The rise of Bill Gates, from Harvard dropout to richest man in the world (MSFT)
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With a net worth of more than $87 billion, Bill Gates is still the richest person in the world.
It wasn't dumb luck that got him that spot – Gates is a smart, aggressive business mind who was never afraid to make enemies in his drive to take Microsoft to the top.
From Harvard dropout to an Albuquerque rental office to the top of the world, here's how Bill Gates turned Microsoft into a global force, and became a billionaire in the process.
William Henry Gates III was born in Seattle, Washington on October 28th, 1955, the son of a lawyer and a banking executive. Because of his suffix, his childhood nickname was "Trey."
APGates' parents were grooming him to be a lawyer. His parents enrolled him at the Lakeside School, a rigorous Seattle private high school that future Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen also attended.
But Lakeside is also where the course of Gates' life changed. In eighth grade, the Lakeside Mothers Club used cash from a rummage sale to give students access to a Teletype Model 30 computer hooked up to the General Electric mainframe. Gates fell in love with the idea of computers.
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