The memoir by Paul Allen titled Paul Allen Idea Man, Penguin, 2011 is a the very interesting story of Mr. Allen has since cofounding Microsoft. The other cofounder Bill Gates is one of the richest men in the world, Mr. Allen is worth in the billions. From a relatively middle income upbringing to a very rich person makes an interesting story in relationship to what he does with the wealth once obtained? In Mr. Allen’s case he was and is fascinated by how things work, coding and what can the future look like. With idea people, many of their ideas are a little before there is a market or the ability to make money is found. Mr. Allen earlier in his life discovered coding and loved it, and when the first desktop computers were coming out, he and Bill Gates programed the language the computer uses to do what many of us want it to do. Basic eventually became MS Dos and most computers use the Microsoft language to run the computers. Mr. Gates owned 66% and Mr. Allen owned the other. They believed the software was more important than the hardware, while most early day companies believed the hardware was more important. After a number of years, running Basic, as computers became important in the work place, IBM entered the field but they were interested in hardware, thus they licenced Basic and MS-DOS which lead to the incredible growth of Microsoft.

In the book, Mr. Allen was thinking about the future and what could be. As the parts and the infrastructure began to catch up to what could be, there were many opportunities to be found and expanded upon. At first these were what Microsoft could do, later when Mr. Allen moved to doing his investments – he would invest in some of the ventures. For example, after MS-DOS is running the computer, applications become very important. An example of an application is MS Office which appeals to small and medium sized businesses and then everyone. The goal at the start was to make computers accessible to everyone, but each and everyone person needs to have a reason to have why they need to use it.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, in the case of Microsoft, it ended up as the standard program to run microcomputers which lead to explosive earnings and over the years a great amount of wealth creation. As time went by, the company needed to continually to change to keep its share as the uses of computers changed. The internet was not captured by Microsoft, neither was Smart Phones and a host of other uses. Microsoft is still a significant player but companies change quickly in the software industry. The leaders have continually changed as they way we interact and change to who we pay. The software industry has shown great wealth drivers of the economy and it is difficult not to want to put money in the area. One method might be to find out what software the more stable traditional companies use and as they change, change with them.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions