Bill Gates

William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate, software developer, and philanthropist. He is best known as the co-founder of Microsoft Corporation. 

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Bill Gates was a Harvard University dropout and he started a software company soon to become Microsoft by purchasing the software technology from someone for just US $50 back then.

 

During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), president and chief software architect, while also being the largest individual shareholder until May 2014. He is one of the best-known entrepreneurs and pioneers of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s.

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Since 1987, he has been included in the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest people. From 1995 to 2017, he held the Forbes title of the richest person in the world all but four of those years. In October 2017, he was surpassed by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who had an estimated net worth of US$90.6 billion compared to Gates's net worth of US$89.9 billion at the time. As of November 2020, Gates had an estimated net worth of US$113.7 billion, making him the third-wealthiest person in the world, behind Bezos and Elon Musk.