Paul allen

Paul Gardner Allen (Seattle, Washington, January 21, 1953 - Seattle, October 15, 2018) was an American businessman, business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. Together with his childhood friend Bill Gates, he founded the Microsoft company in 1975.

Biography

Allen (left) with Bill Gates at Lakeside School, 1970

He attended Lakeside School, a private school located in Seattle, and became friends with Bill Gates, who was three years younger and shared a common enthusiasm for computers.

From the age of 14 he began to be a great computer enthusiast. Allen attended Washington State University, though he dropped out at the age of two to devote himself, along with Bill Gates, to writing commercial software for the new personal computers.

They founded Microsoft (initially "Micro-Soft", the hyphen was dropped a year later) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1975, and started by selling an interpreter for the BASIC language. Allen was instrumental in a deal by Microsoft to buy an operating system called QDOS for $50,000. In this way, Microsoft was able to fulfill its contract to supply the operating system for the new IBM PCs. It was the beginning of remarkable and steady growth for the successful new company.

Allen was forced to resign from Microsoft in 1983 after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, which he overcame after many months of radiation therapy treatment and an SDF bone marrow transplant.

He returned to Microsoft in 1990, when Bill had already become the richest person in the world. He joined the company in a management position, and that same year he created Vulcan Ventures , a venture capital fund specializing in cable and broadband services. Paul Allen participated in more than 140 companies, including Priceline, Dreamworks, GoNet, Oxygen and Metricom.

Among his expensive hobbies, Allen was a sports fan, for which he paid $70 million in 1988 for the Portland Trail Blazers NBA team, and $200 million for the Seattle Seahawks (who won the Super Bowl in 2014). He was one of the minority owners of the Major League Soccer team, the Seattle Sounders FC. He was also a music lover, specifically Rock and Roll. He played the guitar, had a professional recording studio in his home, and funded the Experience Music Project Museum and the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in Seattle. He was fond of searching for extraterrestrial life, and founded several charitable organizations.

In early September 2000, Paul Allen decided to leave Microsoft and all positions he held. In an emotional statement, signed by Bill Gates himself, Allen's contribution to the company's success was recognized. In the future he would act as a strategic advisor. That year, he sold 68 million shares, but when he died he still owned 138 million, which made up the majority of his wealth.

Death

Paul Allen passed away in Seattle on October 15, 2018, due to an illness that had plagued him since 1983.

Philanthropy

Paul Allen giving the Ansari-X prize.

Much of Paul Allen's philanthropy has been devoted to issues related to health and human services, the advancement of science and technology. In 1986 the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation was established to administer his charitable works. Annually, Allen raised 30 million dollars for his foundation. Approximately 75% of the foundation's money goes to various Seattle and Washington State NGOs. 25% is distributed in Portland, Oregon and other cities in the Pacific Northwest.

One of the institutions Allen donated the most money to is the University of Washington. In the 1980s, he contributed nearly $18 million to build a new library named after his father, Kenneth S. Allen. In 2003, she donated $5 million to establish the Faye G. Allen Center for the Visual Arts, in honor of her mother. In 2004, the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science and Engineering was completed, to which he donated the sum of 14 million dollars, being he who contributed the most to such a project. For many years he collaborated with the Washington University School of Medicine, to which he donated $3.2 million.

Paul Allen, who received treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, declared that when he died most of his fortune would be donated to philanthropy. Allen's "fortune" at death was estimated at $17.5 billion.

Allen followed in the footsteps of former teammate Bill Gates and billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who have devoted the vast majority of their wealth to charity.

Venture Investor

Allen ranked 51st on the Forbes magazine list of the world's richest people. Allen, who co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1975, stepped down as director in 1983, when he won his first bout with cancer.

In October 2004 Allen confirmed that he was the sole investor behind Burt Rutan's company Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne suborbital commercial spacecraft project. SpaceShipOne reached an altitude of 115,090m and was the first successful privately funded effort to put a civilian in suborbital space. He won the Ansari X Award and received $10 million.

