Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft

The memoir of Paul Allen is interesting. Not necessarily historic or even well researched. It has quite a bit of repetition. In some ways it is a schizophrenic look at a man who made a lot of money, spent a lot of money and had poor advice along the way. In reading it there were times where I wondered if I was reading a book about a brilliant engineer or a kid who found twenty dollars outside a candy store. One moment he would praise his relationship with Bill Gates and the next minute damn it with faint praise. I liked some of the historical data and I felt the warmth at some of his philanthropic donations, but the book left me underwhelmed with it as a history.

Super insight into so many aspects of this interesting man and the things he has been involved in up to the time of the writing. Paul Allen is underrated I think - big time - a brilliant man and so many little tidbits in the book illustrate it. No question Gates is smart too, but this really gives some insight into Paul Allen and the significance of him in Microsoft's development.I don't think people realize the other things he is doing - his brain project for instance - these are things that could and are having tremendous impact on humanity.I came away with not only good insight, but certainly food for thought about much larger things. For one - when you read about the education he and Gates were getting in high school and junior high - it pales to mine and probably most others. I think it shows how the 'right' education, early enough, is really important.

Very interesting book - gives you a more complete understanding of the early days of Microsoft. Paul Allen is often forgotten - all of the attention is given to Bill Gates. You only get part of the picture if you leave out Allen's story.I am reminded of Apple, which was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Wozniak was the engineer, and Jobs was the salesman. Without both of them, there never would have been an Apple Corporation. If you want Woz's story, read his book "iWoz".

I enjoyed reading of Paul Allen's life adventures, with a bit of awe as to what looked like a fun ride, until the work became work. The tales of him and young Bill Gates, their colleagues and those who began Microsoft were fascinating. I also enjoyed many of the things he's involved himself with since. Who wouldn't want that kind of money and spend the rest of your life pursuing all of your interests? I cannot complete the review without adding my opinion of how he sounds in the book. Many talk of how he portrayed Bill Gates, but I found it to be not from bitterness or continuing wounds. He talks of the good and the bad, and there is that in all of out lives. The latter part of the book, he begins sounding like he has been undervalued, that his 'many ideas' were wonderful, and others dropped the ball. Many of his ideas were too far advanced for the time, and some unable to attain, as anyone venturing into such things does so to make money. You can't spend it without intending to make some back, so some ideas, good as they may be, need to be scrapped for lack of a return on such endeavors. I hsven't finished the book yet, so my review doesn't encompass how the book finally looks when complete, but A GOOD READ, non-the-less.

This book details Paul Allen's story on the beginning of Microsoft and his relationship with Bill Gates. The 2nd half of the book deals with his sport teams (TrailBlazers and Seahawks), space planes, investments, life as a wealthy mogul, and recent events.Contrary to the press reports, this book draws a neutral portrait of Bill Gates. He is both highly praised and criticized. The book truly delivers an unvarnished view of Bill Gates and the beginnings of Microsoft. If you are into tech-history, this book should not be missed.I think the title "Idea Man" is spot-on. Paul is the founding Visionary of Microsoft. He had the world-changing ideas and inspirations. But it was mostly Bill Gates who sorted them out and drove Paul Allen and rest of Microsoft's employees to execute those ideas into a reality. It is important to note that game changing ideas at Microsoft were somewhat lacking after Paul Allen left Microsoft. Instead, Microsoft became more like Bill Gates, an entity that is ruthless, sucessful, and technically brilliant. Yet, Microsoft lacked a vision and played mostly catchup to other visionary companies and ideas (Netscape, Apple, smartPhones, tablets, game consoles etc). I am convinced that Microsoft may have been a different and a more visionary company if Paul Allen had stayed.I have also read the two books written by Bill Gates. In both books, Bill Gates gives strong endorsement and credit to Paul Allen for the co-founding of Microsoft. The two men have known each other for over 40 years and grew up together. The bond between the two seems very deep.Pros:1)This book is written in an extremely fluid style. I am not sure if Paul hired a ghostwriter, but if the book was mostly first-hand written, then I am impressed.2)Paul Allen provides details on his days with Bill Gates at Lakeside school, Harvard, and Microsoft. When Paul Allen asked Bill Gates how large their software company could be, Bill replied "about 35 employees" and Paul Allen thought that was little ambitious.3)The story of the founding and the early days of Microsoft was very engaging. It kept me up until 4am reading this book.Cons:1)Where is the sage advice? What would have Paul Allen done differently? He takes a passive retroactive account of his past, and does not delve too much into the lessons he has learned from them.2)Where is the analysis of the past, the current, and the future state of technology? I am especially interested on Paul Allen's take on technology's future 10-20 years down the road.3)This book is missing huge parts of Paul Allen's life. Paul Allen writes mostly about his relationship with his parents and Bill Gates. I don't think one could categorize this book as a complete autobiography.Overall, I highly recommend this book. This book is not written as a completely autobiography. Yet, it provides rich details on many things people would find interesting and engaging.

