Since the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has a huge percentage of its wealth still in MSFT stock, I think Bill Gates can make a case to himself that picking the best possible leader for MSFT will save hundreds of thousands of marginal children.
If I were him, there would be two candidates: Qi Lu (insider, obvious choice), or, for the ultimate in turnaround ballerdom: Ben Horowitz (from a16z). Either would be a vast improvement on Ballmer, but Qi Lu would be the "safe" choice, mostly doubling down on trends within Microsoft. Ben Horowitz would put Microsoft solidly at the core of Silicon Valley, plus it would signify that Microsoft views the next 10 years as "wartime" with a CEO to match.
(The other low-odds pick would be Bill Gates Round 2, but that seems unlikely just due to where he is in life. I could maybe see it as "Interim CEO". He'd do an awesome job I'm sure.)
> Since the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has a huge percentage of its wealth still in MSFT stock, I think Bill Gates can make a case to himself that picking the best possible leader for MSFT will save hundreds of thousands of marginal children.
According to its most recent SEC Form 13F, the Gates Foundation Trust does not hold any Microsoft stock whatsoever. About 47% of its stock holdings are in Berkshire Hathaway.
As for Bill Gates himself, he currently owns less than 5% of Microsoft. That's still almost $14 billion, but it's just 11% of Bill Gates + Warren Buffett's combined wealth. (Both of them are giving essentially their entire fortunes to the Foundation.)
Wow, thanks for digging that up. I assumed BG had done transfers of stock, but I guess he sold it on a plan and gave the cash to the foundation.
Another amazing thing about the BMGF is that it doesn't want to be permanent -- spending all assets within 20 years of the deaths of Bill and Melinda, and for the Buffet contribution, within 10 years of his death. (Based on age, it's highly likely WB will predecease either Bill or Melinda Gates.)
i wonder if they are going to try and preserve the multi-headed monster that is microsoft today, or whether they are going to break it up into constituent parts. i know that the temptation is great to try and compete head to head with google on the plan to totally annihilate each other, but i wonder if that makes any sense. google docs has been around for six years and i've never encountered it in a corporate setting. so does office need to be tied to bing? (and vice versa). will be interesting to see what they choose to do next.
I think that he could turn the company around in months. After all recent failures in MS history are policy errors and not execution ones. The teams still ship high quality software - the problem is mostly with what management wants (at least what I see from the consumer side)
Would BH leave a16z is the question though. I mean sure, ShoeDazzle, Zynga, Groupon, whatever. They're really doing a lot to mess with SV culture, which could be (long term) more transformative than guiding an ailing giant.
If I were him, there would be two candidates: Qi Lu (insider, obvious choice), or, for the ultimate in turnaround ballerdom: Ben Horowitz (from a16z). Either would be a vast improvement on Ballmer, but Qi Lu would be the "safe" choice, mostly doubling down on trends within Microsoft. Ben Horowitz would put Microsoft solidly at the core of Silicon Valley, plus it would signify that Microsoft views the next 10 years as "wartime" with a CEO to match.
(The other low-odds pick would be Bill Gates Round 2, but that seems unlikely just due to where he is in life. I could maybe see it as "Interim CEO". He'd do an awesome job I'm sure.)