There is no relationship in history like the one between Steve Jobs (Apple) and Bill Gates (Microsoft): a love-hate relationship made up of 1% love and 99% hate, although, curiously, they respected each other as rivals.
In an interview with CBS News, Bill Gates said he had very fond memories of his greatest business rival. He said they had practically grown up together and that probably neither of them would have achieved the success they did had they not been hot on each other’s heels. Having a strong rival makes you work harder and never let your guard down, Gates said, and he became emotional when he talked about Steve Jobs’s illness and death.
As partners and rivals, the two led the personal computer market with completely different styles. In fact, the two entrepreneurs were very different.
Steve Jobs was the son of working-class parents, and he had been adopted. He believed in strict control over every product and paid special attention to design.
Bill Gates was a child of upper-class parents who believed in open products and cared less about product design.
They had one thing in common: each of them thought he was smarter than the other. So what did they really think of each other? These are some of the remarks, opinions and words they said in public.
Gates: Steve Jobs is a very strange guy, and oddly imperfect as a human being.
Jobs: Bill Gates lacks imagination and has never invented anything, so I am not surprised he feels more comfortable in philanthropy than in technology.
Gates: Jobs didn’t really know much about technology, but he had an incredible instinct for pleasing the public with his products.
Jobs: Bill Gates has no shame. He has brazenly swindled us and stolen our ideas.
Gates: Apple’s approach only works when Steve Jobs is at the helm, which does not mean he will always win the battles.
Jobs: Microsoft’s problem is simply that it has no flavour. It reflects a business that has inherited the bad taste of its founder, Gates.
Gates: The way Jobs does things is different; I even think it is magical.
Jobs: Bill Gates is an excellent businessman but a terrible product man. For Gates, winning a negotiation to get his product in was more important than making a good product. I admire him as a great businessman, because when someone becomes the richest person on the planet with such a terrible product, it clearly shows he knew how to negotiate and deceive.
Gates: I respect Steve Jobs, because he has been one of the most competent rivals any businessperson could come up against.
What lesson can we learn from these two technology geniuses?
Despite the exchanges of words and the attacks, the two would meet from time to time and even went out with their wives. During Jobs’s illness, right up until his death, one of the people who took the most trouble to keep up with and look after Steve Jobs’s health was Bill Gates himself.
Business is business, and these two great historic rivals show that even in business you need “corporate sportsmanship”. When we talked about smart leadership lessons, there was a saying that went: “A leader must be both feared and loved.” I think that, between these two great leaders, that phrase sums up the relationship they kept up for decades.
Further reading
- Steve Jobs had been donating money anonymously for 20 years
- Steve Jobs’s early days and the birth of Apple
Featured image: Sailko, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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