8Bill Gates
Bill Gates’ first business failed.
Yes, Bill Gates, one of the most famous self make billionaires in the world had to overcome some obstacles too.
Gates’ first company, Traf-O-Data was a big nasty failure. Its objective was ‘to read the raw data from roadway traffic counters and create reports for traffic engineers‘. In this way, the company would optimize traffic and end road congestion.
The company’s product was the Traf-O-Data 8008, a device which could read traffic tapes and process the data. He and his partner, Paul Allen, tried to sell it but their first demo failed because the machine ‘didn’t work’, recalled Gates.
How many of you would have given up at this point? Well, these 2 didn’t and this is how Paull Allen summarised the experience:
‘Even though Traf-O-Data wasn’t a roaring success, it was seminal in preparing us to make Microsoft’s first product a couple of years later’
They kept working and that was the best decision they ever made as Microsoft became the largest personal-computer software company in the world.
