Bill Gates on his best-ever investment – The Wall Street Journal

DUBLIN – Microsoft co-founder and former CEO Bill Gates knows a thing or two. He successfully built one of the world's biggest software companies and he has a track record of relatively successful tech investing. But these days, his most important role, from an impact perspective, is philanthropist. Through his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Gates has had a major impact on the core areas the foundation focuses on: education and healthcare. In particular, the Foundation's work on infectious diseases and vaccination has saved hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of lives. In this thoughtful essay, Gates the philanthropist makes an important connection between health interventions and wealth creation. Investing a few dollars to prevent a child from dying of an infectious disease can yield enormous returns – the lifetime earnings of that child, plus all the associated economic activity that the child's spending facilitates. Saving children's lives is, of course, a good thing in its own right. But thinking about the long-term economic benefits of those saved lives underscores the enormous value of healthcare interventions. – Felicity Duncan

Bill Gates: The Best Investment I've Ever Made

By Bill Gates

(The Wall Street Journal) Technology is a boom-or-bust business, but it's mostly busts. I've always assumed that 10% of my technology investments will succeed—and succeed wildly. The other 90% I expect to fail.

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