Today, Bill Gates is retiring as an employee of Microsoft to focus on his philanthropic foundation. More than any other single person, Gates defined the PC era. His products touch nearly every computer user on the planet. And he created what is still the biggest technology wealth machine in Microsoft. But now that he is leaving, who will fill his shoes?
I don’t mean who will fill his shoes at Microsoft. Gates stepped back from day-to-day management years ago, handing his business responsibilities to CEO Steve Ballmer and technology responsibilities to chief software architect Ray Ozzie. What I mean is: Who will carry on his legacy and define the current Web era of computing?
It is unlikely there will ever be another Bill Gates if for the only reason that Gates’ influence stemmed from his control of the computing platform of choice (the PC, through Windows). The computing platform of choice today is the Web, and no single person or company can control that. But there are plenty of Web company founders out there—from large companies to small startups—that are turning the Web into a platform for applications and creating new kinds of software as a result.
In fact, there are many application platforms emerging on the Web. There is Facebook and Open Social for social networking apps. Salesforce.com AppExchange for enterprise apps. And more generic cloud computing services such as Amazon’s Web Services and Google’s App Engine for any kind of app. And soon these will be extended to mobile devices as well with the iPhone and Google’s Android.
The resulting software being built on top of these and other Web platforms is qualitatively different than PC software. It is connected to other software and other people. That makes it inherently social and driven by communications rather than productivity. It can also be taken apart and spread to other Websites, or even put back on the desktop, in the form of widgets.
So who is filling Gates’ shoes? Lots of people are collectively, starting with Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Slide’s Max Levchin, and Twitter’s Evan Williams. These are some of the names we came up with for Reuters, who asked us to put together a list of “Entrepreneurs to watch” box, which you can read on Reuters as part of its Bill Gates coverage (it’s the interactive box at the bottom of the page).
Below after the break are the people we chose, along with why we chose them. This is just a representative sample, and was written for a general audience. Add your own candidates in comments along with why you think they deserve to be recognized.
Sergey Brin/Larry Page (Google founders)
The two people most likely to carry on Bill Gates’ legacy also happen to be his biggest nemeses. Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are already nerdy, brainy billionaires and are taking on Microsoft on multiple fronts—from search to online applications. And, in fact, when it comes to making money on the Web, it is Microsoft that is trying to catch up to Google.
Just like Windows is the starting point for everything people do on their PCs, for many people Google’s search engine is the starting point for everything they do on the Web. Brin and Page are building on top of that with online applications and other products aimed directly at Microsoft’s other businesses such as Gmail (Outlook), Google Docs (Office), and Android (Windows Mobile).
Jeff Bezos (Amazon founder and CEO)
Jeff Bezos, one of Seattle’s other billionaires, is best known for bringing shopping online with Amazon.com. But over the past few years, Bezos has started selling something besides books and digital cameras. In his eyes Amazon.com is just a massive Web application that sits in the cloud.
He is now offering Amazon’s “cloud computing” infrastructure to other companies that don’t want to have to build their own data centers to store data or run a Web applications. Through a series of “Web services,” companies can buy data storage, compute cycles, and database access from Amazon, and pay only for what they use. In this way, Bezos is helping to define the next era of Web-scale computing.
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder and CEO)
If there is one person who reminds people the most of the young Bill Gates, it is Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The 24-year old is a Harvard drop-out (like Gates) and is building his company with the focus and singular vision of making it the operating system for social applications.
The rise and success of Facebook is largely due to the fact that it is a platform for Web applications created by other developers (just as Windows is a platform for PC applications). And Zuckerberg has created a mini-economy around Facebook. Maybe these similarities are what convinced Microsoft to invest $240 million in Facebook last fall.
Marc Benioff (Salesforce founder and CEO)
Just like consumer applications, enterprise software is moving to the Web as well. One of the first entrepreneurs to capitalize on this shift is Marc Benioff. His company, Salesforce.com, began by selling browser-based customer relationship management (CRM) software as a subscription service over the Web.Taking a page from the Bill Gates playbook, he’s extended his pay-by-the-drink concept to other areas of enterprise software and opened up Salesforce.com as platform for other companies to build and distribute their own Web-based software.
Max Levchin (Slide founder and CEO)
A Ukrainian-born programmer, Max Levchin started his career as the co-founder and CTO of PayPal, which was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. Two years later he founded Slide, which pioneered a new type of software known as a widget. Slide’s widgets typically draw data from the Web and are geared towards self-expression. They can appear on your desktop or added to other Websites such as Facebook.
