Working World

Outside of computer circles, he’s a lot less famous than his former business partner, Bill Gates, and he is somewhat less rich. But at those levels, degrees of relative wealth hardly matter. Paul Allen, who co-founded Microsoft, is worth an estimated $18 billion, making him the fifth wealthiest person in America (Forbes 2007).

Allen and Gates met at a private school in Seattle when they were 14 and 12. In the mid-70s, they wrote a customized BASIC program for a very early microcomputer called the Altair and formed a legal partnership called Microsoft. When IBM began making personal computers in 1980, Microsoft got the contract to provide a disk operating system, which they licensed, rather than sold, to IBM, allowing Gates and Allen to supply IBM clone manufacturers with operating systems as well. MS-DOS became the industry standard, selling $32 million in software in the first three years.

In 1983, Allen was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease, a form of cancer, and left the company to receive bone marrow transplants and radiation treatment. These treatments were successful, and he recovered but never returned to the company. He still owned 28 percent of the company when it went public in 1985 (compared to Gates’s 49 percent) and served on the board of directors until late 2000. However, his major interests have been elsewhere for many years.

Currently, Allen is chairman of a private asset management company called Vulcan, Inc. and has founded, owned or invested in over 140 media, entertainment and technology companies. Vulcan obtained 60 acres in South Lake Union, a Seattle district being developed as a biotechnology hub and mixed use community. The company has the capability to develop 10 million square feet of residential, retail, commercial and research space in this area.

Allen’s holdings, interests and activities are vast and varied. His website, www.paulallen.com, devotes pages to his businesses, but also to his museum collections and philanthropic, scientific and sports endeavors. His music and science fiction museum in Seattle houses Jimi Hendrix and Star Trek memorabilia, and his private art collection contains works by many major impressionists and modern artists such as Monet, Van Gogh and Picasso.

Allen has invested in brain mapping research and SpaceShipOne, which won the XPrize for being the first privately built suborbital spacecraft. In addition, he owns the Seattle Seahawks football team and the Portland Trailblazers basketball team.

The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation administers charitable giving that funds his museums, the Allen Institute for Brain Science and a new library, art center, computer/engineering center, and medical school facilities at the University of Washington. But it’s not all work. When it’s time to play, Allen can throw a party on his yacht, the Octopus, which is the sixth largest in the world. It’s got its own recording studio, submarine and helicopter. (His other two yachts are smaller.)

A letter posted on his website speaks of how the “varied possibilities of the universe have dazzled him” since childhood. He claims to be driven by these possibilities and the desire to help humanity move forward in its attempts to “find answers to problems, create works of beauty and originality, and to create vital new ideas.” Not a bad way to try to spend $18 billion.

Suzanne Ridgway is a freelance writer and regular columnist for Working World and Working Nurse magazines. Suzanne also writes grant proposals for nonprofit organizations.