| research. But if you want to become as rich as Bill Gates, you have to remember that it is cheaper to wait for a small company to come up with something good and then buy them. In the old days, antitrust laws kept monopolies from buying potential competitors. But not anymore. When Microsoft products were threatened by network computers and Wed-based applications, they simply bought WebTV and Hotmail.
根据传统经济学的经验，垄断者应不惜重金搞科研。但是如果你想成为和比尔盖茨一般的富人，你就必须记得买小公司研发出来的好东西比自主研发所花的成本要更为低廉。过去，反垄断法禁止垄断大户收购其潜在竞争者。但是今非昔日。当微软的产品受到来自网络计算机和基于网络的软件的威胁时，微软采取的仅仅是购买了互联网传输流媒体技术以及电子邮件系统技术的策略。
Another good strategy is to hire the right people. Some of the guys who wrote Microsoft Windows had previous worked on window systems at Xerox PAPC. So Xerox paid for the research; Microsoft paid only for development.
另一个成功的策略就是雇佣了正确的一批人。好些替微软视窗卖命的年轻人原先都效命于施乐公司帕洛阿尔托研究中心。所以说，这个研究中心支付了微软系统的研发费用，而微软仅仅支付了这套系统的改良费用。
Lesson 4: Let Other People Do the Programming 让其他人去做编程工作
If you're a great engineer, it can be frustrating to rely on other people to translate your ideas into reality. However, keep in mind that you're not going to get rich being "just a coder." Bill Gates does code reviews, not coding.
如果你是一个出色的编程人员，那么依靠他人来完成你的程序设计构想称得上是件令人沮丧的事情。然而，你需要牢记的是：仅仅当个电脑程序员是不能成为富人的。比尔盖茨所做的是改进代码质量和确认设计方案，而非编写代码。
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Lesson 5: Train Your New CEO 培养下一个首席执行官
For many it can be painful to run a company of more than 50 people. You spend more time than you'd like sitting in boring meetings, skimming over long legal documents in which you know there are errors but aren't sure how serious, etc. The temptation is to hand over the reins to the first "professional manager" who comes along. And that's what the standard venture capitalist formula dictates. But Bill Gates didn't do that. He hired Steve Ballmer in 1980 and gave him the CEO job 20 years later.
对于许多人来说，管理一个50人以上的公司是件叫人头疼的事情。你要花费更多的时间去应付恼人的会议，去阅读明知有错，却不知错误有多严重的冗长的法律文件。所以，只要一有合适的“职业经理人”，人们就想把手中的缰绳交出去。这就是一般的风险资本家所遵循的模式。但是比尔盖茨不是这样做的。他1980年就开始雇佣史蒂夫·巴尔默，但是过了20年，他才宣布首席执行官的职务由后者接任。
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