I was a young teenager in the early 1980s and grew up through the micro revolution. In the 90s I started programming Windows Desktop Applications and have been doing so ever since.So for me, this book was mainly of interest because of Paul Allen's involvement in the early days of the personal computer.The first few obligatory chapters about early years and parents were Ok reading, but when it got to his first encounters with Bill was where the book became fascinating. The next 8 or 9 chapters about the formation and success of Microsoft were literally thrilling reading, I could hardly put the book down.However after Paul left Microsoft the story (for me) trails off. You go from reading about inside information about Microsoft, IBM, Xerox et. al. to an entire chapter about Basketball which bored me to tears. Then there's an entire chapter about American football which I largely skipped. There are a few interesting chapters after that about the X-Prize (I learned a lot of stuff from that), and there's a few chapters about Paul's failed efforts to get into the internet business.So overall - 4 stars because the Microsoft years were absolutely enthralling. But the rest of it just felt like the ramblings of an unsatisfied multi-billionnaire. I'd have preferred a whole book about the softwar side of Paul and the Microsoft story in more depth.

Paul Allen. Nice bloke, really. Maybe a bit of an accidental billionaire, but it's hard to grudge him the cash. He pretty much changed the world, after all, even if he was, as he admits, merely standing and building on the shoulders of giants. Money isn't everything though, and this is another of those life stories where the music of Neil Sedaka plays in the background as a soundtrack: "I miss the hungry years, we never had a dime...."I think you'll have to be a bit of a geek to be really gripped by the first half of this book as Allen and Gates struggle to code Microsoft to the top. The key watersheds in the history of the company are written about slightly dispassionately and you are given a flavour of the necessary ruthlessness that permeated the computer industry and obviously still does. Stuck for a good idea? Then go and steal one of your competitors'. (The current patent wars in technology are an indicator that copying is not a form of flattery.) Allen writes almost reluctantly, I felt, about his partner in crime, Bill Gates, and the picture painted isn't one that adds much warmth to one of the world's richest men. Allen, being the nice guy he seems to be, holds back about how he felt Gates stiffed him, dissed him and finally ignored him as Microsoft steamed towards world domination. The final assessment of Microsoft losing out to Apple, Google and the rest seem tinged with an element of glee. But it was Allen's baby too, so the affection is still there.Halfway through the book and Allen is through with Microsoft, which somewhat surprised me. Was that it? Now as rich as Croesus, what should Allen do with his burgeoning cash pile? He likes basketball, so why not buy a team? And a football team. Build them a half billion dollar stadium on top, to play in. He could have become the ultimate sports mogul, but he's involved in every other project and distraction that comes his way. While Donald Trump wrote The Art of the Deal, Allen works hard on what seems to be the Fart of the Deal, and gamely recounts some of the exceedingly smelly and disastrous investments he made during the Internet years. One bad deal alone cost him $8 billion, while he admits in print that selling too quickly out of AOL cost him $40 billion. It must have been hard writing that sentence.Allen lives in a different financial stratosphere to everyone except about a handful of individuals on the planet. He splurges cash everywhere. He sees his childhood cinema going to the dogs, so he just buys it and does it up. He liked Hendrix as a youth, so he basically buys everything from guitars to underpants that the man owned and then builds a museum to house them in. He builds a rocket to the moon. After a while, you really begin to think that Gates' philanthropy is an infinitely better deal. Eventually, and maybe inevitably, we get to his charitable work, but he skims over it really, in the same way he does with his battles with his health. The book leaves you with the feeling that Allen knows the clock is ticking and that he has so much to do. His wealth affords him boundless opportunities but, if you haven't got your health....This was a very readable autobiography, a book of two halves maybe, but it always kept my interest.

