Bill Gates's Favorite Business Book

I've speculated that he has either to much sun exposure [1], smokes (but he doesn't?), or has some sickness that has caused him to age.

Actually when he retired from Microsoft I had thought that health might have something to do with it. (I don't remember many cases anecdotal of successful business people "retiring" as early as he has done. They usually continue strong until a ripe age.)

Obviously there is no known sickness that he has spoken publicly about but that wouldn't be that unusual.

[1] But he doesn't seem like the type that would be baking in the sun over the course of many years and he does live in Washington State not in Florida.

Edit: It's not off topic and it's not a comment made for vanity reasons (ie "jeez doesn't he look bad!"). The comment is made primarily because I think he possibly has health issues and I'm curious what others think (especially those on HN with a medical background).

You can think of those as acquisitions. It's sort of a lesser known fact that he made the majority of his money in insurance. Before anyone else thought of it, Buffett developed a Homeostatic operation that collected insurance premiums and then invested that float in other companies who had a history of spinning off large amounts of free cash flow. He'd suck off that free cash flow and buy up more companies. All while keeping a larger and larger amount of free cash on hand in the event that he had to pay out any large claims.

This is all easier said than done because if you price your premiums wrong you can blow up the whole business. He priced his premiums conservatively and sold odd insurance in the back of newspapers and trade magazines, covering things and making policies that no one else dare take on.

There's a lot more gun slinging and pivoting in the Buffett story than you'd read about today. He raised cash manually from groups of Doctors in the 60's for his first investor partnership (he was 26). It was no different than a 26 year old kid going out today and raising cash for a startup. And incidentally, he delivered. There's one story in the excellent Alice Schroeder bio about him (http://goo.gl/nZGrIX) He was around 30 years old living in suburban Omaha. One afternoon he casually asks his next door neighbor if he's ever thought about how he'll pay for his children's college then goes into a sales pitch asking him for $10,000 (in the 60's). The neighbor declined. Can you imagine? He had hustle, and street smarts, and swagger. That's a businessman. In fact he's one of the best businessmen. Even Gates would tell you that.

But there are many differences between being Potus and the head of Microsoft.

President is a short term job (in general) and it is entered into later in life after I would guess a less stressful (than being President that is) life.

Gates started Microsoft when young and grew into the job over time. Not to mention that being the captain of that ship is greatly different (in terms of the "masters" that you serve) than being a politician.

Not having done either it's hard to really decide what the real differences are. But my guess is that Gates obviously had a tremendous amount of support from people hand picked over the years to carry out his wishes and way more latitude to do what he wanted which a President doesn't have. I think that factor alone is good with reducing stress of a job. (Being more in charge of your destiny, being more in control).

Also although I don't have photos to show I do remember there was a demarcation point where he started to just "look older". That didn't seem to coincide with just normal aging.

Ballmer of course doesn't look bad for his age. (Not that that proves my point but I will point that out.)