Bill Gates was born on October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington. Bill was an ambitious boy from childhood. He was very intelligent and fiercely competitive. Without a doubt, these qualities have played a role in where he is now. He was always good with mathematics and science. His father was an influential lawyer and his parents had planned a law career for him but as we all know, destiny had other plans.

He showed his interest when he was young. At school he wrote a program to play tic-tac-toe against a computer. He used the programming language called BASIC. Thus began his fascination with the world of computers. Gates was skilled in computers and even got banned from Computer Centre Corporation for exploiting bugs in the system and obtaining free computer time. His close friend and eventual business partner Paul Allen was banned along with him. After this ban, the four students offered to discover and eliminate bugs in return for computer time. As can be seen, Bill shared a true passion for his work and showed enterprise.

Seeing his proficiency, his school hired him to write a program to schedule students. He wrote the code such that he could be in the class with the most female students. At 17, Gates and his friend Paul Allen started a venture called Traf-O-Data. This program helped record and regulate traffic and it helped them earn around $20,000.

Graduating out of high school, he joined Harvard. Here he met Steve Ballmer, a future business partner. He was confused in college, just like a lot of other people. He chose pre-law, but he stuck with his love for computers. He would spend long hours in front of the computer all night and sleep in class next day. He stayed in constant touch with Paul Allen and they both got jobs in Honeywell. Finally he decided to drop out of college and start his own firm.

This firm was Microsoft, started with the vision “A computer on every desk and Microsoft software on every computer”. Bill Gates has since achieved remarkable success. He is the richest man on earth and his company has achieved goals and set benchmarks for other companies time and again. Bill Gates was an ordinary man who believed in the power of intelligence and hard work.

He pursued his dream and never gave up. His story shows us perseverance is the difference between success and failure, that any person can become great and achieve success with hard work and perseverance.