Bill Gates Spent A Year Trying To Avoid Dropping Out—Here's Why He Couldn't Wait Any Longer

Bill Gates spent Microsoft MSFT first year attempting to run the fledgling software company without abandoning his Harvard education, ultimately facing a necessary choice between college and entrepreneurship.

“I had to give in to the inevitable, and give up school and, of course, never go back,” Gates recently told CNBC in an interview about his new memoir, “Source Code.”

The Microsoft co-founder described his intense struggle with the decision, telling CNBC that he even tried convincing early programmer Ric Weiland to “take charge of things” so he could finish his degree. Instead, Weiland left for graduate school.

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“Even Ric wasn’t going to pull things together with the intensity that I knew we needed to stay in front,” Gates said.

The urgency began in 1974 when Gates’ high school friend and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen showed him a Popular Electronics magazine featuring the Altair 8800, described as the “world’s first minicomputer kit to rival commercial models.” The moment crystallized their belief that they could pioneer software for the emerging personal computer industry.

“The panic about, ‘God, it’s happening without us,’ was when Popular Electronics had the kit computer [on its cover],” Gates explained. “Little did we know, [Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems, or MITS] basically hadn’t assembled any of them.”

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Despite the opportunity, Gates’ attachment to Harvard’s intellectual environment caused him to split time between college and Microsoft’s original Albuquerque, New Mexico headquarters throughout 1976. He attended two more semesters while attempting to manage the company remotely.

“I enjoyed Harvard. I enjoyed the classes, including some that I just sat in on: psychology, economics, history courses,” Gates said. “I loved having smart people around. We could sit and talk late into the night about very interesting things.”

The decision didn’t feel particularly risky to Gates, who reasoned he could return to Harvard if the venture failed. “I wasn’t borrowing money. I had money from the programming stuff that we’d done [in high school], and software companies aren’t very capital intensive,” he noted.

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Looking back, Gates believes the early timing was important. “Maybe,” he said when asked if delaying for college would have meant missing their opportunity. “We really were there at the very, very beginning.”

The company’s ambition exceeded most contemporaries’ vision, including one of Gates' Harvard professors. “We were crazy ambitious, saying things like: ‘A computer on every desk and in every home,'” Gates recalled. Today, Microsoft is worth nearly $3.1 trillion.

Despite his success, Gates doesn’t recommend his path to others. “I’m not some person who promotes dropping out of college,” he said. “I think it’s an exceptional case where the urgency is such that you interrupt those college years to go do something else.”

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