Recently, the firm Global Village held an event for the founder of companies. Bill Gates, the Microsoft billionaire and the most prominent investor of Global Village, had a chat with Eventbrite CEO, Julia Hartz. Both of them discussed founding a Company and the tough decisions needed to keep a Company on top of its competitors.
During the conversation, Hartz asked Gates about the work-life balance. She asked whether there should be more work or a balance in life. She also asked Gates whether he had changed his past viewpoint, when he said, “he didn’t think there was any need for weekend or vacations.”
Bill Gates said that there should be no vacations in the company’s earlier years and especially not if the company was building some kind of software. Gates told Hartz that a company should make huge sacrifices, in its early years. He also said that you shouldn’t enjoy when you need to prove your worth in the market or prove that a project is quite successful.
Actually, Bill Gates still regrets taking some time off and letting Google develop Android, which is the standard non-Apple phone platform. He still thinks that Microsoft should have won in this race.
Here is the full view of Gates regarding work-life balance. He gives his opinion whether a new CEO should focus entirely on work or should he have a good balance in life:
“I think that you can glamorize and even worship the idea of working too hard. During my initial times, I didn’t believe in weekends or any vacations. I even knew every person’s license plate number. Therefore, I knew when they had come and gone during the previous month. Therefore, I don’t recommend it at all and most people won’t enjoy their life this way.
When I got into my 30s, I couldn’t imagine how I worked so hard. At that time, I was a bit composed and I started loving weekends. My girlfriend also loved vacations. This turned into my escape plan. Now, I take many vacations. I can imagine my 20-year-old-self, hating the person I have now become. At one time, I was sure that I would fly nothing more than a coach. Now, I have a plane. Therefore, you can say that I have succeeded quickly.
An important thing that helps startups is if the co-workers are as hungry for success as the CEO, and they all want the Company to succeed. You also need to have a mutual understanding in the Company. It shouldn’t be like that one person is expecting different results and the other person is expecting something entirely different.
You will also have individuals in your Company who get distracted by other things, like family and relatives. So, yes, I believe that you should make a fair amount of sacrifice during those early years.
In the software world, we have a saying that ‘winner takes all the market’. I still regret myself for the biggest mistake I made in mismanagement, which caused Android development. Android is the non-Apple phone platform. Microsoft should have had this privilege.
When I say that the winner takes all, I really mean it. For example, if you have half as many apps or 90% as many apps, you will still lose. There is only place for one non-Apple operating system. It is worth over 400 billion dollars.
It still amazes that after making such a big mistake, Microsoft’s assets of Windows and office are the best in the market. If we would have developed something better than Android, we would have been ‘the Company’.
The idea that small changes can make a big difference isn’t true for many businesses. For example, in service businesses, this mentality isn’t there. However, you need to have this mentality in the software world. You need to ask yourself every night, ‘Am I screwing this whole thing up?’ And in the end, we really did screw up.”
