Ben Gilbert: commitment

Transcript context

…Totally, and that's the point we want to land here. For young Bill, Trey growing up here, he is growing up in a pretty unique household. He would later talk about being 9 or 10 years old. Most nights at dinner at his house, there would be a CEO, a senator, a governor, or somebody who's just over for dinner, and Bill would sit there and absorb the business conversation. It's like the Hermes family, the Dumas family that we talked about in that episode. This whole thing makes me think of Paul, the main character in the Dune movies in the book. He's bred from birth to be this incredible business mind. At age 13, with his best friend, who we will talk about very soon, he brought up the idea, I wonder what company I will be the CEO of when I grow up. What industry will I go after? What problems will I tackle? It wasn't a question of if, but which. Yes. It just turned out that He would be the CEO and founder of the biggest company in the biggest industry ever to exist. The other thing that we got to say about Bill growing up, he is insanely competitive. He did not and does not like to lose at anything. That is putting it mildly, whether it's sports, swimming, computers, school, or the classroom. There's a quote in one of the books we read from a childhood friend of his who says, "Everything Bill did, he did competitively and never simply to relax." I think this used to be more than today. There's this image of Bill Gates that he was a computer nerd, that he was this shy little skinny kid. The way he looks doesn't help this, but that is not the case at all. This guy had a competitive fire in him, I'm sure he still does like none other.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.