#401 How Bill Gates Works

Founders

David Senra

Steve Jobs, Founders, James Dyson, Company Builders, Technology, Henry Ford, Elon Musk, Business Professional Biography, How I Built This, The History Of Entrepreneurship, Jim Clark, Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurs, History, Founder, Business Autobiography, Jeff Bezos, Entrepreneur, Biography, Biographies Of Entrepreneurs, Biographies, Business, Business Biography

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 24 September 2025

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This episode is about Bill Gates' obsessive drive and hardcore work ethic. Bill Gates had the rarest entrepreneurial talent—the ability to see the leverage point in a new industry, seize it with relentless intensity, and *will* Microsoft into one of the most successful companies in human history. To make this episode I read Bill's new autobiography, Source Code: My Beginnings, and pulled ideas and notes from 4 more books about his singular career: Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World Episode sponsors: Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠⁠ Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. ⁠⁠⁠Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. ⁠⁠https://www.vanta.com/founders⁠⁠ ⁠Collateral⁠ transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil & gas companies, and all kinds of corporations. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. You can do that by going to ⁠https://collateral.com

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I want to start with a quote, by Bill Gates on Bill Gates.
0:03.6	And then I want to tell you this excellent Larry Ellison quote on Bill Gates that I found.
0:08.1	So first, this is Bill Gates on Bill Gates.
0:10.6	He says a key advantage I had was being fanatical.
0:14.1	That is taking all of my capabilities day and night and just focusing on how do you write good software.
0:20.3	I loved being a fanatic.
0:23.0	Eventually, I reveled in it. I didn't believe in weekends. I didn't believe in vacations.
0:28.7	For a lot of people, it wasn't an ideal place to work. We were pretty frantic and demanding.
0:35.4	And then here's the quote from Larry Ellison on Bill Gates. Keep in mind,
0:38.0	Larry Ellison and Bill Gates were very fierce competitors. This is what Larry Ellison said. Bill Gates is
0:42.9	one of the most remarkable business people I've ever met. Some people say Bill is the most brilliant guy
0:47.9	that they've ever met. There are a lot of really brilliant scientists in our business. Forgive me,
0:53.4	there are a lot of people in the world
0:54.5	smarter than Bill Gates. There are very few people in the world that have his focus and
1:00.1	endurance. Someone once said Bill wants people to think that he is Thomas Edison, when he is really
1:06.0	Rockefeller. If he was Edison, he would be less dangerous. He is utterly relentless. He is indefatigable. He is
1:15.5	absolutely focused and he wants it all. Barry Diller said he is young and he's mean and he's not
1:23.5	tired. That's a high compliment coming from Barry Diller. Bill is tough and he wants it all and I have
1:30.9	incredible respect for that man. So recently, Bill Gates just wrote an autobiography. It's called
1:36.8	Source Code. It covers his early childhood and his life up until founding Microsoft in a few
1:41.8	short years after that. And so originally this episode was just going to be about what I learned by reading
1:46.4	source code.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from David Senra, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of David Senra and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.