The Accidental Zillionaire

Demystifying Paul Allen

Wiley, 2002

15 min read

10 take-aways

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What's inside?

Meet Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, the quiet force behind Microsoft and so much more.

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Editorial Rating

Qualities

Overview
For Beginners

Recommendation

It was hard not to envy the late Paul Allen. A son of Oklahomans who moved to Seattle, he went to private school, met Bill Gates, helped start Microsoft and ended up with billions to invest, enjoy and give away. He saw himself as an ordinary slob, but he owned major league teams, funded scientific exploration and became a leading philanthropist. Allen and his family didn’t work with the author of this 2002 biography, so nothing is straight from the horse’s mouth and much of the coverage is dated. However, despite her gossipy tone, author Laura Rich provides a useful look at Allen’s early post-Microsoft career. The book is easy enough to read, though it relies mainly on secondary sources and can drift into being repetitious. If you want a retrospective look at Paul Allen, who died at age 65 in Seattle in October, 2018, this will fit in easily among more recent takes.

Summary

Meeting Bill Gates

Some people say, some people say that meeting Gates was the best thing Paul Allen ever did. This may not be true, although it’s hard to demonstrate the reverse. Allen generally shuns the press. He’s an introverted techie and always has been. Even people who worked with him during the early Microsoft days describe him mainly by comparison or contrast with Bill Gates. Allen made billions when the company he co-founded became insanely, unimaginably successful – perhaps mostly due to the cunning and acumen of Bill Gates.

Allen left Microsoft in 1983, so he hadn’t worked there for decades, though the value of his stake continued to increase. The popping of the technology bubble dropped him down a few pegs on the Forbes list of the richest Americans, but he stayed pretty close to the top.

Allen scored higher than his high school classmate Bill Gates on the SAT test. Gates, however, was a relentless schemer, and Allen never seemed to care that much about the money end of things; he was more interested in the guts of technology and machines. When he left Microsoft, he owned roughly a third of the...

About the Author

Laura Rich, a former writer for Industry Standard, Adweek and Inside Media, writes for Entertainment Weekly and the Hollywood Reporter.

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R. A. 6 years ago

The book describes mediocrely to Mr Allen.
Even so it was an interesting insides.
Now I have a much clear impression about Microsoft's cofounder.

Laura Rich