On December 13, 2011, Allen announced the creation of Stratolaunch systems. This is an orbital launch system consisting of a dual-fuselage, six-engine jet aircraft capable of carrying a rocket at high altitudes; the rocket then separates from its transport aircraft and with its own engines completes its ascent to Earth orbit. If successful, this project would be the first fully privately funded space transportation system. After his death, in January 2019 it was announced that the project was cancelled.

Allen Vulcan Real Estate is a key developer and investor in the development of Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood, a biotech research zone and mixed-use community. Allen was also the largest private landowner in South Lake Union, owning nearly 240,000 square feet in the area.

His holding company has a development capacity of more than 1,000,000 square feet of new housing, office, retail, and biotech research space. The Unión Lago Sur urbanization represents one of the largest urban revitalization projects in the country. Allen made estimated investments in the US of about $200 million as of 2005, and promoted funding for the Seattle Line Streetcar, known as the South Lake Union Streetcar, which runs from Seattle Westlake Center to the southern end of the Lake Union.

The streetcar is a public-private partnership made possible by a local Improvement District (LID) with the support of businesses and residents along the line; which officially began operating on December 12, 2006.

In 2012, The Wall Street Journal called Allen's South Lake Union investment "unexpectedly lucrative" and that led the firm to sell some 170,000 m² of office complexes to Amazon.com for the sum of 1.16 billion dollars, one of the largest office sales in Seattle.

Quest for the Musashi

In March 2015, Paul Allen claimed to have discovered the wreckage of the most heavily firepowered battleship in history, a Japanese ship sunk in 1944 in World War II by the US Navy off the Philippine coast. The billionaire uploaded photos and videos to the Internet of alleged parts of the "Musashi," detected by a robot aboard the "Octopus," Allen's yacht dedicated to exploration and scientific research.

The remains of the ship rest at a depth of almost two kilometers in the Sibuyan Sea, in the center of the Philippine archipelago, the scene of one of the great naval battles of the Pacific War in 1944. "Rest in peace the crew of the Musashi, 1023 lives were lost, in the bombardment of the ship carried out by United States units on October 24, 1944, Allen said on Twitter.

The battleship, which like all major ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy bore the Japanese Imperial seal chrysanthemum on the prow, was equipped with nine 460mm guns, the most firepower ever fielded on a warship by a conventional cannon. Her sister ship, the "Yamato", was wrecked in 1945 in the Battle of Okinawa.

The discovery came after an eight-year search, supported at the documentary level by four countries and using 'advanced technology' to investigate. to probe the seabed, Allen explained in a statement on his website. Coincidentally, the remains of the Musashi are arranged quite similarly to those of her twin, the Yamato .

Manolo Quezon, undersecretary for communications in the Philippine presidency and a prominent historian, said that if verified, it would be a 'major' historical discovery. "It would be like finding the Titanic, because of the status of the ship and her interest," he explained.

The "Musashi" She was one of a trio of superships built by the Japanese during the conflict that, at 263 meters in length, are the largest, most armored and most powerful warships ever built. US warplanes sank the "Musashi" during the Battle of Leyte, considered the greatest naval battle of the war, in which Japan was defeated by American and Australian forces. The Musashi was found at the bottom of an abyssal slope 1900 m deep, the wreck was confirmed by Japanese experts.

Dozens of Japanese ships that sank in the years of conflict have since been found in Philippine waters and many have become popular tourist spots for divers.

"Since my youth I have been fascinated by the history of World War II, inspired by my father's service in the United States Army" "It is an honor to be part of the discovery of a key ship in naval history and to honor the memory of the men who served with incredible courage on board," Allen said.

Wealth

Paul Allen was a regular on Forbes' list of the world's richest people, headed in 2009 by Bill Gates, while Allen had $17.5 billion at the time of his death. 5,000 of those millions constituted by his shares in Microsoft.