up to changes in circumstance.
The second point is even more important because it shocks us into the unavoidable conclusion that our belief was mistaken and that future beliefs may also be incorrect and will require more rigorous conception.
I’ll close this post by sharing an example from my programming past:

When writing software, my first pass at coding is full of holes and flaws. I usually focus on implementing the perfect scenario. The user types the right thing, hits the right button and gets the right answer.

Perfect, but all I really know is that my software can handle correct input. I could run the software 100 times and get a right answer, but I haven’t learned anything about what’s wrong with it.

Fortunately I know from hundreds of previous bugs that my limited success is insufficient, and set about seeing how my system copes with unexpected inputs; users entering dates in the wrong format, missing out fields or clicking “submit” 50 times. The system will then fail time after time after time, whereby I refine the code (the model) and over time it becomes more robust, a process only becomes possible by intentionally seeking failure.

Ever come across a piece of software that didn’t work?
Don’t you wish the developer responsible had failed just one more time?