At a recent event hosted by the founders of Village Global, one of its most important investors, Bill Gates, spoke about the difficult decisions required almost daily to create a thriving business.
Eventbrite founding advisor Julia Hartz asked Bill Gates his thoughts on work-life balance. The question came after Gates said he “don’t really believe in vacations.”
His answer, in short:
No, not in the early years of a company, and especially not if that company is building software platforms. As Gates told Hartz, “there are very big sacrifices to be made during those early years, especially if you’re trying to do some technical stuff.”
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 their entire conversation below, but here is Gates' full response translated from English:
The truth is, I didn't believe in weekends. I didn't believe in vacations...
...once I entered my 30s, I couldn't imagine that I would enjoy weekends. And, you know, my girlfriend loved vacations. And that 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 those first few years, you have a team made up of workaholics, for your company….
…but yes, I have a pretty strong opinion 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 world of software, and especially platforms, the winner takes all the markets. So you know, my biggest mistake ever was the mismanagement that kept Microsoft from being what Android is today, [meaning Android is a standard non-Apple phone form platform.] Microsoft had to win that.
It's truly a winner-take-all situation here. ...there was room for an operating system that wasn't owned by Apple, and what was that worth? $400 billion that could have been transferred from G Company [Google] to M Company [Microsoft].
Watch the video
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