Bill Gates Recalls Entrepreneurship

Bill Gates wants to sell you $10 billion worth of software.

Maybe you don't understand what this means, and 10 billion dollars is what he estimates that the value of the small business software market will bring to Microsoft every year by 2010.

This helps to explain why Gates is optimistic these days, though people are beginning to complain that his products are susceptible to viruses and are not reliable.

I am very excited about what we are doing for small businesses.

Gates, with a red face and relaxed expression, said.

He received exclusive interview with DavidLidsky and DavidWhitford of FSB magazine at Microsoft new office in Manhattan.

Of course, we are also very excited.

Or we should be excited.

Microsoft plans to digitize all kinds of commercial services and deliver them through the Internet, so that small businesses see hope.

However, the first thing we need to know is whether the richest person in the world has forgotten where he came from.

Do you remember how you look like a small business man?

I'm not so confused.

I feel that one of the most interesting moments is when I know everyone in the business and basically do all the work on my own.

To write a lot of software, sales, accounting, tax and so on a lot of things that must be done, most of it was done by yourself.

What important things were there in the first place, you think they helped Microsoft to succeed?

We have three points that really help a lot.

One is our vision, which has not changed since the first day of the company.

Microsoft is one of Paul Alan [Microsoft founder] and my dream of what software can become. You can buy PC from different Hard Suits Inc, but they all run the same software.

This means a complete reorganization of the computer industry.

We understand that we are doing an important thing.

Our second key point is the people we hire.

We employ very smart and capable people.

We have had a misunderstanding that we used to think that "smart" is "omnipotent", because a small number of our initial employees are indeed omnipotent.

"Go to law, learn finance, learn to sell!

Well, I'll send you to Japan tomorrow, and tell me what's going on there. "

The subsequent results surprised us: many very capable people are very professional in terms of their abilities.

When we want them to enter the new field, they can not cope.

The next third point is that we do things in a long way.

We did not plan to go public and get rich.

No short-term thinking.

It is always a matter of decades. There is no shortcut. We belong to one step at a time.

When you realize that this thing can be bigger, is there any carp jumping over Longmen?

When IBM's PC came out, all of the design and software were made by us.

It took us a year and a half to finish this thing, which is very remarkable.

The weird thing is that you can never accurately measure how successful you are.

But you can see that other companies have succeeded in making a bet with you.

If you go to an event, a partner may say, "yes, I hired 20 people, thank you."

It really makes you unbelievable.

The idea behind many entrepreneurs is to succeed, cash in, and then create new things.

You could have taken this step long ago.

Why still insist?

When you start an enterprise, you have a goal.

For some people, it is a financial goal - there is nothing wrong with that.

For some people, the goal is that they want to create something special.

For Paul and me, the goal is to make computers a dream of enhancing the most effective tools of human capacity.

We didn't think we'd make a lot of money.

Of course, we did make a lot of money.

But we were cautious about how big the company could be.

Although PC was very inconspicuous at first, due to the magic of chips and software, we regard it as something that has great prospects for growth. It will become the basic tool to decide how information workers accomplish their work.

If we want to achieve this vision, it will not be plain sailing.

If we build a perfect personal computer, I will say, "Oh, what can I do next?"

But we haven't done that yet.

I am confident that we will be able to achieve most of our goals in the next ten years.

I think we are on the way to achieving our goals.

Do you expect your child to start your business as well?

I will be very neutral about what they choose to do.

But if they want to enter the technology industry, I will ask them a few times: do you really want to be my colleague because of a strange expectation there?

Maybe they end up doing something totally different.

If they choose to become doctors, or become artists, or start their own businesses, this is also good.

What I want them to do is to feel that they can take risks and feel secure. But, of course, it is not a safe foothold without going out and doing nothing.

This is very difficult to achieve a balance.

If you start an enterprise now, what kind of enterprise will it be?

If we say that the establishment of a large enterprise is very rare, it will take a very long time.

I think biotechnology is now a promising field for entrepreneurship.

Another area of great potential is to understand how information technology has made the world go global.

The labour market, which is essentially regional, is now becoming global.

This is frightening.

If people understand this situation and think like this, "so where is the best skilled person, how can I get them to work together", then this is also an opportunity for them.

That is to say, in the face of rapid changes, there will be opportunities.

What can Microsoft do for small businesses?

If we make our software simpler, the impact on small businesses may be greater than elsewhere.

Companies like DELL, FedEx and Staples have found ways to serve small businesses and are loved by customers.

Why do people not feel this way about Microsoft?

If you give people a list of company names and say, "which one do you admire most," Microsoft will take the lead again and again.

Do you think it's admiration or respect?

They are all.

All the surveys I have seen are among the best.

Now people are using our software every day.

They know that we can do better in terms of safety and simplification.

They expect to get more from us, which is a good thing.

I like this architecture.

They have great expectations and we still have a lot of things to do.

We need to have breakthroughs in order to motivate small businesses to take action and use the next generation of such software.

If we do make a breakthrough in this area, you can see that we can get a small license fee from every small business.

Although every family is a little bit, the number of small businesses is large enough to become a big business opportunity for us.