bgC3 – Bill Gates’ new company
Bill Gates has been a stalwart in the world of technology since he founded Microsoft alongside Paul Allen in 1975. He has since retired from the day to day running of the company but remains a big part of the set-up. But that, and his involvement with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is clearly not enough, so he has set a new company up, mysteriously named bgC3.
TechFlash, a newly launched website from tech reporters Todd Bishop, Eric Engleman, and John Cook got the scoop on the company, which has actually been in existence since March 2008 under the name Carillon Holdings but which seems to have evolved over the past few months to become bgC3.
The name was formally adopted in early July, just a few days after Gates retired from Microsoft. The name is thought to stand for Bill Gates Catalyst 3, with the Catalyst standing for the role Gates is intending to play in bringing together new people and new ideas. The 3 refers to this being his third big venture, the other two obviously being Microsoft and the Foundation.
bgC3 has offices in Kirkland, not far from Bill Gates palatial home on Lake Washington. bgC3 is described in official federal trademark filings as a think tank specialising in “scientific and technological services,” “industrial analysis and research,” and “design and development of computer hardware and software.”
Gates has always been interested in using his stature and wealth to do more than just create new products to add to his bank balance, and bgC3 looks like being a natural addition to the Foundation. With Gates not working at Microsoft on a daily basis, it seems likely that a huge chunk of his time will now be spent at the new company trying to solve problems in fields as diverse as energy, biofuels, and economics.
The offices are thought to be filled with state of the art Microsoft technology, including a Surface tabletop computer which acts as the company guestbook. bgC3 is unlikely to be the start of something as huge as Microsoft however, as the office space is limited to between 40 and 60 people.
I always thought it to be highly unlikely that Gates would retire gracefully and sit in his mansion spending his billions on shopping channel purchases, though that would have been kind of funny. And it seems he’s in the process of proving his retirement is going to involve more than just appearing in a couple of shoddy adverts with Jerry Seinfeld.
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October 22nd, 2008
I think he is up to something a little more profound. I posted about it in my blog — for one thing, Gates never starts small companies or foundations. Why do we think this is a small start-up?
October 29th, 2008
“Bill Gates has been a stalwart in the world of technology since he founded Microsoft alongside Paul Allen in 1975.”
Correction: Bill Gates has been a *criminal* since he founded Microsoft.
@Brandon, profundity is not in Bill Gate’s dictionary. As for him starting small companies, I assume that you’ve seen the 1978 photograph of the original staff of Microsoft?