Slide’s Facebook applications, which include FunWall and SuperPoke, boast more active users than any other company’s. In January, Levchin raised $50 million for Slide, giving the company a valuation of half a billion dollars.
Kevin Rose (Digg founder)
If software is becoming social, there is no better example than Digg. The popular news site attracts 15 million visitors a month, according to comScore. Digg relies entirely on its readers to submit headlines and links to articles, and vote them to the homepage.
Digg is the brainchild of founder Kevin Rose, who has mastered the art of teasing wisdom from the crowd. It is not so much about the underlying algorithms that power Digg as it is about setting the right conditions to give people the incentive to contribute.
Evan Williams (Twitter)
The Web at its core is a communications medium, and Evan Williams keeps coming up with new ways to for people to communicate over it. He founded Blogger, one of the original and largest Web-based blogging services, which he sold to Google in 2003. More recently he co-founded Twitter, a micro-blogging service that lets people broadcast short text messages of no more than 140 characters.
By limiting the length of the messages, Twitter effectively lowers the barriers to communicating. After all, it is much easier to send a Tweet than to write an entire blog post.
The service is growing so fast that it is hitting serious scaling issues and if often down. But the company raised $15 million to help solve those issues. One of the investors: Jeff Bezos
Stewart Butterfield/Caterina Fake (Flickr founders)
Husband-and-wife team Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake created the most successful photo-sharing site on the Web with Flickr. By default, every photo uploaded to the site is public to encourage sharing and can easily be displayed on other sites as well. Flickr shows what can happen when you take personal media and put it online. Instead of being forgotten in a shoebox, a photo you took two years ago can be discovered and enjoyed by someone halfway around the world.
After it was purchased by Yahoo in 2005 for an estimated $35 million, Butterfield and Fake stayed on. The service kept growing and eventually replaced Yahoo Photos. It now attracts 54 million visitors a month worldwide, according to comScore. Both recently departed Yahoo, which is undergoing management turmoil, but keep an eye on them to see what they do next.
Paul Buchheit and Bret Taylor (FriendFeed founders)
On the Web, it can be hard to keep track all the information and services that are available. FriendFeed, a startup that launched publicly earlier this year, helps you manage the information overload by pulling together the online activities of all your friends in one place. You can see all of your friends’ blog posts, Twitters, Flickr photos, stories they vote up on Digg, and YouTube videos they like, among other things, all in one feed. This turns out to be an effective, and addictive, information filter.
Two of FriendFeed’s co-founders are ex-Googlers Paul Buchheit and BretTaylor. Buchheit was the 23rd employee at Google, where he created Gmail and implemented many of its innovative features. He developed the original prototype of Google AdSense, and was responsible for Google’s famous “Don’t be evil” motto. Taylor led the development of Google Maps and Google Local.
I’d be happy to fill his shoes
http://pitches..../pitch/47-yovia
I wish Steve Jobs could be younger…
He is a true iCon i believe
blinkenlights.com/classiccmp/gateswhine.html
“I would appreciate letters from any one who wants to pay up”
blogs.computerworld.com/node/2803
“Gates: This social-networking thing takes you to crazy places.
WSJ: But those were stolen, correct?
Gates: Stolen’s a strong word. It’s copyrighted content that the owner wasn’t paid for. So yes. ”
about.com/library/blgatesbill.htm
“in 1989, he was arrested for suspicion of driving drunk, but the charges were later reduced.”
http://www.usdo...es/ms_index.htm
Let’s not forget the bad side of Bill. Like the fact that he’s a flaming hypocrite.
With that said;
Bill can head up my company and sell social networking script if he wants. I always need somebody like him.
He is truly an extraordinaire!
One that history will always remember as the person who made computing experience possible in a way that is democratic and easily available in almost any branded/clone PC.
As a human being, he inspires humanity to move forward not just in technology but in humanity itself as a community to embrace good. His next role in his philanthropic foundation will be his biggest challenge yet to create another spot in the history books.
Well done and congratulations!
Warmest,
Darren Lee
http://www.adexcel.com
I think Steve Ballmer will fill his shoes just fine..
why are people making such a big deal of this, it’s not like Steve can’t pick up the phone and say hey bill “what you think?”
If the conversation regards trying to “fill the shoes” of Bill Gates, you have to determine the criteria for evaluation. Bill Gates legacy will partially be remembered for the influence he had on businesses and everyday consumers. His product (windows) turned into something that people HAD to have. You can’t conduct business in 90% of companies without hopping onto a computer powered by window software. Its safe to say consumers heavily relied upon Gate’s software to get through the day (and they still do). The flexibility, openness, and exponentially growing power of the web will ultimately destroy the Microsoft (desktop) juggernaut, unless they rolled out some sort of product that was designed for the web, and had as much impact as a windows did.
