Paul AllenInvestor

Paul Gardner Allen is an American business magnate, investor and philanthropist, best known as the co-founder, with Bill Gates, of Microsoft Corporation. Wikipedia Born: January 21, 1953 (age 61), Seattle, Washington, United States Siblings: Jody Patton Education: Lakeside School, Washington State University Parents: Faye G. Allen, Kenneth S. Allen Awards: News & Documentary Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Programming – Long Form Movies and TV shows: Black Sky: The Race for Space, Me & Isaac Newton, Inspirations

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Paul AllenBirthday : 01/21/1953Place of birth : Seattle (Washington) - USACountry of residence : USALinked companies : Microsoft Corporation - Costco Wholesale Corporation - Amazon.com, Inc.

Biography

Co-founder of Microsoft with Bill Gates, Paul Allen has a passion for computing and sports. At the head of the group Venture Productions, he brilliantly multiplies his investments in information technology companies, new technology and sports. Three areas he controls and which enabled him to haul up to the 57th place of Forbes ranking in 2011 with a personal fortune of 13 billion of dollars. 

It is on the benches of the school that Paul Allen and Bill Gates meet. Motivated by a passion for programming, they fiddle with all programs and computer games. 

Paul Allen learns at the University of Washington the secrets of computer programming. After two years, he considers knowing enough things to start working. He is hired by a home automation company in Boston. But the company is a too small playground for this informatics bulimic. 

He does not hesitate when his childhood friend Bill Gates asked him to associate with him in order to sell programming to others. Together, they found Microsoft and develop the first language MS DOS which they sell from 1981 to IBM. 

Compensation by IBM of $ 35 for each copy allows Microsoft to build a small gold mine and make its IPO in 1986. Three years before, Paul Allen leaves the technical direction and preserves his position on the board of directors where he stays until 2000. 

In 1997, Paul Allen founded Vulcan Productions, a film production company. At the same time, he invested heavily in high technology, media and sport. 

Citations« The possible is always redefined. I am really concerned about humanity and its progress ».BibliographieThe Accidental Zillionaire : Demystifying Paul Allen written by Laura Rich published by Wiley (2002)

Book of Paul allen

About the Book

It all started on a snowy day in December 1974, when he was twenty-one years old. After buying the new issue of Popular Electronics in Harvard Square, Allen ran to show it to his best friend from Seattle, Bill Gates, then a Harvard undergrad. The magazine's cover story featured the Altair 8800, the first true personal computer; Allen knew that he and Gates had the skills to code a programming language for it. When Gates agreed to collaborate on BASIC for the Altair, one of the most influential partnerships of the digital era was up and running. 

While much has been written about Microsoft's early years, Allen has never before told the story from his point of view. Nor has he previously talked about the details of his complex relationship with Gates or his behind-closed-doors perspective on how a struggling start-up became the most powerful technology company in the world. Idea Man is the candid and long-awaited memoir of an intensely private person, a tale of triumphant highs and terrifying lows. 

After becoming seriously ill with Hodgkin's lymphoma in 1982, Allen began scaling back his involvement with Microsoft. He recovered and started using his fortune—and his ideas—for a life of adventure and discovery, from the first privately funded spacecraft (SpaceShipOne) to a landmark breakthrough in neuroscience (the Allen Brain Atlas). 

More recently, after fighting back another bout with lymphoma, this time non-Hodgkin's, Allen decided it was time to write his memoirs. 

Idea Man is an astonishing true story of ideas made real. 

About the Author

Paul G. Allen is a technologist and leading philanthropist who started Microsoft with Bill Gates. He is founder and chairman of Vulcan Inc., the company that oversees his business and philanthropic activities. 

Allen started Microsoft with Gates, a childhood friend, in Albuquerque in 1975. He was the company's chief technologist until he left in 1983. Today, Allen continues the search for knowledge that led to the creation of Microsoft and has become one of the most generous and best-known philanthropists in America. He supports and advances world-class projects and high-impact initiatives that improve the way people live, learn, work and experience the world through arts, science, education, entertainment, sports, business and technology.

His multibillion-dollar investment portfolio includes a major real estate redevelopment in Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood and holdings in dozens of technology, media and other companies. 

He also owns the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League, the Portland Trail Blazers of the National Basketball Association, and is part of the primary ownership group for the Seattle Sounders FC, the city's Major League Soccer team. 

With lifetime giving of more than $1.5 billion, Allen has pledged to leave a majority of his estate to philanthropy. He gives back to the community through the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, which works to transform individual lives and strengthen communities by supporting arts and culture, youth engagement, community development and social change, and scientific and technological innovation. He also gives directly, including $26 million in 2010 to Washington State University for the Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health. 

In 2003, he created the Allen Institute for Brain Science to accelerate understanding of the human brain in health and disease. The Seattle-based nonprofit pursues unprecedented large-scale research initiatives that result in knowledge, data and tools intended to fuel discovery throughout the broader scientific community. The Institute has generated groundbreaking online public resources that integrate extensive genomic and neuroanatomical data, including interactive atlases of the mouse and human brain. These resources have become staple research tools for scientists worldwide, helping to lead them to insights about neurological function and brain-related diseases and disorders. Given the Institute's achievements, in March 2012, Allen pledged $300 million to significantly expand its scientific programs. This funding brought his total commitment to date to $500 million and launched three new initiatives that will tackle some of the most fundamental and complex questions in brain science. 

In 2004, Allen funded SpaceShipOne, the first privately-backed effort to successfully put a civilian in suborbital space, winning him and designer Burt Rutan the Ansari X-Prize. In 2011, Allen got back into the space business with the formation of Stratolaunch Systems which is developing an innovative airborne launch system. It will utilize the largest aircraft ever manufactured and will provide orbital access to space with greater safety, cost-effectiveness and flexibility.

His independent film company, Vulcan Productions, has won numerous awards for feature films and documentaries, including the Emmy Award-winning Rx for Survival–A Global Health Challenge; the Peabody Award-winning Judgment Day: Intelligent Design; the PBS series This Emotional Life; and the PBS series The Blues, which Martin Scorsese executive produced with Allen and Jo Lynn Allen. 

Idea Man, Allen's 2011 memoir, was a New York Times bestseller. 

Allen is also founder of the EMP Museum, Seattle's critically acclaimed interactive museum of music, popular culture and science fiction; the Flying Heritage Collection, an assemblage of rare World War II aircraft restored to flying condition and shared with the public; and the Living Computer Museum, a collection of restored vintage timesharing computer equipment.