At a recent event hosted by its founders companys Village Global, one of its most important investors, Bill Gates, spoke about the difficult decisions required almost daily to create a thriving business.
The founding counselor of Eventbrite Julia Hartz asked Bill Gates for his thoughts on the balance between work and personal life. The question came when Gates said, "I do not really believe in the holidays."
His answer, briefly:
No, not in the early years of the company and especially not if the company builds software platforms. As Gates told Hartz, "great sacrifices must be made during these early years, especially if you are trying to do some technical things."
In fact, Gates still blames himself for allowing Google to develop Android, a “standard non-Apple phone form platform”, as he describes it.
"It was natural for Microsoft to win."
You can find the whole conversation below, but here is Gates's full English translation:
The truth is that I did not believe in the weekends. I did not believe in the holidays….
…once I entered my 30s, I couldn't imagine liking the weekends. And, you know, my girlfriend liked the vacation. And this ended up becoming a habit. Now I take a lot of vacations. My old self would definitely be disgusted by my current self.
But yes, it's nice if during these first years, you have a team of workaholics for your company….
Or yes, I have a pretty tough view that very big sacrifices should be made during the early years, especially if you are trying to do some technical things that need to be implemented immediately.
You know, in the software world, and especially in platforms, it's winner take all markets. So you know my biggest mistake ever is being mean management that made Microsoft not what Android is today, [meaning Android is a standard non-Apple phone form platform. Microsoft had to win this one.
It really does matter here that the winner gets it all. …there was space for an operating system that did not belong to Apple, and what was it worth? $ 400 billion that could be transferred from G [Google] to M [Microsoft].
Watch the video
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