The only comparisons to a Bill Gates currently is Jerry Yang…………….. JK. The Google could maybe take the cake. Their product, the most trafficked search engine in the world, is the starting point for discovery of knowledge and information – that has an enormous value to it. If search stays as the focal point of the web surfing experience, expect Larry and Serge to keep making noise. The question becomes will they continue their involvement in as heavy a fashion as Bill Gates did late into his career? …. here is an example of what the characteristics these great leaders all have in common (look at the excerpt) http://www.read...ex.php?RTA=web2
I vote for Larry & Sergey mainly because they’ve convinced the world that we need Google like Howard Schultz convinced us that we’d pay over $4 for a cup of Starbuck’s coffee.
The drunk driving url didn’t come through correctly, here it is. Little known fact about him. Most people do not know this.
crime.about.com/od/famousdiduno/ig/celebrity_mugshots/gatesbill.htm
“in 1989, he was arrested for suspicion of driving drunk, but the charges were later reduced.”
I wish Techcrunch would stop comparing Twitter, a service completely unheard of outside of Silicon Valley, to internet behemoths like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, et al.
If we’re talking about filling the shoes of tech influence, then Twitter is merely a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of the left shoe. Please start treat it as such.
A very disappointing article. Instead of focusing on the greatest pioneer of modern day computing, you’ve used this as an excuse to trot out your usual linkage to everything Web2.0, with Facebook at the top of course.
Absolutely no thought put into the list of ’successors’, you’ve just listed everyone who is prominent at the minute. Half of them will be forgotten in a year anyway.
facebook Mark Zuckerberg
please what the hell are you smoking?
facebook is a niche service
him being the next bill gates is laughable
Who will fill his shoes…..
Ah, no one. The days when a kid could have his friend call a calculator company pretending to be him, then drive out to New Mexico and hustle a hardware vendor are long gone.
Bill made sure of that with his ruthless pushes for globalization. The days of solid living and great jobs went with his revolution.
That is his legacy in my opinion.
With that said, if he wants to sell my software for me, he’s welcome to do it in his retirement.
First of all congratulations to Bill. Although I am not a fan of Microsoft and its business practices I can;t help it but acknowledge that his achievements are out of this world. I also have to give kudos to him for leaving the corporate world to do even more remarkable things to humanity. It is all to easy to stay in the corporate mill for tool long and he took the right steps at the right time.
As for who is going to replace him in the tech / biz world I don’t think voting for someone will lead anywhere. Especially today we should keep in mind that true heroes arise based on their achievements and nothing else. So let’s see what the guys on your list above are going to achieve (beyond what they’ve already done) and maybe compare them to Bill in another decade.
Good post, well written. This part though ..
> The computing platform of choice today is the Web.
erhm .. Web is hardly a _computing_ platform. It might be the data accumulation platform, but computing platform, in a conventional sense of the term, it is not.
I don’t agree with the premise of the article. There’s no comparison between Gates and any of these people. Paul Allen buys the rights to Tim Patterson’s SCP DOS in 1980, then turns around and licenses it to IBM for their 5150. Presto Chango, every business computer on the planet gets Microsoft’s OS for the next 28 years and counting. Sure, go ahead and compare Microsoft to Google, or Amazon, or Facebook. But to compare Brin or Bezos with Gates is like comparing George Washington, or Benjamin Franklin, with Bill Clinton. One is a founding father, the other introduced the Family Leave Act (and NAFTA!)
Ok, ok I understand you are trying to distinguish the PC era from the Web. But I still ain’t pickin’ up what your layin’ down. Make the case in 15 years, and it might stick.
Including the friendfeed founders as the “next bill gates” in the same article as Sergey and Larry is a joke. This article is a joke. The whole thing is one big freaking joke.
Bill Gates is an extremely inspirational figure.
With all due respect to the people mentioned in the article and to the author, I believe a true icon can only be realised once he is formed.
“Don’t worry about what anybody else is going to do. The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” – Alan Kay (1940-present)
No one is good for that position. Honestly I believe that because of Bill Gates millions have jobs and many companies have big revenues. Because it doesn’t matter what some people might say, Microsoft products and services are used by everyone.
He has his place in the IT&C Hall of Fame… and one of the front seats in my opinion.
Thank you MS, thank you Bill Gates.
You can’t be serious! You are comparing people on this list to Bill Gates? Do you have any idea how big a difference is between Microsoft and
Twitter/Facebook/Digg/Slide etc etc..
