Editor's Letter
|
"He has always had a futures
orientation...he has been talking about the wired world for a long
time." --Bert Kolde, manager, Vulcan Northwest
In January 1975 a programmer brought a Popular
Mechanics' advertisement for a microcomputer kit--along with an idea--to his
friend's college dorm room.
Their partnership eventually evolved into the world's most valuable company,
with a market capitalization that surpassed $260 billion on Sept. 14, slightly
ahead of General Electric Corp.'s valuation of $257.4 billion.
HOW LONG AT
COMPANY: 1975-1983
BORN:
Jan. 21, 1953
EDUCATION: Attended Washington State University
ACCOMPLISHMENT
Co-founded Microsoft in 1975; investor in
Asymestrix, Vulcan Ventures and Vulcan Northwest
Before he left Microsoft in 1983, Allen was head of research and new product
development and was behind many of the company's highest-profile products,
including MS-DOS, Word, Windows and the Microsoft Mouse. The Microsoft
co-founder was making a fortune in Redmond, Wash., selling operating systems to
nearly everyone with a PC when Hodgkin's disease caused him to re-evaluate his
life. He left Microsoft to devote himself to other interests, and he eventually
beat the serious illness.
Allen maintains a seat on Microsoft's board of directors and is still the
company's second largest shareholder with an 8 percent stake.
"Before Bill Gates and I started Microsoft, we had a vision of a wired world in
which everyone would have a PC at home and at work that would be interconnected
in a global network, providing immediate availability to information and
resources anywhere in the world," Allen writes on his extensive Web site
(www.paulallen.com), where he describes everything from his investment strategy
to his favorite books and music.
Like Gates, Allen is a college dropout, having left Washington State University
to work for Honeywell. Also like Gates, he is near the top of the billionaire's
club now worth an estimated $22 billion and is America's third richest
man--behind investor Warren Buffet, who is second at $29 billion and Gates, who
is No. 1 at $58 billion--according to the 1998 Forbes magazine poll. Allen has
investments in some 65 diverse companies and owns two professional sports teams,
the Portland Trail Blazers of the National Basketball Association and the
Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League.
He also recently acquired Charter Communications for $4.5 billion and Marcus
Cable for $2.8 billion. Combined, they are the seventh largest cable company in
the United States. Another part of his original view of a wired world, Allen
sees high bandwidth as key to delivering a new set of information and services
to customers. "For Paul, it has always been the notion that the microprocessor
connected to a network creates a new platform," said Bill Savoy, president of
Vulcan Ventures, Allen's investment group.
Among other duties, Savoy oversees Allen's investments in new media companies
and his 24 percent stake in Dreamworks SKG, which was behind the recent
blockbuster film "Saving Private Ryan."
"Paul is keenly aware of the impact of technology and the way technology should
be deployed and used," Savoy said. "He clearly is a visionary. There's no doubt
about that. He sees opportunities in ways that other people just don't get it.
As a person, he's just a really nice guy. He's not pretentious. He's not full of
himself, just an ordinary, decent guy," Savoy said.
In business and in life, Allen surrounds himself with longtime friends and
family. His mother, Faye, lives on part of his 40,000-square-foot waterfront
home on Mercer Island. His sister, Jody Allen Patton, manages his foundations
and serves in executive positions in at least two corporations. Bert Kolde, a
former SeaFirst Corp. bank executive and Allen's roommate at WSU, headed
Allen-owned Asymetrix Learning Systems Inc. for years before running Vulcan
Northwest, the part of Allen's organization that monitors the performance of his
companies and looks for ways to encourage synergies between them. Kolde met
Allen in a fraternity in the early 1970s.
"He was really into rock music and played chess a lot," Kolde said. Allen went
to work at Honeywell and hooked up with Kolde again at the beginning of his
post-Microsoft phase. "He has always had a futures orientation. He always had
walls of science-fiction books. He has been talking about the wired world for a
long time," Kolde said.
In another forward-looking area, Allen is investing in online learning projects,
including collaborating with the College Board to offer Advanced Placement
classes online to high-school students where AP classes are not available.
Another project would help high-school dropouts earn Graduate Equivalent Degrees
online.
Born in Seattle, Allen, 45, who is single, has blue eyes and a gentle demeanor,
often has been described as shy, but friends and associates say he just does not
seek the limelight.
But in the same breath, they will tell you he can handle the brightest spotlight
when necessary. When Allen bought the Seattle Seahawks and his organization
orchestrated a bond measure to build a new stadium, Allen stepped up to the
plate, making television commercials and appearances and going before scores of
reporters and television cameras during high-pressure press conferences. Voters
passed the measure.
Allen has an artistic side, too, and loves music. His Web site lists his
favorite music titles: Electric Ladyland, Jimi Hendrix; Band Of Gypsies, Jimi
Hendrix; Are You Experienced, Jimi Hendrix; So, Us, Peter Gabriel; Abbey Road,
Beatles; Late For The Sky, Jackson Browne; Dark Side Of The Moon, Pink Floyd;
and Vivid, Living Colour.
In fact, the billionaire has financed a shrine for legendary Seattle electric
guitarist Jimi Hendrix, called the Experience Music Project.
Obviously, Allen pursues eclectic personal interests. He still gets together
with his friends and jams with his band on a regular basis, as he did during a
break at an Informix Corp. user conference in Seattle last summer. It is his
passion, his friends say. Occasionally, he opens up the regulation-size
basketball court in his home to employees.
His grown-up toys are too numerous to mention, but a few give the idea. He owns
a villa in the south of France, a 122-acre property in Beverly Hills, a 387-acre
island in Washington's San Juan Islands, a 198-foot state-of-the-art yacht and a
171,000-foot airplane hangar at Boeing Field that holds his Boeing 757 and
Challenger 601 jets.
Even after having co-starred in the founding of one of the most successful
corporations of the 20th century, his eye is fixed on the business models of the
next century.
"He hasn't stopped pioneering," Kolde said. "He's still active in a lot of
technology companies and his largest investments to date have been in cable
systems, which he sees as an important platform for advanced digital services
going forward in the future. He will play a significant role in bringing that to
reality as well, so the pioneering isn't over."
Allen's idea of a wired world started at Microsoft.
"Paul Allen has long believed that the microprocessor is more than PCs running
software," Savoy said. "When you provide a microprocessor with a communication
network, you get the possibility of personalized information, which is an
enormous change from today when information is mass produced. There is no reason
that customized information can't arrive at your television set, your cellular
phone and, ultimately, a new class of consumer products. Paul Allen believes
this is leading the way to a dramatic change in the availability of art and
literature and the way goods and services are delivered."
|
