The Microsoft boss has revealed his 'greatest mistake ever' ended up costing the company $400,000,000,000.
Bill Gates kick-started the software company we're all familiar with, Microsoft, with his childhood buddy and fellow Washington native, Paul Allen, in 1975.
In just four short years, the pals saw their revolutionary technology snowball with success, surpassing its first $1 million in sales before hitting public shelves in 1986.
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Today, Microsoft Corporation is worth some three trillion dollars and Gates was considered the world's richest person for various years - up until 2023 when he dropped to the sixth richest American and seventh richest person around the globe.
Still, according to Forbes he has a net worth of $103.8 billion and enjoys the philanthropic life through his private charity, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Yet that's not to say he's off the clock as the 69-year-old recently sat down with Eventbrite CEO, Julia Hartz, at an event by venture firm Village Global to talk all things business and the secrets to success.
It was here that Gates admitted he made one of the most costly mistakes of his career to the tune of $400 billion - which is an awful lot of zeroes to lose out on.
The businessman said the eye-watering blow all came to a head when tech companies raced to secure the second-best spot in the phone market after Apple, and Microsoft lagged behind.
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He explained in the interview: "You know, in the software world, in particular for platforms, these are winner-take-all markets. So, you know, the greatest mistake ever is the whatever mismanagement I engaged in that caused Microsoft not to be what Android is, [meaning] Android is the standard non-Apple phone form platform.
"That was a natural thing for Microsoft to win."
Gates continued: "It really is winner take all. If you're there with half as many apps or 90 percent as many apps, you're on your way to complete doom.
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"There's room for exactly one non-Apple operating system, and what's that worth? $400 billion that would be transferred from company G [Google] to company M [Microsoft]."
As well as the $400 billion loss, Gates said the screw up was 'a super important one' and may just be 'one of the greatest mistakes of all time'.
According to Inc.com, Apple's iPhone came into the public realm in June 2007, shortly followed by Google's Android-based smartphone a little more than a year later, September 2008.
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Meanwhile, the Windows Phone 7 didn't come out until October 2010, leaving Android and Apple to dominate with 99.9 percent of the market share and blow other competitors out of the water.
While Gates said Microsoft is still 'a leading company', if it had landed the mobile spot after Apple, 'we would be the company', TechCrunch reports.
'But oh well', he shrugged.
Topics: Microsoft, Bill Gates, Technology, Business, Money, Phones, iPhone, Apple, Google
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