And you threw in FriendFeed also in there??
Is there any credibility left in TC? Do you guyz get these stupid lists edited by Michael or not?
Just throw in whatever name comes to head!! Moronic!
Oh, as an ideea, put in that poll the “none” option.
Another thought provoking and introspective article. TechCrunch at its finest!
I think the answer, more for now is Larry and Sergey, for their products truly touch the entire web, just like Gate’s touches entire PC industry. They’ve done so in a way that makes billions of dollars, and that means they’re going to be around for a while, just like Microsoft. Facebook, while touching the lives of many, still can’t seem to figure out how to make money.
As for Levchin, I’m not impressed. Woo-hoo slide shows on myspace profiles. Yawn. Paypal was impressive though, I’ll give him that. And I hear he works pretty hard.
I think the REAL question, is who will fill Larry and Sergey’s shoes when the web becomes what it will become next.
All the nominees you listed, with the exception of Google and Amazon, run extremely niche services that millions of people do not use and have never heard of. And will never have a use for because they are unproductive. But these people run Windows, and they know Microsoft and Bill Gates.
This is a terrible list of candidates. You’ve only listed some popular websites founders / operators; but Microsoft, and Gates in particular, are not well known for their websites, but rather their software.
Comparing a legendary software maker and business man to someone else in a comparable field would be more appropriate than comparing him to the founders of a photo sharing site. The comparison is ludicrous!
will failedblog be the next techcrunch
None of the above.
Someone that democratizes energy production, if that ever happens. “The spice must flow!”
Steve Jobs filled Gates’ shoes years ago. The real question is: who will fill Steve Job’s shoes?
I am not sure that Bill Gates is entirety the one who is responsible for all we have in PC’s. Sure he started and owned Microsoft – but even if He hadn’t – someone else would have. He also didn’t build the computers or systems we use – his employee’s did.
Bill Gates became a business man that just happened to be in the right place when computers took off. As well be the next “Bill Gates”….
My choice is not present in the list ….looks like you missed it out …
I can only fill Bill Gates shoes…
Not only we both are born on the same day, we both also think the same way….
Check my profile
http://www.rash...ranjanpadhy.com
Half the options on that poll are laughable.. Kevin Rose? Twitter? Slide? Zuck? At least propose people who have business models that can create sustainable profit.
Man, this is why I am seriously considering NOT reading TC any more.
That list of people to fill Gates’s “shoes” is insane. Some of the names made sense…like Larry Page/ Sergey Brin. Bezos and Benioff where good too.
But give me a break! KEVIN ROSE? Evan Williams??? COME ON!
Granted, they have very successful sites but let’s be real here. Bill Gates started a PROFITABLE EMPIRE based on an old technique called supply and demand. People demanded Microsoft’s products and MS supplied them.
But to rank Digg and Twitter in the same playing field as MS is laughable. Do those companies even make money? I’m sure they do…but $14B NET PROFIT per year? Hardly. Hearing Kevin Rose as the next Bill Gates makes me want to puke. I wish Kevin well. I hope he does continue his success.
The day I see Digg or Twitter on over a BILLION computers then I will eat my words.
cbmeeks
The large problem you have with the companies listed, is that Bill, Paul & Steve had a controlling share of their company at the same stage. These people do not.
They are largely at the mercy of Venture Cap and investors.
Bill was the boss. Both financially and executively. That is the difference that further makes it impossible for these people to fill his shoes.
These peoples’ influence over their respective company is crippled compared to Bill Gates at Microsoft. Bill was a tyrant as was Jobs and others that ran software companies back then. What they did would be considered highly unacceptable by today’s standards.
what a terrible, laughable list of names in that poll
The large problem you have with the companies listed, is that Bill, Paul and Steve had a controlling share of their company at the same stage. These people do not. They are largely at the mercy of venture cap and investors. Bill was the boss. Both financially and in an executive roll. That is the difference that further makes it impossible for these people to fill his shoes. These peoples’ influence over their respective company is crippled compared to Bill at Microsoft. Bill was a tyrant as was Jobs and others that ran software companies back then. What they did would be considered highly unacceptable by today’s standards.
i think the main criteria for a Bill-replacement is someone who cares about the user experience.
Have you ever used an Apple or Adobe piece of software compared with something similar from Microsoft?
The only difference really is having Project Managers and eventually all the way up to the CEO who really care about the user experience.
At the moment, no one at Microsoft does, which is a shame.
I know exactly who will fill his shoes… A much poorer man will fill his shoes.
Its so funny that founders of Facebook, twitter , Flickr & FriendFeed is on the list. What are they ? No body even knows abt it.
