With a little help from Mom

I bet you didn’t know this about Billy Gates. Or is that Bill Gates … the Microsoft chap remember?

I’m told that networks are the express chutes to stardom. That explains why you and I are not stars and why Billy… Bill whoever, is.

Bill’s mom, Mary Gates was on the board of United Way, along with John Akers who was then a big man at IBM. He was, at the time, spearheading IBMs foray into the desktop computer business.

If you recall, computers then were as big as flying saucers but with only an ounce of their capabilities. For starters they couldn’t fly and take you to a fairer world where everyone were stars. So it made perfect sense to compress the mammoth, electronic gutted, phoof-puff of dubious competence to fit its apparent station in the order of evolution.

It so happened that Ms. Gates talked to Akers about a new breed of small computer outfits (read garage enterprises) that made better partners with their speedy response times. So when Akers called in proposals, he sent out feelers to the mites as well. And that feeler was Billy’s twinkle, twinkle lucky star. It made him so much bigger than IBM. Last I heard, he’d been voted the world’s richest man for the nth time running.

Would this have been possible without a little help from mama? What do you gather?