Bill gates family background

On October 28, 1955, Gates was born in Seattle, Washington. He grew up in an upper-middle
class family with his older sister, Kristianne, and younger sister, Libby. William Gates Sr.,
their father, was a promising law student when he met his future wife, Mary Maxwell. She
was an athletic, outgoing student at the University of Washington, actively involved in
student affairs and leadership.

His mother, Mary, spent the majority of her time working with children, civic affairs and
charities after a brief career as a teacher. Additionally, she served on the boards of several
corporations, including the First Interstate Bank in Seattle (founded by her grandfather), the
United Way, and International Business Machines (IBM). When she volunteered in schools
and community organizations, Gates would often accompany her. (127 Words)

Education

Gates enrolled at Lakeside School when he turned 13. Besides excelling in math and science,
he also excelled in drama and English. At Lakeside School, a Seattle computer company
provided students with computer time. From proceeds of the school's rummage sale, the
Mother's Club purchased a teletype terminal for use by students. Gates spent much of his free
time working on a terminal after he became fascinated by what computers could do. He wrote
a tic-tac-toe program in BASIC computer language that allowed users to play against the
computer. In the fall of 1973, Gates enrolled at Harvard University thinking that he would be
a lawyer. In 1975, Gates dropped out of college to pursue his business, Microsoft, with
partner Allen. Instead of attending classes, he spent more time in computer labs. He did not
really have a study regimen; he got by on a few hours of sleep, crammed for a test, and
passed with a reasonable grade. (115 Words)

Gates and Allen founded Microsoft in 1975, mixing the words "microcomputer" and
"software" (they dropped the hyphen within a year). BASIC software for the Altair computer
was the company's first product.

It wasn't a smooth ride at first. Microsoft's BASIC software program for the Altair computer
was making the company a fee and royalties, but it wasn't covering their overhead.
Approximately ten percent of the people who used BASIC on the Altair computer actually
paid for it, according to Gates' later account.
 Microsoft's BASIC software was popular among computer hobbyists, who obtained
pre-market copies and reproduced and distributed them for free. Many computer enthusiasts
were not interested in money at this time. The ease of reproduction and distribution allowed
them to share software with their friends and fellow computer enthusiasts. But Gates had a
different opinion. He considered the free distribution of software to be a form of theft,
especially if it involved software that was intended for sale.

Gates wrote an open letter in February 1976 urging computer hobbyists to stop pirating
software; he argued that pirating software discourages developers from investing time and
money into high-quality software. The letter was unpopular with computer enthusiasts, but
Gates stuck to his beliefs and would use the threat of innovation as a defense in court when
accused of unfair business practices.

It was often acrimonious between Gates and MITS president Ed Roberts. Gates and Roberts
were combative over software development and the direction of the company. Roberts
thought Gates was spoiled and obnoxious.

In 1977, Roberts sold MITS to another computer company and went back to Georgia to enter
medical school and become a doctor.

Allen and Gates were on their own. They sued the new owner of MITS to retain the software
rights they developed for Altair. Microsoft wrote software in different formats for other
computer companies, and Gates moved the company's operations east of Seattle, to Bellevue,
Washington, in 1979.

Having returned home to the Pacific Northwest, Gates threw himself into his work. All 25
employees of the young company were responsible for various aspects of operations, product
development, business development, and marketing.
Microsoft started out on shaky ground, but by 1979 had gross revenues of approximately $2.5
million. Gates took the helm of the company at the age of 23. As CEO, he led the company
and served as its spokesperson with his expertise in software development and keen business
sense. Gates reviewed every line of code the company shipped, rewriting code whenever
necessary. (487 word)

STEVE JOBS

EARLY LIFE

Steven Paul Jobs was an American inventor, designer and entrepreneur who was the
co-founder, chief executive and chairman of Apple Computer. Apple's revolutionary
products, which include the iPod, iPhone and iPad, are now seen as dictating the evolution of
modern technology.

Born in 1955 to two University of Wisconsin graduate students who gave him up for
adoption, Jobs was smart but directionless, dropping out of college and experimenting with
different pursuits before co-founding Apple with Steve Wozniak in 1976. Jobs left the
company in 1985, launching Pixar Animation Studios, then returned to Apple more than a
decade later. Jobs died in 2011 following a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California. He lived with his adoptive
family in Mountain View, California, within the area that would later become known as
Silicon Valley.