Original Sin said…
If we’re talking about filling the shoes of tech influence, then Twitter is merely a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of the left shoe.
Amen to that.
Twitter? Facebook? Digg? Flick’r?
Life on earth (businesses or personal) don’t depend on them if they disappear today.
slow news day?
Why Sergey Brin and Larry Page ? Google has had success in basically only one front – ad placement, little else. Does Google have any successful “products” you can actually buy ? No.
Would Brin and Page actually know how to run a company which competes with the likes of Apple, Sony, or IBM ? Definitily not.
There’s a *huge* difference between a bubble company which produces nothing and whose value is basically a search engine, and a company like Microsoft.
I think its a real insult to Bill Gates’ Legacy to include Kevin Rose, and Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Lenchin, friendfeed, or twitter. I’m sorry Erik, but you lose tons of credibility for even putting them in the same league as Mr.Gates. I highly doubt from what I’ve seen that any of these people will come close to his legacy. Mr. Gates was far ahead of his time. I am no fanboy in fact I use linux at home, but you have to respect what Mr Gates has done. Why not include Tom anderson of MySpace or Michael Arlington of Techcrunch in your list too , it seems like you’ll throw anybody that has a somewhat successful web site on this list. Its a joke. Watch Pirates of Silicon Valley, read a book , and tell me if anything these guys are doing are comparable.
Whoever does fill them will have a lot of work to do.
Thousands of MS employees to blow up at in meetings, calling them stupid and asking what schools they attended. Hundreds of thousands of business partners to cheat and offend. More elected representatives to buy, more Justice Department officials to ignore, and new EU trade commissioners to lie to (and then pay).
He’ll have new critical markets to miss, and new lame and cynical branding initiatives to launch. Fortunately, he won’t have to invent new ways to waste the company’s diminishing monopoly revenues – the online services division and bad acquisitions should remain reliable here.
It might be tough to keep screwing up Windows as badly as Bill did Vista, but here an arrogant, slack company culture will help out any successor.
But it won’t be fun to watch any more. Gates will drift off on his way to becoming Saint Bill on a foundation built on intimidation and deception, and the new guy will just be some corporate hack presiding over the fall.
Allison Peinngtion said…
He hadn’t – someone else would have. He also didn’t build the computers or systems we use – his employee’s did.
This is a self-referential argument that has no ending. Here is how your argument (in italic) goes.
Allison argued…
If it wasn’t Bill Gates who was responsible for bringing PC to the masses then someone would have done it.
Let’s suppose that someone was David Zuckerberg who was responsible for bringing PC to the masses and not Bill Gates.
Allison argued…
If it wasn’t David Zuckerberg who was responsible for bringing PC to the masses then someone would have done it.
Let’s suppose that someone was George Bush who was responsible for bringing PC to the masses and not Bill Gates.
Allison argued…
If it wasn’t George Bush who was responsible for bringing PC to the masses then someone would have done it.
Let’s suppose that someone was George Clooney who was responsible for bringing PC to the masses and not Bill Gates.
Allison argued…
If it wasn’t George Clooney who was responsible for bringing PC to the masses then someone would have done it.
and so on and on and on…
the foundation is a remarkable achievement
Friendfeed?
Twitter?
C’mon guys…cool apps for sure, but 1) they’re waaaay too early-stage to be placed anywhere near the level of Amazon & Google and 2) clever as they are, those apps don’t strike me as future Fortune 500 companies.
MS was a great experience though there were lots of fuckers
testing comments
It almost seems like this list was put together for its controversy factor, since half the names on here are laughable. You can’t seriously compare Google and Amazon to Facebook and FriendFeed.
Only three of the firms are having significant impact: Google, Amazon and Facebook.
Sergey and Larry have created a company that is definately defining the web … but they don’t have the presence that Gates had.
Bezos has changed retailing, and has the charisma to be like Gates — and AWS may emerge as the leading PaaS.
Facebook continues to evolve and change the web — making it more social — and Mark is learning to fill his role as CEO of a billion dollar company. He is also young and ambitious with a clear vision of making change.
All the rest of the list are Sillicon Valleys darlings — good people that have done great things — but an order of magnitude or more less influence then Gates.
In some ways, a typical article from Erikk that gets people to read the article and comment (here I am!)
Why isn’t Mike Arrington on the list while you’re at it?
@ Jerry – Well why not Yang? y’all playa-haters!
People have to remember this email of Bill Gates:
http://blog.sea...asp?source=mypi
It’s just funny as hell! Anyways, he did a good job, and a greater job that he decided to let Microsoft sink by itself.