Hisham Sarwar
The world’s second richest man, co-founder of Microsoft and philanthropist Bill Gates worked weekends and did not take any vacations in the early days of Microsoft. He says it was all part of the sacrifice he made in setting up his company and become successful.
At an event, last week with other business leaders, Gates chatted to Eventbrite co-founder and CEO Julia Hartz about founding a company and his worth ethic when he was young and energetic and how his early, hard efforts in the 20s helped set up the tone for his company.
It really is true that I didn’t believe in weekends; I didn’t believe in vacations, said Gates, reported by TechCrunch.
“I knew everybody’s license plate so I could tell you over the last month when their car had come and gone from the parking lot.”
Gates also said that he somewhat was relaxed in his 30s but has no regret for his early sacrifices of working so hard and not taking time off from the work. Gates believes, very large sacrifices should be made especially in early years at work, particularly if you do some engineering things that you have to get the feasibility.
People can “over worship and mythologize the idea of working extremely hard,” and that he would not emphasize this as the only method to get your business off to a flyer and he would not recommend it for everyone.
In the same interview with Eventbrite’s Hartz, Gates also talked about his greatest ever mistake, Not going for Android. He also said that his failure to foresee the future and not to launch a competitor to Apple’s iOS operating system was about a $400 billion judgment error.
