Bill Gates did not create Microsoft alone, for he had an entrepreneurial accomplice in Paul Allen. He is the other co-founder of the Microsoft Corporation, the world’s largest software company.

However, Paul Allen did not stay long at Microsoft. He resigned in 1983 after he was diagnosed with cancer and left the company’s board altogether in 2000.

Since then, he has involved himself in a wide spectrum of business interests. He founded Charter Communications, the popular cable TV company, and Vulcan, a holding firm.

With a net worth of more than $10 billion, Paul Allen could well afford his post-Microsoft activities. For one, he is a generous investor in many technology projects. In 2002, he donated $100 million to found the Allen Institute for Brain Science, which successfully created a genetic map of the mouse brain. He also bankrolled the first commercially made spacecraft, SpaceShipOne.

Paul Allen bought NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers in 1988 and NFL’s Seattle Seahawks in 1997. He is also the co-owner of Major League’s Seattle Sounders Football Club. He even helped erect the Rose Garden Arena in Portland in 1993.

A huge Jimi Hendrix fan, Paul Allen built The Experience Music Project, a vast interactive museum in Seattle. Paul Allen also bought into film studio DreamWorks SKG.

Like his Bill Gates, Paul Allen is also a prolific philanthropist. He established the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, which benefits many Washington charities.

Paul Allen was born in 1953 in Seattle. Paul Allen was in ninth grade at Seattle’s Lakeside School when he met Gates, who was then a seventh-grader.

Paul Allen enrolled at the Washington State University but left in 1974. Gates, by then a Harvard University pupil, urged Paul Allen to move to nearby Boston, where he landed work at Honeywell.

History entered a milestone in 1975. Upon reading an article about the Altair 8800, Paul Allen and Gates reckoned the computer lacked a user-friendly programming language. Together they customized one and licensed it to Altair’s maker, MITS.

MITS designated Paul Allen as its software director, but he quit after a year to focus on Microsoft. He had formed the company with Gates in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where MITS was headquartered.

In 1979, Paul Allen and Bill Gates transferred Microsoft to Redmond, Washington. From here, Microsoft launched the MS-DOS operating system, which fast became the standard operating system for personal computers the world over. Microsoft has since launched many indispensable products, many of which bears Paul Allen’s imprint.