Page 34 - Psychology of Money - Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness-Harriman House Limited (2020)

Bill Gates and Paul Allen became household names thanks to Microsoft’s
success. But back at Lakeside there was a third member of this gang of
COBACOBA
high-school computer prodigies.

Kent Evans and Bill Gates became best friends in eighth grade. Evans was,

by Gates’ own account, the best student in the class.

The two talked “on the phone ridiculous amounts,” Gates recalls in the
documentary Inside Bill’s Brain. “I still know Kent’s phone number,” he
says. “525-7851.”

Evans was as skilled with computers as Gates and Allen. Lakeside once
struggled to manually put together the school’s class schedule—a maze of
complexity to get hundreds of students the classes they need at times that
don’t conflict with other courses. The school tasked Bill and Kent—
children, by any measure—to build a computer program to solve the

problem. It worked.

And unlike Paul Allen, Kent shared Bill’s business mind and endless
ambition. “Kent always had the big briefcase, like a lawyer’s briefcase,”
Gates recalls. “We were always scheming about what we’d be doing five or
six years in the future. Should we go be CEOs? What kind of impact could
you have? Should we go be generals? Should we go be ambassadors?”

Whatever it was, Bill and Kent knew they’d do it together.

After reminiscing on his friendship with Kent, Gates trails off.

“We would have kept working together. I’m sure we would have gone to
college together.” Kent could have been a founding partner of Microsoft
with Gates and Allen.

But it would never happen. Kent died in a mountaineering accident before
he graduated high school.

Every year there are around three dozen mountaineering deaths in the

United States.⁹ The odds of being killed on a mountain in high school are
roughly one in a million.