What Made Bill Gates the USA’s Richest Man?

Bill Gates is considered one of the richest men in the world. Even though he has already stepped down from Microsoft as a CEO and Chief Software Architect, Gates is still earning enough to make him rank among the richest in the world. He is now a full time philanthropist through the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation.

But even though he is busy spending more money than earning, why is he still one of the richest men in the world?

The reason is because of licensing and software. It’s true that Microsoft may have gathered some bad press on how it treats its competition but practically everyone is using Windows (owned by Microsoft) as their operating system. The O.S. was developed under the helm of Bill Gates and the company still earns billions every year through it.

In the early years of Microsoft, Bill Gates was an active software developer with the mind of an entrepreneur. Because of his skills in business, he was able to integrate his knowledge on computers with business which made him extremely rich. He has mainly been on executive and managerial roles for the past 20 years but he is still chief architect in software development.

To this day, Bill Gates still earns millions every year because he owns 6.4% of the common stock of Microsoft. With this share, he doesn’t have to work at his company and will consistently earn high amounts from their software sales every year. He is not just a smart programmer, he is also a very smart and cunning businessman.