As a boy, Jobs and his father worked on electronics in the family garage. Paul showed his son
how to take apart and reconstruct electronics, a hobby that instilled confidence, tenacity and
mechanical prowess in young Jobs.
 Steve Jobs’ Education and College

While Jobs was always an intelligent and innovative thinker, his youth was riddled with
frustrations over formal schooling. Jobs was a prankster in elementary school due to
boredom, and his fourth-grade teacher needed to bribe him to study. Jobs tested so well,
however, that administrators wanted to skip him ahead to high school — a proposal that his
parents declined.

Steve Jobs’ Parents and Adoption

Joanne Schieble (later Joanne Simpson) and Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, two University of
Wisconsin graduate students, gave birth to Jobs. They adopted their son without naming him.

Jandali was Jobs' father, a Syrian professor of political science. His mother was a speech
therapist. Soon after Jobs was adopted, his biological parents married and had another child,
Mona Simpson. It wasn't until Jobs was 27 that he discovered who his biological parents
were.

Clara and Paul Jobs adopted Jobs as an infant and named him Steven Paul Jobs. Paul was a
Coast Guard veteran and a machinist, while Clara was an accountant. (110 words)

Steve Jobs’ Education and College

Jobs was a creative and innovative thinker, but he struggled with formal schooling in his
youth. In elementary school, Jobs was a prankster due to boredom, and his fourth-grade
teacher had to bribe him to study. Jobs tested so well, however, that administrators wanted to
skip him ahead to high school — a proposal that his parents declined.

Jobs attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, after graduating from high school. After six
months, he dropped out of college and spent the next 18 months taking creative classes at the
school. His love of typography was sparked by a course in calligraphy.
 Jobs joined Atari in 1974 as a video game designer. He left the company a few months later
to find spiritual enlightenment in India, traveling further and experimenting with psychedelic
drugs. (125 words)

Here are the 10 major achievements of Steve Jobs including his contribution to the field of
computer and technology; and as an entrepreneur.

#1 HE CO-FOUNDED A COMPANY NAMED APPLE ALONG WITH STEVE

WOZNIAC
Steve Jobs occasionally met with former high school friend Steve Wozniac, who worked at
Hewett Packard (HP). Jobs learned his friend was developing his own computer logic board
during this time and suggested that they start a business together selling it. Soon after, HP
formally rejected Wozniac's design. Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniac, and Ronald Wayne founded
Apple Computer in the garage of Jobs's Los Altos home in April 1976. The primary objective
of the company was to sell Wozniac's designed machine, Apple I. The machine was little
more than a circuit board, and the initial business funds came from selling Jobs's Volkswagen
minibus and Wozniak's programmable calculator.

#2 HE DELIVERED THE FIRST COMMERCIALLY SUCCESSFUL PERSONAL

COMPUTER
Apple II was a significant technological leap over its predecessor when it was released in
1977. Jobs and Wozniac sold about 175 Apple Is in the previous year but the Apple II was the
first consumer product to be sold by Apple Computer. Jobs convinced Mike Markkula
(former Intel product marketing manager) to invest $60,000 in the company. The first Apple
II was sold on the 10th of June, 1977, and it would continue to be sold for 17 years. Apple
sold close to 6 million Apple II models by 1993, including 1.25 million Apple II GS models.
As a result of this phenomenal success, Apple II series home computers are considered one of
the first mass-produced microcomputers.

#4 HE WAS AWARDED OVER 450 PATENTS AS HE REVOLUTIONIZED SIX MAJOR

INDUSTRIES
Steve Jobs' ability to visualize, conceptualize, and deliver groundbreaking products through
his team and companies took the world by surprise. During his lifetime of work as a creative
entrepreneur he focused on the “look and feel“ of his products and aspired for perfection in
design. He was awarded close to 450 patents ranging from computers, touch based interfaces,
keyboards, portables to staircases, clasps and sleeves. Along the way he revolutionized six
industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing and digital
publishing.
 #5 HE WAS BEHIND THE SUCCESSFUL ANIMATION STUDIO PIXAR
After leaving Apple in 1985 due to differences with the company’s CEO John Sculley, Jobs
launched NeXT Inc. with $7 million. Although known for their engineering design, NeXT
computers were not competing well with less costly alternatives from companies like Sun
Microsystems. In 1986, Jobs put in another $10 million as an investment in the spin–out of
The Graphics Group from Lucasfilm’s computer graphics division. This would later be
renamed as Pixar. The idea was to leverage NeXT computing technology as a powerful
rendering option for computer graphics. Although Steve had envisioned Pixar to develop
graphics-rendering hardware and software, the business eventually evolved into an animation
studio. The company, in collaboration with Disney, began churning out a string of hit
computer-animated blockbuster films including Toy Story (1995), Toy Story 2 (1999), A
Bugs Life (1998), Monsters Inc. (2001), Finding Nemo (2003) and The Incredibles (2004).
Twenty years later his $10 million investment would yield him $7.4 billion and a place in
Disney’s board of directors as the largest individual shareholder in return for Pixar merging
with Disney.
(530 words)

Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett demonstrated keen business abilities at a young age. He formed Buffett
Partnership Ltd. in 1956, and by 1965 he had assumed control of Berkshire Hathaway.
Overseeing the growth of a conglomerate with holdings in the media, insurance, energy and
food and beverage industries, Buffett became one of the world's richest men and a celebrated
philanthropist.

Early Life
Warren Edward Buffett was born on August 30, 1930, in Omaha, Nebraska. Buffett's father,
Howard, worked as a stockbroker and served as a U.S. congressman. His mother, Leila Stahl
Buffett, was a homemaker. Buffett was the second of three children and the only boy. He
demonstrated a knack for financial and business matters early in his childhood: Friends and
acquaintances have said the young boy was a mathematical prodigy who could add large
columns of numbers in his head, a talent he occasionally demonstrated in his later years. (130
words)

Education
Buffett enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania at the age of 16 to study business. He
stayed two years, moved to the University of Nebraska to finish up his degree, and emerged
from college at age 20 with nearly $10,000 from his childhood businesses.In 1951 he
received his master's degree in economics at Columbia University, where he studied under
economist Benjamin Graham and furthered his education at the New York Institute of
Finance.
 Influenced by Graham's 1949 book, The Intelligent Investor, Buffett sold securities for
Buffett-Falk & Company for three years, before working for his mentor for two years as an
analyst at Graham-Newman Corp. (105 words)

In June 2006 Buffett made an announcement that he would be giving his entire fortune away
to charity, committing 85 percent of it to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This
donation became the largest act of charitable giving in United States history. In 2010 Buffett
and Gates announced they had formed The Giving Pledge campaign to recruit more wealthy
individuals for philanthropic causes. In 2012 Buffett disclosed that he had been diagnosed
with prostate cancer. He began undergoing radiation treatment in July, and successfully
completed his treatment in November. The health scare did little to slow the octogenarian,
who annually ranks near the top of the Forbes world billionaires list. In February 2013
Buffett purchased H. J. Heinz with private equity group 3G Capital for $28 billion. Later
additions to the Berkshire Hathaway stable included battery maker Duracell and Kraft Foods
Group, which merged with Heinz in 2015 to form the third-largest food and beverage
company in North America.
In 2016 Buffett launched Drive2Vote, a website aimed at encouraging people in his Nebraska
community to exercise their right to vote, as well as to assist in registering and driving voters
to a polling location if they needed a ride.
A vocal supporter of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, whom he’d endorsed
in 2015, Buffett also challenged the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, to meet and share
their tax returns. "I will meet him in Omaha or Mar-a-Lago or, he can pick the place, anytime
between now and election, he said at an August 1 rally in Omaha. "I'll bring my return, he'll
bring his return. We're both under audit. And believe me, nobody's going to stop us from
talking about what's on those returns." Trump did not accept the offer, though his refusal to
share his returns ultimately did not prevent his election to the presidency in 2016.
In May 2017 Buffett revealed that he had begun selling some of the approximately 81 million
shares he owned in IBM stock, noting that he did not value the company as highly as he did
six years earlier. Following another sale in the third quarter, his stake in the company dropped
to about 37 million shares. On the flip side, he increased his investment in Apple by 3 percent
and became Bank of America's largest shareholder by exercising warrants for 700 million
shares. Early the following year, he added more Apple shares to make it Berkshire
Hathaway's largest common stock investment.
Between 2006 and 2017, Buffett gave away close to $28 billion in charity, according to a
report by USA Today. (495 words)

