I strongly recommend this book.

While it is easy to get caught up in what Apple, Google, and Facebook have been doing of late, we should not forget that it was companies like Microsoft and visionaries like Bill Gates and Paul Allen that truly changed society and brought to our lives (work and recreation) the personal computer.

The first 60% of this book is all about the founding of Microsoft and Allen’s partnership with Gates. It is a very detailed account of how Allen and Gates got started and launched their company through about 1983, when Allen left Microsoft (how they got the ball rolling with developing BASIC for new microprocessors, how they got into the OS business, etc.). The relationship between these two icons is fascinating as is Allen’s play-by-play of the dawn of the computer age.

Even though I skimmed most of the remaining 40% of the book, where Allen talks about his life/adventures after Microsoft, I learned a lot from the first 200 pages – both regarding the power of hard work and taking risks and facts I didn’t know like the importance of Ed Roberts, who truly brought to market the first PC, the Altair 8800.

Give it a go.....