What Is Paul Allen?

Buying a sports team is a good idea if you're a billionaire. If you're a billionaire and Microsoft co-founder, you can buy as many sports teams as you want. That's what Paul Allen did when he purchased the Portland Trailblazers in 1988 and later bought the Seattle Seahawks in 1996. Since he's also an investor, he owns several other real estate and aerospace companies, which have paid off handsomely for him over the years. He quit Microsoft in 1982, citing illness as the reason for stepping down, but stayed on the board until 2000 and continued to earn dividends from his shares until recently, when he sold them off for around $800 million (which is significant because it's about 5% of his total net worth). Paul Allen was from Seattle in 1953 and attended Lakeside School. There, he met Bill Gates, who was three years his junior. The two shared an affection for technology. They both developed their talents and passion for computers by using the school's Teletype terminal to access various time-sharing computer systems. After graduating from Lakeside, After studying at Washington State University for two years, Paul Allen dropped out to become a programmer for Honeywell near Harvard, where Bill Gates was examining. Allen convinced Gates to drop out of school to develop Altair BASIC for MITS together. Microsoft was formed shortly after that, and BASIC interpreters became Microsoft's core business until 1981, when MS-DOS was released. When he left Microsoft in 1982, There were claims that Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were attempting to push him out, so it was difficult to discern whether he died of Hodgkin's disease or was trying to oust him. After Microsoft, Allen founded numerous other businesses in technology and finance. In 1992, he founded Interval Research Corporation with David Liddle. Stratolaunch Systems, an aerospace firm dedicated to creating a sub-orbital launch system using a dual-bodied aircraft, was founded in 2011. Allen is also interested in real estate and owns the Portland Trail Blazers, an NBA team, and the Seattle Seahawks, an NFL team.