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: Bill Gates answered a host of questions at an event “Entrepreneurs to Icons’’ organised by The Indus Entrepreneurs in New Delhi. Excerpts from his responses on business, competition, entrepreneurship and leadership.
On intense competition
Every time a new company emerges, industry experts say now this will put you (Microsoft) out of business. But we respond by saying that - sorry, not this time. But we have to work a lot. When we started we had a mission of bringing a computer to every home, every desk. But, we are still far from achieving that goal. We are working towards it.
On free software and Google as competition
Google’s business model is not based on free software. Their business model is based on advertisements from which they make a lot of money. But they don’t give anything to you (consumers and investors). The whole search business is advertising oriented. Google keeps all of the money with itself. Their model is not going to hold. But we are happy that now there is a company who can challenge us. People may be undestimating Microsoft in the search business. Our search is better than Google’s. But sometimes, it’s good to be underestimated.
On why he started and stopped ESOPs
ESOPs (Employee Stock Options ) work well in the early years. But, if you get to a point where the industry is very hot, Esops get overvalued. Not only were the Esops valued too high, they were also fluctuating. We had to pass the risk of those market conditions. To protect from that, we’ve shifted our model. We’ve cut the variance down with predictability. We are now offering shares instead of share options.
On what gets him worried
What keeps me worried is if we miss some very big technical change. Press loves the new challenger. If someone invented AI (Artificial Intelligence) before we did, that would worry me. The key for a large company is to maintain willingness to take risks. We’ve got to be at the forefront of technology. Now it’s Google more than anybody else. We love the fact that there are areas where people are underestimating us.
On the next disruptive technology
The next generation disruptive technologies will be low cost computing, speech recognition software, a computer the size of a tablet which lets you do a variety of things. In future, software will work magic. Phones will be able to recognize your...
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