Jeff Bezos

Entrepreneur and e-commerce pioneer Jeff Bezos is the founder and CEO of the e-commerce
company Amazon, owner of The Washington Post and founder of the space exploration
company Blue Origin. His successful business ventures have made him one of the richest
people in the world. Born in 1964 in New Mexico, Bezos had an early love of computers and
studied computer science and electrical engineering at Princeton University. After graduation,
he worked on Wall Street, and in 1990 he became the youngest senior vice president at the
investment firm D.E. Shaw. Four years later, Bezos quit his lucrative job to open
Amazon.com, an online bookstore that became one of the Internet's biggest success stories. In
2013, Bezos purchased The Washington Post, and in 2017 Amazon acquired Whole Foods. In
February 2021, Amazon announced that Bezos will step down as CEO in the third quarter of
the year. (125 words)

Early Life and Education

Bezos was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to a teenage mother,
Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen, and his biological father, Ted Jorgensen. The Jorgensens were
married less than a year. When Bezos was 4 years old, his mother remarried Mike Bezos, a
Cuban immigrant.Bezos graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1986 with
a degree in computer science and electrical engineering.Bezos showed an early interest in
how things work, turning his parents' garage into a laboratory and rigging electrical
contraptions around his house as a child.He moved to Miami with his family as a teenager,
where he developed a love for computers and graduated valedictorian of his high school. It
was during high school that he started his first business, the Dream Institute, an educational
summer camp for fourth, fifth and sixth graders. (139 words)

Career

After graduating from Princeton, Bezos found work at several firms on Wall Street, including
Fitel, Bankers Trust and the investment firm D.E. Shaw. In 1990, Bezos became D.E. Shaw's
youngest vice president. While his career in finance was extremely lucrative, Bezos chose to
make a risky move into the nascent world of e-commerce. He quit his job in 1994, moved to
Seattle and targeted the untapped potential of the Internet market by opening an online
bookstore.Bezos opened Amazon.com, named after the meandering South American river, on
July 16, 1995, after asking 300 friends to beta test his site. In the months leading up to
launch, a few employees began developing software with Bezos in his garage; they
eventually expanded operations into a two-bedroom house equipped with three Sun
Microstations.The initial success of the company was meteoric. With no press promotion,
Amazon.com sold books across the United States and in 45 foreign countries within 30 days.
In two months, sales reached $20,000 a week, growing faster than Bezos and his startup team
had envisioned. Amazon.com went public in 1997, leading many market analysts to question
whether the company could hold its own when traditional retailers launched their own
e-commerce sites. Two years later, the start-up not only kept up, but also outpaced
competitors, becoming an e-commerce leader.Bezos continued to diversify Amazon’s
offerings with the sale of CDs and videos in 1998, and later clothes, electronics, toys and
more through major retail partnerships. While many dot.coms of the early '90s went bust,
Amazon flourished with yearly sales that jumped from $510,000 in 1995 to over $17 billion
in 2011.As part of Bezos' 2018 annual shareholder letter, the media tycoon said the company
had surpassed 100 million paid subscribers for Amazon Prime. By September 2018, Amazon
was valued at more than $1 trillion, the second company to ever hit that record just a few
weeks after Apple. At the end of 2018, Amazon announced it was raising the minimum wage
for its workers to $15 per hour. The company has still been criticized for its working
conditions and grueling pace, with workers protesting during Prime Day in July 2019.In
2006, Amazon.com launched its video-on-demand service. Initially known as Amazon
Unbox on TiVo, it was eventually rebranded as Amazon Instant Video.Bezos premiered
several original programs with the launch of Amazon Studios in 2013. The company hit it big
in 2014 with the critically-acclaimed Transparent and Mozart in the Jungle. The company
produced and released its first original feature film, Spike Lee's Chi-Raq, In 2015.In 2016,
Bezos stepped in front of the camera for a cameo appearance playing an alien in Star Trek
Beyond. A Star Trek fan since childhood, Bezos is listed as a Starfleet Official in the movie
credits on IMDb.In early 2018, The Seattle Times reported that Amazon had consolidated its
consumer retail operations in order to focus on growing areas including digital entertainment
and Alexa, Amazon's virtual assistant. (495)

Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg co-founded the social-networking website Facebook out of his college
dorm room at Harvard University. Zuckerberg left college after his sophomore year to
concentrate on the site, the user base of which has grown to more than two billion people,
making Zuckerberg a billionaire many times over. The birth of Facebook was portrayed in the
2010 film The Social Network.

Early Life

Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984, in White Plains, New York, into a comfortable,
well-educated family. He was raised in the nearby village of Dobbs Ferry.

