Today, I will be sharing with you some strategic business advice and quotes from Bill Gates. But before we dive into the famous Bill Gates quotes; let’s have a quick look at his bio.
Short Bio of Bill Gates: Bill Gates is the founder of Microsoft corporation; the largest software company in the world and at the time of writing this article, he is the richest man in the world. Bill Gates has held the coveted position of the world’s richest man more than 12 consecutive years and he’s not letting go of that position. His wealth have crossed the $100billion mark; peaking at an all time high of $101billion.
Bill Gates is number one on our list of the richest school drop out billionaires; having dropped out of Harvard to start Microsoft. Though he has faced massive media attack and several anti-trust lawsuits; Bill Gates is best known for his quiet, unpretentious nature and huge donations to Charity. Below are Bill Gates business quotes and advice to young entrepreneurs.
50 Famous Bill Gates Quotes + Strategic Business Advice for Entrepreneurs
1. “We were young, but we had good advice good ideas and lots of enthusiasm.”
2. “Our success has really been based on partnerships from the very beginning.”
3. ” This is a fantastic time to be entering the business world because business is going to change in the next ten years than it has in the last fifty years.”
4. “The most meaningful way to differentiate your company from your competitors, the best way to put distance between you and the crowd is to do an outstanding job with information. How you gather, manage and use information will determine whether you win or lose.”
5. “A bad strategy will fail no matter how good your information is and lame execution will stymie a good strategy. If you do enough things poorly, you will go out of business.”
6. “Information flow is the life blood of your company because it enables you to get the most out of your people and learn from your customers.”
7. “Information work is thinking work.”
8. “Business people need to shake off the notion that information is hard to get.”
9. “Better information can expand the role of sales managers from being closers of big deals to being business managers.”
10. “Bringing together the right information with the right people will dramatically improve a company’s ability to develop and act on strategic business opportunities.”
11. “A self service approach can handle 90 percent of employee administrative needs.”
12. “Customer service will become the primary value added function of every business.”
13. “The pace of change and the need for more personalized attention to customers will drive companies to adopt digital processes internally.”
14. “As the internet drives down the cost of transactions, the middle man will disappear or evolve to add new value.”
15. “Only a few businesses will succeed by having the lowest price, so most will need a strategy that includes customer services.”
16. “An important re-engineering principle is that companies should focus on their core competence and outsource everything else.”
17. “The competition to hire the best will increase in the years ahead. Companies that give extra flexibility to their employees will have the edge in this area.”
18. “Customers want high quality at low prices and they want it now.”
19. “The most important ‘speed’ issue is often not technical but cultural. It’s convincing everyone that the company’s survival depends on everyone moving as fast as possible.”
20. “How fast a company can respond in an emergency is a measure of its corporate reflexes.”
21. “A company’s ability to respond to an unplanned event, good or bad is a prime indicator of its ability to compete.”
22. “Strategically, a major function of the CEO is to look for bad news and encourage the organization to respond to it. Employees must be encouraged to share bad news as much as good news.”
23. “Reward worthy failure – Experimentation.”
24. “In three years, every product my company makes will be obsolete. The only question is whether we will make them obsolete or somebody else will.”
25. “Sometimes, I think my most important job as a CEO is to listen for bad news. If you don’t act on it, your people will eventually stop bringing bad news to your attention and that is the beginning of the end.”
26. “Embrace bad news to learn where you need the most improvement.”
27. “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”
28. “Know your numbers’ is a fundamental precept of business.”
29. “Teams should be able to act with the same unity of purpose and focus as a well motivated individual.”
30. “To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks.”
31. “In business as well as the military, he who has the shortest procurement and deployment cycle wins.”
32. “Every company can choose whether to lead or follow the emerging digital trends.”
33. “I regret being the richest man in the world because that position attracts undeserved publicity.”
34. “Capitalism is this wonderful thing that motivates people; it causes wonderful inventions to be done. But in the area of diseases of the world at large, it has really let us down.”
35. “I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions; they will be moved to act.”
36. “I do think this next century hopefully, will be about a more global view. Where you just don’t think, yes my country is doing well but you think about the world at large.”
37. “I have $100billion. You realize I could spend $3million a day, everyday for the next hundred 100 years? And that’s if I don’t make another dime.”
38. “I think it’s fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we have ever created. They are tools of communication, tools of creativity and they can be shaped by their users.”
39. “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.”
40. “The browser space that we are in, we have about 90%. Sure, Firefox has come along and the press love the idea of that. Our commitment is to keep our browser that competes with Firefox to be the best browser; best in security and best in features.”
41. “There are people who don’t like capitalism and people who don’t like PCs. But there’s no one who like the PC who doesn’t like Microsoft.”
42. “I like my job because it involves learning. I like being around smart people who are trying to figure out new things. I like the fact that if people really try, they can figure out how to invent things that actually have an impact.”
43. “If you give people tools and they use their natural ability and their curiosity, they will develop things in ways that will surprise you very much beyond what you might have expected.”
44. “You need to know about the customer feedback that says things should be better.”
45. “The people who resist change will be confronted by the growing number of people who see that better ways are available; thanks to technology.”
46. “You’ve got to give great tools to small teams. Pick good people, use small teams and give them great tools so that they are very productive in terms of what they are doing.”
47. “We bet the company on Windows and we deserve to benefit. It was a risk that paid off immensely.”
48. “The vision is really about empowering workers, giving them all the information about what’s going on so that they can do a lot more than they have done in the past.”
49. “Microsoft is not about greed. It’s about innovation and fairness.”
50. “Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don’t think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the other.”