I believe it'll get increasingly popular,

and we're doing some neat, new things

to take advantage of that.

When you have the level of success that we've had,

when you have a business that's important as this

with this many competitors,

you're going to have people saying some nasty things.

The lives all over the world should be

treated with the same value that we treat lives

here in the rich world.

If you ask people across the United States,

"Is the future going to be better than the past?",

most say no.

- He's an American entrepreneur,

author, investor, and philanthropist.

In 1975, he co-founded Microsoft which went on to become

the world's largest PC software company.

He's currently the richest person in the world

with an estimated net worth of $84 billion dollars.

He's Bill Gates, and here's my take on

his top 10 rules for success, volume two.

Rule number two is my personal favorite,

and stick around all the way to the end

for a special bonus clip.

As always, as Bill is talking,

if he says something that really resonates with you,

please leave it in the comments below

and put quotes around it

so other people can be inspired as well.

Enjoy.

(inspirational music)

- You really have to believe

the Internet's going to be mainstream,

a lot of people are going to get out there and use it,

and that they're going to be willing

to pay for some content.

- [Charlie] Is that the operating idea that you have?

- Each of these businesses

is an entrepreneurial business.

The overreaching theme is that yes,

I believe in the Internet.

I believe it'll get increasingly popular,

and we're doing some neat, new things

to take advantage of that.

- You've got a lot of cash on hand.

Yes?

- Right.

- [Charlie] All right (laughing).

It puts you in an enviable position.

You can experiment with a lot of entrepreneurial ideas

and see what sticks and what flies.

- We're in business to make money.

- [Charlie] The other thing is providing

such a cash flow for you.

- [Bill] Well, it all belongs to the shareholders.

- [Charlie] Yes.

- We're not dilettantes.

- [Charlie] No, I know.

- We are business people, and

it is true that if you find an idea

that requires three or four years

of improvement and patience and really sticking with it

that we're very good at that.

Take Windows, which we bet our company on.

Everybody who doubted that would succeed,

IBM did not support us in that.

It took longer than we expected,

over four years before finally

graphical interface got popular

and now people take it for granted.

It's part of every personal computer,

and you just expect it to be there.

That was one of the grand successes of the company.

In the same way we're betting on the Internet,

that our tools there will be popular

and that a few of these content plays

that we've decided to get involved in,

that the scale and the users

will make those into great businesses.

Well, certainly every product we do

is absolutely as capable as it can possibly be.

There's no holding back.

The people at Microsoft

come into work everyday

building the best products they can,

and they're very proud.

Go into schools and see how kids are using this stuff.

Go and ask people about how their jobs have changed

because of the personal computer.

- [Interviewer] Sure.

- We're sitting there listening to our customers

saying how they'd like to make things better.

We do absolutely our best job.

In fact, that's why we've been successful.

Anybody who holds back in this business

isn't going to be around for long because

this is a business where you always have to be

moving at a very rapid pace.

- You have, for years, ever since you were a little boy,

I hear, have been called a nerd.

Do you care?

Does it hurt you?

- Well, nerd means a lot of things.

I'm somebody who can

sit and read a book about science for hours on end.

I don't mind being labeled as somebody

who finds that interesting.

- [Barbara] There is hardly a day

in which something is not written about Microsoft.

It has become almost a frenzy.

You are being called the evil empire.

Forget being called a nerd.

You are now being called arrogant, greedy, the Devil.

You've read all this stuff

or heard that this has been said.

What do you say about all of this?

- Well, it's a very competitive business.

- That's all?

- [Bill] Oh no, absolutely.

When you have the level of success that we've had,

when you have a business that's important as this

with this many competitors,

you're going to have people saying some nasty things.

You have to learn a little bit

not to take it too personally.

- You went to Harvard and you dropped out.

Have you ever thought how your life could be better off

if you had gotten your Harvard degree?

- [Bill] Well, I'm a weird dropout

because I take college courses all the time.

I love learning company courses and things,

so I love being a student.

There were smart people around.

They fed you.

They gave you these nice grades that made you feel smart.

I feel it was unfortunate

that I didn't get to stay there

but I don't think I missed any knowledge because

whatever I needed to learn

I was still in a learning mode.

People who have been successful are often,

not always, pretty fanatical about

the thing they're trying to do.

I remember one industry panel

where there were about seven people and the debate was

would the computer interface be this character-mode thing

or would be it be graphic user interface?

At the time, the graphic user interface stuff was so slow

it was laughable.

Writing software for it was so bad.

It was Windows 1.0.

The people on the panel were saying, "No, no.

"This is kind of a stupid thing."

I would say, "No, believe me.

"This'll be great."

One of the guys on the panel said,

"Hey, Bill is wrong,

"but Bill works harder than the rest of us.

"Even though it's the wrong solution,

"he's likely to succeed."

That was the best compliment I ever had.

Just by working day and night,

I could send the industry in some direction.

I was fanatical in that period of time, that is,

I didn't believe in vacation.

I didn't believe in weekends.

It turned out that worked for me that

we got our company going at a speed

that allowed it to make mistakes faster

than other people were and kind of see those mistakes.

- [Charlie] Do you worry about Linux as a competition

for operating systems?

- [Bill] Yes.

We've competed against various forms

of Unix over the years,

and Linux is growing in popularity

and definitely a competitor.

- How threatening a competitor?

- It's a competitor we take very seriously.

I think, you know, part of Microsoft's success

is that we don't underestimate

the importance of the work that other companies are doing.

We look out.

We think, "Are there aspects of that that are

"best practices?"

For example, online supports

and the community things that are done

around Linux are done very well.

We're thinking about it and making sure that our innovation

will make sure that our value and our leadership

stays in front.

First I met Warren.

We were talking about getting together and doing

something again.

He pulled out his calendar,

and the pages were so blank.

I said, "Wow,

"you've managed to avoid getting tied in

"to a lot of kind of meaningless activity."

Warren said, "Yeah, you have to be good at saying no

"and picking the things that really make a difference."

That's one of many things I've learned from Warren,

but that's one of my favorites

so I can blame it on him whenever I'm turning things down.

- You have made

a significant contribution

in the fight against AIDS in Africa.

You have funded, to a large degree,

vaccines and vaccine research.

Give me a sense of where that's directed

and what success you think

we're making and your own particular interest

in public health in the world.

- Well, this is a real passion for me.

- [Charlie] I know.

- I'll give a succinct answer.

People, I think, don't have a full awareness

how four billion of the six billion people on this planet

don't have basic health needs met.

The death rate of infants,

the epidemic infectious diseases

that are just a way of life in most of the world

don't exist in the developed world,

yet the research isn't going on

for the medicines that would get rid of these diseases.

Even diseases like tuberculosis,

where for a few hundred dollars lives can be saved,

that's not being done.

Vaccines aren't being moved

from the rich world to the poor world.

AIDS is the most extreme where

the prevention measures that could prevent this

from becoming a huge epidemic

in countries like India and Nigeria

and many countries where it's not

in huge percentages today.

- [Charlie] It hasn't reached the proportions of Africa.

- [Bill] The right things, I think,

are not being prioritized.

The foundation that my wife and I have

have taken as its top priority

these world health issues,

the research, getting the vaccines out.

It's been fascinating to learn about this

and to try to say that all these lives,

the lives all over the world,

should be treated with the same value

that we treat lives here in the rich world.

- [Charlie] Just to sum up in a sense,

what you have learned

from your own involvement,

from funding it in terms of

more money than had ever been applied,

is that it can make a difference.

- Absolutely.

Millions of lives

can be and should be saved through these efforts.

We can make a difference,

and we can encourage others to get involved.