Zuckerberg’s father, Edward Zuckerberg, ran a dental practice attached to the family's home.
His mother, Karen, worked as a psychiatrist before the birth of the couple's four children —
Mark, Randi, Donna and Arielle. Zuckerberg developed an interest in computers at an early
age; when he was about 12, he used Atari BASIC to create a messaging program he named
"Zucknet." His father used the program in his dental office, so that the receptionist could
inform him of a new patient without yelling across the room. The family also used Zucknet to
communicate within the house.Together with his friends, he also created computer games just
for fun. "I had a bunch of friends who were artists," he said. "They'd come over, draw stuff,
and I'd build a game out of it."

Mark Zuckerberg’s Education

To keep up with Zuckerberg's burgeoning interest in computers, his parents hired private
computer tutor David Newman to come to the house once a week and work with Zuckerberg.
Newman later told reporters that it was hard to stay ahead of the prodigy, who began taking
graduate courses at nearby Mercy College around this same time.

Zuckerberg later studied at Phillips Exeter Academy, an exclusive preparatory school in New
Hampshire. There he showed talent in fencing, becoming the captain of the school's team. He
also excelled in literature, earning a diploma in classics.

Yet Zuckerberg remained fascinated by computers and continued to work on developing new
programs. While still in high school, he created an early version of the music software
Pandora, which he called Synapse.

Several companies—including AOL and Microsoft—expressed an interest in buying the

software, and hiring the teenager before graduation. He declined the offers. (135 words)

Mark Zuckerberg and Founding Facebook

Zuckerberg and his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin created
The Facebook, a site that allowed users to create their own profiles, upload photos, and
communicate with other users. The group ran the site out of a dorm room at Harvard
University until June 2004.
 That year Zuckerberg dropped out of college and moved the company to Palo Alto,
California. By the end of 2004, Facebook had 1 million users.

In 2005, Zuckerberg's enterprise received a huge boost from the venture capital firm Accel
Partners. Accel invested $12.7 million into the network, which at the time was open only to
Ivy League students.

Zuckerberg's company then granted access to other colleges, high school and international
schools, pushing the site's membership to more than 5.5 million users by December 2005.
The site began attracting the interest of other companies that wanted to advertise with the
popular social hub.

Not wanting to sell out, Zuckerberg turned down offers from companies such as Yahoo! and
MTV Networks. Instead, he focused on expanding the site, opening up his project to outside
developers and adding more features.

Personal Wealth

The negative PR around the 2016 election and Cambridge Analytica scandal seemingly did
little to slow the company's progress: Facebook saw its stock close at a record $203.23 on
July 6, 2018. The surge bumped Zuckerberg past Berkshire Hathaway chief Warren Buffett to
become the world's third-richest person, behind fellow tech titans Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates.

Any gains were wiped out when Facebook shares dropped a staggering 19 percent on July 26,
following an earnings report that revealed a failure to meet revenue expectations and slowing
user growth. Nearly $16 billion of Zuckerberg's personal fortune was erased in one day.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Donations and Philanthropic Causes

Since amassing his sizeable fortune, Zuckerberg has used his millions to fund a variety of
philanthropic causes. The most notable examples came in September 2010, when he donated
$100 million to save the failing Newark Public Schools system in New Jersey.

Then, in December 2010, Zuckerberg signed the "Giving Pledge", promising to donate at
least 50 percent of his wealth to charity over the course of his lifetime. Other Giving Pledge
members include Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and George Lucas. After his donation,
Zuckerberg called on other young, wealthy entrepreneurs to follow suit.

"With a generation of younger folks who have thrived on the success of their companies,
there is a big opportunity for many of us to give back earlier in our lifetime and see the
impact of our philanthropic efforts," he said.
 In November 2015, Zuckerberg and his wife also pledged in an open letter to their daughter
that they would give 99 percent of their Facebook shares to charity.

"We are committed to doing our small part to help create this world for all children," the
couple wrote in the open letter that was posted on Zuckerberg's Facebook page. "We will give
99% of our Facebook shares — currently about $45 billion — during our lives to join many
others in improving this world for the next generation."

In September 2016, Zuckerberg and Chan announced that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
(CZI), the company into which they put their Facebook shares, would invest at least $3
billion into scientific research over the next decade to help “cure, prevent and manage all
diseases in our children's lifetime." Renowned neuroscientist Cori Bargmann of The
Rockefeller University, was named the president of science at CZI. (550 words)