 At Lakeside School, Paul Allen (14 years old) and friend Bill Gates (12 years old) became early computer enthusiasts. Allen went on to attend Washington State University, though he dropped out after two years to pursue his and Gates's dream of writing software commercially for the new "personal computers".
Allen and Gates and a small group of other Lakeside students begin programming in BASIC, using a teletype terminal. Helps teach computer course to junior high students at Lakeside. Graduates from Lakeside; enrolls at Washington State University. Allen and Gates buy an Intel 8008 chip for $360 and build a computer to measure traffic.They launch their first company, Traf-O-Data. Hired as a programmer by Honeywell in Boston. Allen and Gates write the first microcomputer BASIC for the Altair, a computer kit based on Intel's new 8080 chip. They move to Albuquerque, N.M., where Altair's producer MITS makes Allen its associate director of software. Allen divides his time between MITS and a new company he and Gates have started to develop and market microcomputer languages: Micro Soft.
Apple commissions Microsoft to supply a version of its BASIC for the hot-selling Apple II. Radio Shack buys a Microsoft BASIC for its TRS-80. Microsoft moves from Albuquerque to Bellevue, Wash. Microsoft agrees to develop and license DOS and BASIC to IBM for its new personal computer. Gates and Allen discuss graphical user interfaces, planting the seeds that will become Windows.
Allen and Gates found Microsoft (initially "Micro Soft") in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and begin selling a BASIC interpreter. Allen spearheads a deal for Microsoft to buy an operating system called QDOS for $50,000. Microsoft wins a contract to supply it to for use as the operating system of IBM's new PC. This becomes the foundation for Microsoft's remarkable growth.
Allen was forced to resign from Microsoft in 1983 after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease which was successfully treated by several months of radiation therapy.
In 1984 he founded Asymetrix, a software development company based in Belleuve, Washington, to make application development tools that nonprogrammers can use. Asymetrix later went on to become Click2learn.com and yet later merged with Docent to become Sum Total System (2004). In the 1990's the company began to specialize in software for developing and delivering computer-based learning.
1992 Allen started Starwave, a producer of online content sites. Starwave did such great work for ESPN SportsZone and ABCNews.com that Disney (NYSE: DIS) bought it for a total of $350 million last year.
1998 In April Allen buys Marcus Cable, the nation's 10th largest cable company, for $2.8 billion--his biggest investment to date. Also this year Allen grabbed a stake of the Internet video-sales market with his purchase of Hollywood Entertainment. And he took another software group public. This time it's Asymetrix Learning Systems, maker of products for online classes.
On September 28, 2000 - Microsoft Corp. announced that Paul Allen is assuming a new role as senior strategy adviser to top Microsoft executives. The company also announced that Allen and Richard Hackborn have decided not to seek re-election to Microsoft's board of directors at the company's November shareholder meeting.
In December 2003 he announced that he was the sponsor behind the SpaceShipOne private rocket plane venture from Scaled Composites, as part of the ANSARI X PRIZE competition. In June 2004, SpaceShipOne became the first successful commercial spacecraft when it passed the 100 kilometer threshold of space.
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