From self-help books to shredding on the guitar, the most successful Microsoft alumni have some wild and varied interests. For those lucky enough to hitch their wagons to Microsoft early on in its meteoric rise to the top of the computing market, the payoff was huge.
Some analysts estimate that thanks to the stock options the company gave to early employees, Microsoft had created three billionaires and as many as 12,000 millionaires by 2005. And even for those who didn’t quite get to those heights, the rewards were huge.
Here’s a look at what some of Microsoft’s most successful alumni have done with their post-Redmond lives, from fine art to spaceflight.
Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, is a huge collector of rare books and paintings. In 1998, he set a record for American art when he paid $36 million for Winslow Homer’s “Lost on the Grand Banks.”
The record has since been surpassed — earlier this year, a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting sold for $110 million at auction.
Tech: The weird and wild ways Microsoft’s first employees spent the millions they made
