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Comment by melvinram | Hacker News Reader

You don't have to pick between Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. Take the best about each and apply to your life as they are appropriate to your goals and strategy.

With that said, if I had to choose, I'd choose Gates... and I do wish there was more about Bill Gates's approach available to learn from.

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One shouldn't let the notion of Jobs and Gates being "competitors" from being able to admire both of them. I admire each for different reasons. I think that has to be the case since they are pretty different characters: a closer analogy could be between a great batter and a great pitcher.

For some info, Gates wrote this yesterday http://www.gatesfoundation.org/annual-letter

(Was posted on HN but the crowd here seems to prefer something more controversial when it comes to Gates.)

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You have to give Jobs credit for be a successful serial entrepreneur: Apple, Pixar, NeXT (debatable, but it sold for $429 million), and again Apple.

NeXT soaked up over $1 billion in investment about a decade before selling to Apple. If it's a success now, it's only because if you traded your NeXT stock for equivalent Apple stock in 1997, it would probably represent a significant return on the money invested in NeXT in the 1980's. But you'd have gotten an even better return by having that money in federal bonds between 1985 and 1997 (and then investing it in Apple) rather than having it in NeXT.

And NeXT's software is pretty much driving Apple's product lines now.

Which is a pretty good result for a 'failed company': Get paid $429 million to take over a larger company, and watch the technology you developed blossom to its full potential that was never possible as a tiny fringe player in the market, contributing to massive, overwhelming, record-smashing success.

very well said. No one is Perfect in everything. From those kind of poeple, we need to pick good things that really stand out in them and for which they became iCons now.

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