Hacker News Reader

Gates did not start Microsoft with a loan from his parents, it was entirely bootstrapped financially.

Paul Allen and Gates had saved up a small amount of money from contract work. Together they provided all of Microsoft's seed capital. They had customers for Microsoft essentially from the start of the business (MITS being the first), making it profitable nearly from day one.

View on HN

Which completely bypasses the point that their parents had to be wealthy enough to provide for his education at a school that had computing labs at a time that they were very rare. Bill Gates and Paul Allen certainly had to work their tails off, but negating that having a wealthy parent puts you in a far higher likelihood to be successful is just silly. The average child of poor parents is not likely to have the same opportunity as those of a child of wealthy parents. It's exactly what perpetuates the cycle of wealth.

Lots of people started microcomputer companies at about the same time as Gates. Evidently, not attending Lakeside was not a barrier.

Gary Kildall wrote CP/M in 1974, a year before Gates formed Microsoft.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com