There are a number of fascinating stories that Paul Allen could have told. He could write a whole book on the acquisition, development and delivery of MS/DOS to IBM and then to other PC makers. Paul Allen devotes only a couple of pages to this topic - indeed just enough to support his claim that it was his idea to use Tom Patterson's 86-DOS after Jack Sams, an IBM employee suggested to Microsoft that they supply an OS. It seems that at the beginning, neither Sams, Gates nor Allen really appreciated the value of owning and controlling the operating system.Allen also claims to be the idea man behind MS Windows having seen the original Xerox Star computer with its GUI bitmapped display at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. The development of MS Windows, the rivalry with Apple, the development of the MAC and then the MS Windows versions of Word and Excel would be another fascinating story. All we are told is that Allen was instrumental in the hiring of Charles Simonyi from Xerox - their expert in WYSIWYG word processor.There is a great deal of detail about the £8 billion invested in Cable networks that Allen wrote off, but the reader is still left wondering how and why this all happened. Even for Allen $8B is quite a big chunk of cash.I was originally going to give this book 3 stars, because it could, indeed should, have been an absolutely compelling read and it isn't. Nevertheless, Allen does relate snippets of the history of the Personal Computer Industry that are interesting enough to justify 5 stars at a pinch.Note to Publisher: The table of contents in my edition says the index appears on page 347. There is no page 347 and there is no index which is a pity.

Most people will probably read this book because they are interested in the early years of Microsoft, and that is certainly well covered in the book. It's a warts-and-all account which is not entirely flattering for Bill Gates. This section of the book was fascinating, and if you're involved in the IT industry you should probably buy and read the book just for this.However, the book also documents Allen's time after Microsoft, when he has lived the billionaire's lifestyle - travelling to far-away places, buying a super-yacht and sports teams (pity he hasn't yet bought Man United off the Glaziers...), setting up a museum and playing guitar with the rock stars. But he's also also recovered twice from cancer, and he's contributed strongly to the human genome project. I nearly didn't bother with this section of the book, and I glad that I did because some of it is worthwhile and fascinating, though other parts are a little more than nauseating - or maybe I'm just jealous of such opulent wealth.

I've been in software almost as long as Microsoft has.The book is in two parts, the early years, Microsoft history leading up to the break with Microsoft, and his remaining life since Microsoft.I bought the book partly because I'm interested in software, partly in other peoples life stories.I wasn't disappointed. I learned a lot on the history side because everybody has heard of bill gates, less so of Paul. Very interesting to hear his angle!

Bought as a gift

I got this book after reading Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography. This doesn't live up to that, but it's still good to read. the start of the book for 50-80 pages is quiet interesting all about the early days in computing and Microsoft. But then it also covers all of Paul's activities after Microsoft which i wasn't too happy with as it was all just him selling himself.. You didn't see much about his failures or regrets etc.. but the end of the book got back to computing and end ok.

I looked forward to this book since it was announced. Microsoft is a company that has had a tremendous impact on almost everybody's life, so I was fascinated about finding out some things about how it works and what drives them. Paul Allen seems to have very little knowledge of what happened in Redmond after leaving the firm, so while I gained some insight into the early days, there really wasn't much about it after he left. Instead we get a lot about Paul Allen's charitable work, while important and certainly beneficial to those receiving largesse from him, it does bring down the reading experience. He has also been through some mildly malevolent medical scares, so if you are into billionaire sob stories you might even consider a fifth star.

Wooow what a great guy he was and everyone thinks Bill Gates was the man behind Microsoft and this wonderful book dispels this myth

A definate read to understand how Microsoft got to be what it is and the stresses and strains of getting their.

I knew Microsoft was an important foundation of the tech industry. This book helps complete the picture and highlights Allen's significant contribution. Well worth a read

Excellent read. Paul Allen is clearly a unique breed of person who has not let wealth obscure his drive to improve himself and his chosen areas. A real 'what if' thinker.

Excellent history of early Microsoft years, especially MITS era. The rest is 'meh', mildly interesting but not too much substance...

I read this book last year and thought it was a really interesting account of his life.Would defiantly recommend it as not only does it talk about his time at Microsoft it also talks about his life after, what he has invested in and what he does now with his wealth.Interesting read

Boring