I don't see Gates as the great computer guy. I look at him as a ruthless evil genius that made Microsoft what it is. Of course that's partly because he's also a "great computer guy".
To make an analogy with Apple, if anything, his role at Microsoft was more like that of Steve Jobs, rather than that of Steve Wozniak; he provided the vision, he made the business calls that made Microsoft. Bill Gates does have a different style than Steve Jobs and doesn't have the same distortion field and attractiveness, but his speeches at Ted are great nonetheless (which makes me think he was bored at Microsoft :)).
This is a very interesting article. I am myself working on a project and considering good friends to be co-founders in that. But based on what Paul Allen is mentioning here and based on few other stories of startups which made it big like Facebook, few thoughts came to my mind:
1) Is it that to make it really big, to the likes of Microsoft, Facebook a founder has to play games and trick his own friends in a way that the founder owns majority of stake in the company. I am not necessarily saying it is bad, it is just a observation and want your opinion. It is totally possible that one of the co-founders is so passionate about the idea that he works hard by twice or thrice as much as other cofounder and in the process somehow manages to get hold of major equity. What do you think? Is it necessary to be evil to make it big? Does your passion blind you somewhere in the process where one cannot distinguish right from "not so much right"?
2) I dont see and havent heard about Steve Jobs being great friends with Steve Wozniak. So is Bill gates with Paul Allen. Facebook Mark Z and other cofounders have some fights between them too. Given this and stories from similar or smaller companies, it makes me think, is it possible to have a good and healthy friend ship like relationship with your co-founder after a period of time? Or with the turn of events in the company it is bound to happen that the relationship will go sour?
What do you guys think?
Another example: the beetles. Perhaps one of the greatest creative partnerships of all time, churning out two records a year for 7 years, and then were sick of each other and broke up.
To make an analogy with Apple, if anything, his role at Microsoft was more like that of Steve Jobs, rather than that of Steve Wozniak; he provided the vision, he made the business calls that made Microsoft. Bill Gates does have a different style than Steve Jobs and doesn't have the same distortion field and attractiveness, but his speeches at Ted are great nonetheless (which makes me think he was bored at Microsoft :)).