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Paul Allen Bio, Founder of Microsoft

Paul Allen was born January 21, 1953, in Seattle. He met Bill Gates while a student at the Lakeside School, a Seattle private school, and the two bonded over their shared interest in computers, using the school's computer terminal after hours to hone their programming abilities. When he later dropped out of Washington State University to take a job as a computer programmer for Honeywell in Boston, he got back in touch with Gates, then a Harvard undergraduate. At Allen's urging, Gates dropped out as well, and the two moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in order to found the software company Micro-Soft (which eventually lost its hyphen and second capital).

Micro-Soft began operations in 1975, selling an interpreter for the BASIC programming language. Allen's sights were higher, and it was principally on his initiative that the company bought the QDOS operating system software and adapted it to meet the needs of a contract with IBM. Their modified DOS software, MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System) became the operating system for IBM's PC computer, and by extension the software for the many PC-compatible machines that would follow. Before all the benefits from this could be seen, Allen was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease in 1983. Though his treatments were successful, he did not return to Microsoft when they were completed -- there have been rumors that he overheard a discussion among his partners about how to obtain his shares in the company if he died. He retained his position on the board until 2000, but did not have an active role in the company's operations.

In the meantime, he founded Vulcan Inc., a private asset management company, and used his growing fortune to purchase twelve professional sports teams, including half of the major Seattle-area franchises: the Seattle Seahawks NFL franchise, the Seattle National Hockey League franchise, the Seattle SuperSonics NBA franchise, and the Portland Trailblazers NBA franchise.

He continues to own 138 million shares in Microsoft, and is ranked as the fifth richest American by Forbes magazine.

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