The book tries to find out the keys of Bill Gates enormous success during the last 30 years. Des points out eleven secrets of his success:
- Be in the right place at the right time
- Fall in love with the technology
- Take no prisoners
- Hire very smart people
- Learn to survive
- Don’t expect any thanks
- Assume the visionary position
- Cover all the bases
- Build a byte-sized business
- Never, ever, take your eye off the ball
- Know when it’s time to move on
He elaborates every topic in a separate article and gives detailed explanation covered with anecdotes and quotes from Bill.
My essence of the book is — you have to work hard for success and then luck comes to you as well. Sometimes it is missed, that Bill worked more or less 24h a day, was seeing holiday as weakness and finally being on holiday read books, you probably wouldn’t like to read, if you study biology to make your living later on.
… and I like some quotes, which are still (or even) relevant today:
“[,,] every successful business requires three people: a dreamer, a business man and a son of a bitch [..]”
“We’ve always said that, given our long-term approach, this business will definitely go through cycles. There will be ups and downs.”
“We are always telling analysts: Don’t recommend our stock. We sell software, not stock. Lower your earnings estimate, be more conservative. It’s not a long-term approach to promote the stock in any way”
… guess we can still learn from this
