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Accidental Zillionaire: Demystifying Paul Allen, The
by Laura Rich
Author attempts to pull Paul Allen out of the shadows.
The co-founder of Microsoft along with Bill Gates, Paul Allen, has come a long way. He now owns the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers and the NFL's Seattle Seahawks; and is a principal investor in Stephen Spielberg's Dreamworks SKG film production company. He owns a 300-ft. yacht (which is only one of many), a number of planes, houses around the world, and was reported to be worth $20.4 billion as of May 2002 – all because he had “a keen interest in the possibilities of technology and a fervent belief in pursuing dreams, no matter how far-fetched they seemed.”
He's always had big aspirations, but little notoriety.
Author Laura Rich sets out to remedy the latter in The Accidental Zillionaire, but when all is said and done, she – and he – fall somewhat short of that goal; which is the contention that Mr. Allen was more than just “Bill Gates' partner.”
Popular historians have thus far been content with leaving Mr. Allen languishing in Mr. Gates' shadow, characterized as a lucky nerd who happened to be in the right place at the right time, although Ms. Rich questions whether this is his rightful place.
And she makes some good points. For instance, Mr. Allen scored higher than Mr. Gates on their college entrance exams – but the question remains – was he smart or savvy?
And which is worth more when it comes to the bottom line?
As a child, allergies kept Mr. Allen indoors, so he read a lot, and watched and talked sports with his father. The rest of the time, he busied himself by taking things apart and putting them back together.
Noticing their son's intellectual potential, the Allens endeavored to enroll him in a prestigious private school. But not wanting to leave his friends at the public school he attended, the young Mr. Allen planned to fail the private school entrance exam, “Except,” as he later said, “when I started taking it, I thought it was pretty interesting,” and he couldn't help passing it with flying colors.
And it was there that he met Bill Gates. The two weren't exactly fast friends, since Mr. Gates, as Ms. Rich notes, was “short, scrawny, and his voice squeaked when he spoke, which was often, loudly, and arrogantly.”
But then one day in 1975, headlines jumped out at Allen touting the “World's First Microcomputer” that was within the consumer's financial reach – the Altair 8800 – and he had to not only share his enthusiasm with Mr. Gates, but convince him they were about to miss out on the technology revolution.
He succeeded, and the pair set about developing an operating system for the Altair 8800.
Obviously, they succeeded, and although Mr. Gates is most-often cited as the orchestrator of the success that followed, Mr. Allen also played an important role. The developer of the Altair, Ed Roberts, says, “Paul was much more important to MITS [the company that developed the Altair], because Gates was hard to deal with. He assumed everyone was stupid, but Paul would listen to what was being said.”
The relationship between Mr. Allen and Mr. Gates was, and would be, volatile and explosive, characterized by screaming and shouting, and sometimes Allen would have to walk out to cool down – sometimes not reporting for work for days afterward.
One of their legendary disputes occurred when Allen and a couple of coworkers left work at Microsoft to go see the first space shuttle launch in 1981, as a deadline loomed to provide IBM with an operating system for its hardware entrance into the PC market.
Gates was still bitter about it 15 years after the fact.
In 1982, Mr. Allen noticed a strange lump on his neck but thought nothing of it, even though he began to feel ill. When he finally sought medical attention, he learned he had Hodgkin's disease. Suddenly, his priorities in life changed and he was no longer prepared to dedicate himself to the long hours that were mandatory at Microsoft, preferring to spend more time with his family while travelling extensively.
But he moved through the critical early stages of the disease, which virtually ensured him a good long-term prognosis, and then in 1986 when Microsoft went public, he found the Microsoft shares he had accumulated over the years were suddenly worth $134 million.
He returned to his passion – developing software – but in the end, Mr. Allen seems to take his rightful place in history, in line behind Gates. The software companies he started after leaving Microsoft largely failed because they were feature-heavy, making the applications slow and impractical; and because he lacked Gates' business savvy.
And yet when the final page is turned, it's hard to feel sorry for Allen because he has the best of both worlds – he has incredible wealth thanks to the dividends he continues to earn from his Microsoft shares, but not the celebrity that usually accompanies such wealth, allowing him to lead a normal life.
Title: Accidental Zillionaire: Demystifying Paul Allen, The
Author: Laura Rich
Publisher: Wiley
ISBN: 0471234915
Review written by: Marc Duane Anderson
Reviewer's Rating:8
Reader's Rating: 1.00
Reader's Votes: 1
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