— Sure, he had accumulated absurd riches from cofounding Microsoft Corp. and lived in a US$130 million mansion with an indoor trampoline room. But he was also known to drive his kids to school, binge Modern Family, dress like Ned Flanders and wait in line for his favorite cheeseburgers.
It’s easy to forget that Bill Gates wasn’t always so publicly revered. During the heyday of the PC revolution, he was the ruthless nerd-turned-tycoon who brutally and profanely berated underlings and allegedly tried to slash Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen’s equity in the company while he was undergoing cancer treatment in the early 1980s.
This was more than superficial fame. Gates’s civic clout could sway the discourse on critical and controversial issues , an influence that’s threatened as more lurid details surface from his current divorce proceedings. That’s not to suggest NGOs and nonprofits will stop taking his money. But, as skeptics have noted, if he’s sought inappropriate relationships with female employees, the foundation that bears his name is probably no longer the ideal advocate for women’s empowerment.
Another consequence may be that Bill’s personal brand, his billionaire-of-the-people shtick, will invite a tough reappraisal. Essential to his bespectacled, do-gooder charm was that it felt authentic and accessible. A 2019 Netflix docuseries even sought to take viewers Inside Bill’s Brain.
His point was that as much as Microsoft had reinvented itself in the many years since Gates ran the software giant, its source code still retained parts of his DNA. The same could be said for the broader technology landscape. Gates had reinvented himself as a philanthropist, yet he also remained a legend among startup cofounders and unicorn CEOs, a statesman in Silicon Valley at a time when many of its once-mythologized leaders are deceased, disappeared, or disgraced.
Being cancer-stricken and begging CPF Board to repay overdue debt; that which in any case cannot be done as the money had been commingled and funneled to private entity Temasek Holdings for Ho Ching to wager on unviable, untenable and ultimately, invariably doomed gambles
Singapore Latest News, Singapore Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.