What I loved about Paul Allen

Thank you!!

> Paul Allen: Gates, Ballmer tried to 'rip me off'

> "One evening in late December 1982, I heard Bill and Steve speaking heatedly in Bill's office and paused outside to listen in," he writes in his memoir. "It was easy to get the gist of the conversation. They were bemoaning my recent lack of production and discussing how they might dilute my Microsoft equity by issuing options to themselves and other shareholders. It was clear that they'd been thinking about this for some time."

Reagan and the US government not only “turned their back” and failed to act for years, leading to conservative estimates of thousands of new infections that could’ve been prevented; they also also actively interfered: for example, Congress banned the use of federal funds for prevention campaigns that “promoted or encouraged, directly or indirectly, homosexual activities”. So a lot of the prevention campaigns became ineffective fear-based propaganda rather than what was needed: targeted education to vulnerable communities about safer sex and needle drug use practices.

Do you also think the government is turning their back to cancer? The reality is if a cure is to come, it will come from private industry (for profit companies).

Probably not without them involved, but you can at least discuss the possibility at some point.

Allen retained his full Microsoft stake and yielded tens of billions of dollars from the Microsoft that Gates, Ballmer and others proceeded to build up in the coming 15-20 years.

I suspect there are few here that haven't had insulting conversations about other people. Said negative, rude, belittling things that they later regretted. Hurled a very mean statement in the middle of a fight. Discussed leaving a spouse behind their back. So on and so forth.

It's not necessary to excuse the behavior of Gates, it was a crass mistake by a 27 year old. Allen retained his ownership, forgave Gates, and that's that.

You can make sure that "your people" (operating from the mindset of corporate feudalism) are taken care of, that if they die prematurely from illness or accident their families are taken care of, and that if they are rendered simply unable to work they and their families are not worse off than in the worst case, without giving someone multi-digit ownership of the company.

It's something to consider when you start drawing up paperwork for your own startup, grisly as that may seem. What happens when one of your founders is struck by a bus a day, a month, a year, five years into the venture? How much of their vested and unvested founder-share goes to their heirs? Does it make a difference if their heirs are their children, their spouse, their siblings, or their favorite charity? Do you want to turn their founder-share from your super-voting shares to a share class with less voting power upon transfer [is that even legal? with vested or unvested shares?]? Does it make a difference if they are killed or merely incapacitated?

It's not a pleasant thing to think about, and it won't matter most of the time, but when it does...