June 30, 2019
Bill Gates on Advice For Founders, Mistakes, and Philanthropy – Venture Stories
Check out the Venture Stories Podcast Page
Key Takeaways
- Advice to founders on work-life balance:
- It’s important during the early years of your company that you have a team consisting of people who have chosen to be maniacal about their work
- “I have a hardcore view that there be a very large sacrifice made in those early years, particularly if you’re trying to do some engineering work”
- The U.S. has the highest dropout rates among high school and college students compared to every other country in the world
- Global poverty is decreasing, but it’s becoming increasingly concentrated in Africa
- In the future, AI will be your portal to the world (largely replacing social networking, search, productivity applications, going to Amazon and buying something, etc.)
- It’ll be like your personal agent
- We haven’t yet solved the problem for how we get a low-cost education for low-income students (that they actually complete)
- Most community colleges have a >50% dropout rate
- Most 4-year colleges have a >30% dropout rate
Books Mentioned
- Bill’s 2019 summer reading list includes:
- Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
- Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved by Kate Bowler
- Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
- Origin Story: A Big History of Everything by David Christian
- Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling
- Julia highly recommends this one
- One of the key points discussed – be a “possibilist”, not an optimist
- Bill is also a fan of Steven Pinker’s writing, specifically The Better Angels of Our Nature
Intro
- Village Global is an early stage venture capital firm backed by many successful entrepreneurs, including Bill Gates
- Host – Julia Hartz, the co-founder and CEO of Eventbrite
- Bill Gates is the founder of Microsoft
On Microsoft
- It was financed mostly by money Bill made in high school
- (Besides a 5% investment at an early valuation of $20 million)
- Bill says one of the most crucial hires early on was that of Steve Ballmer
Work-Life Balance
- Bill has said that in the early days of Microsoft, in his 20s and 30s, he really didn’t do much else besides work (even on weekends)
- He didn’t take any vacations
- What would we he say to early stage founders today about work-life balance?
- It’s important during the early years of your company that you have a team consisting of people who have chosen to be maniacal about their work
- “I have a hardcore view that there be a very large sacrifice made in those early years, particularly if you’re trying to do some engineering work”
- Many markets are “winner-take-all” in the software world
- “The greatest mistake ever is whatever mismanagement I engaged in that caused Microsoft not to be what Android is [the standard non-Apple phone platform]… that was a natural thing for Microsoft to win”
- Small differences magnify themselves over time – so it’s really important to work at it
If Bill were in his 20s again, what kind of company would he start?
- Probably something that has to do with AI
- “The big question for anyone who’s ever written a piece of software is, “What’s the software that’s controlling a human?”
- Think – how can a human play chess, engage in social activities, create art, etc.
- Expanded – He’d spend a lot of time trying to create software that can do the equivalent of what a human can do
- “The big question for anyone who’s ever written a piece of software is, “What’s the software that’s controlling a human?”
- Or perhaps something related to biology (specifically, trying to eliminate diseases of the poor/infectious diseases)
- Disease like typhoid and rhinovirus
- Or energy (related to solving climate change)
The Evolution of Entrepreneurship
- Over the course of Bill’s career, a real “founder ecosystem” has started to develop
- It’s much easier to meet other people facing the same challenges of running a company
- “There’s all these people who want to hand you money now”
- It’s much easier to move fast, invest, and scale – but because of this, intense competition is present
- Entrepreneurship has really gotten to be much more of an understood field
A Quick Blurb on Education
- The U.S. has the highest dropout rates among high school and college students compared to every country in the world
- The U.S. has more students entering higher-education than any other country, but 12 countries currently graduate more students
Reading
- Bill’s 2019 summer reading list includes:
- Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
- Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved by Kate Bowler
- Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
- Origin Story: A Big History of Everything by David Christian
- Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling
- Julia highly recommends this one
- One of the key points discussed – be a “possibilist”, not an optimist
- Bill notes from the book – “The people least aware of the improvements in the world are professors at U.S. universities”
- Bill only started reading a lot once he hit 30s
- “I read a TON of science”
- Bill is also a fan of Steven Pinker’s writing, specifically The Better Angels of Our Nature
- “The world is improving in all these unbelievable ways and the human characteristic is to look at where it’s not improving”
- “I do worry that if you don’t get a lot of people thinking about this… people won’t work together. The really hard problems – solving climate change, not having big pandemics, or not having big wars – those are all things that require countries to work together. There really are no super big problems that don’t require countries to work together.”
- “The world is improving in all these unbelievable ways and the human characteristic is to look at where it’s not improving”
Global Poverty is Decreasing But is Becoming Increasingly Concentrated
- In 1990, 36% of of the world lived on $1.90 or less per day
- Today – this number is 9% (which is mostly concentrated in Africa – by 2050, 90% of the extreme poor will live in Africa)
- To bring this number down – we need investments in health, education, and governance (specifically in Africa)
- “Until you get a certain quality of governance, you can’t get roads, you can’t get electricity, you can’t get schools, and you can’t get basic healthcare”
The Future of Education
- With the rise of online learning (with platforms like Khan Academy) pressure is starting to rise against the traditional university model
- Places like Stanford don’t have to worry due to a surplus of philanthropy and science grants
- In fact, they’ll (along with Harvard/MIT) probably start contributing more and more material towards online education (expanding things like MIT OpenCourseWare)
- But state level schools are really at risk (where the vast majority of college education is completed)
- Tuition for state schools tend to range from $11k-17/year, and it’s only rising
- But realize – “The number of students who can learn without a social setting around them is very, very small”
- (Currently)
- And the group that does the worst with online learning is low-income students – they hit dead ends much quicker
- Places like Stanford don’t have to worry due to a surplus of philanthropy and science grants
- “We haven’t yet solved the problem for how we get a low-cost education for low-income students (that they actually complete”
- Most community colleges have a > 50% dropout rate
- Most 4-year colleges have a >30% dropout rate
What’s the unsolved problem, which could be solved with tech, that Bill would like to see someone tackle?
- There’s currently nothing that matches a great 1-on-1 tutor to a student ready to learn
- The bodies and brains of ~40% of kids in poor countries don’t fully develop
- During their early years, disease and nutrition characteristics are such that they tend to have IQs < 80
- “If we can solve the nutrition thing – that’s gigantic in terms of human potential”
What’s going to be the business model of the “Microsoft for AI”?
- In the future, AI will be your portal to the world (largely replacing social networking, search, productivity applications, going to Amazon and buying something, etc.)
- It’ll be like your personal agent, giving in to see all your information, being the sole platform you interface with
- Therefore, this type of AI has the opportunity to combine many different elements – advertising, subscription, etc.
- Why advertising? – There are win-win situations where your desire to know about a new product type is beneficial to you and the advertiser
Who’s been instrumental to Bill’s success?
- “No founder can change the world alone, it requires a village around you to help you realize your full potential” – Julia
- Warren Buffet, who Bill has gotten to become friends with over the last 30 years
- Warren doesn’t involve himself much with the tech world and therefore has a good outside observer’s prospective
- One lesson Bill has learned from him – work should be fun! (work is so fun for Warren, that he works 6 days a week at 88-years-old)
