One smart genius move that made Bill gates a Billionaire.
🔥 Great question — and while Bill Gates made many smart moves, there's one genius decision that truly changed everything and put him on the path to becoming a billionaire:
💡 The Genius Move: Licensing MS-DOS to IBM Without Giving Up Ownership
📜 The Story in a Nutshell:
In 1980, IBM was building its first personal computer. They needed an operating system (OS).
IBM approached Microsoft (a small company then) — but Microsoft didn’t even have an OS at the time!
So what did Gates do?
🧠 Bill Gates’ Genius Play:
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He didn’t sell the OS — he licensed it.
👉 This meant Microsoft kept the rights to it and could license it to others later too. -
He got the OS (QDOS) from another company (Seattle Computer Products), tweaked it, and called it MS-DOS.
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He delivered MS-DOS to IBM, who bundled it with their PCs.
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As IBM PCs exploded in popularity, MS-DOS became the default OS — and Microsoft got paid every time.
💰 The Impact:
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Microsoft wasn’t just tied to IBM — it became the OS supplier to the entire PC market.
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This deal made Microsoft the standard, and eventually led to Windows, which dominated the world for decades.
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Bill Gates became a billionaire by 1987, just a year after Microsoft went public.
🎯 Why it was genius:
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Most would’ve sold the software for a one-time payment.
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Gates understood the long-term value of software licensing.
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He combined business vision + tech execution, which is rare.
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