In 2024, Bill Gates can count Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and founder of Meta Marc Zuckerberg among his friends. However, during his formative years, the Microsoft co-founder struggled to fit in with his peers and clashed with his parents before ultimately dropping out of Harvard University.
Gates, now 68also revealed that he was almost kicked out of college and will share more of the “hardest parts” of his youth in a new memoir to be released next year.
Gates announced the autobiography, “Source Code,” on his blog this week, and it will be available February 4, 2025.
“I have been in the public eye since my early 20s, but much of my life before then is not well known,” Gates wrote on the site. announcement message.
“Over the years, I have often been asked about my education, my time at Harvard, and co-founding the company. These questions made me realize that people might be interested in my journey and the factors that influenced it.
The book, he adds, will cover his “maladjusted” early years as a child, his “rebellious” teenage phase when he “clashed” with his parents and “the sudden loss of a loved one”.
“Throughout this book, you will also discover the stories of many people who believed in me, pushed me to grow, and helped me. turn my quirks into strengths“Gates continued.
“And I think about how lucky I was being born into a large family at a time of historic technological change and optimism, and coming of age just as the personal computer revolution was taking off.
Bill’s best friend
Although Gates doesn’t specify who the person he lost at a young age is, the father of three has previously opened up about losing his best friend in an accident when he was 17.
Kent Evans was Gates’ first business partner when the duo were in 8th grade. The two began working in a school’s computer lab programming payroll for a local business.
In Netflix special “Inside Bill’s Brain” released in 2019, Gates revealed that he still knows Evans’ phone number by heart.
It was Kent who was the first to “get” Gates to read Fortune magazine, man worth $152 billion recalled, adding: “If you entered the civil service, what did you gain? Should we be CEOs? What kind of impact could you have? Should we be generals? Should we become ambassadors?
Gates adds that Evans was the “best student in class” and that they would have continued to work together and attend college together if Evans had not died in a mountaineering accident.
“It was so unexpected, so unusual. People didn’t know what to say to me or Kent’s parents,” Gates continues. “I kind of thought, OK, now I’m going to do these things that Kent and I talked about, but I’m going to do it without Kent.”
Days at the lake
Although the memoir’s synopsis on pre-sale sites promises that the book will detail “the story of (Gates’) principled grandmother and ambitious parents,” it commits to telling the story of how Gates went from “midnight escapades” in a computer lab to creating Microsoft.
Yet there is a well-known connection between the two, linking Gates’ childhood successes to the Big Tech giant he later built. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
Allen, although a few years older than Gates, formed a strong friendship with the entrepreneur while studying at Lakeside School in Seattle.
After working with Gates and Evans on the payment system algorithm, Allen then worked with Gates on digitizing their school’s scheduling system.
A year ago, I wrote about LinkedInGates gave some insight – which will surely be expanded upon in the book – into what school meant to him.
In 2023, he wrote: “I am grateful to the school and its teachers for everything they have given me, including the opportunity to learn computers and programming at a young age.
“Looking back, it’s amazing how much my experience there shaped my future.”
