Allen was the "idea guy" of the personal computing empire while Gates was the man of action who brought those ideas to life. A college dropout, Allen was writing code for another computer firm when it dawned on him that every American - every everyone! - should have a computer at home, and one for the office, and one to operate the ordering system at restaurants, and, well, he knew before we did that everything everywhere would be better off with a computer brain running it much better than ours can.
Allen resigned from the firm he named Microsoft in 1983, after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, in pursuit of other opportunities in business, music (he was known as an excellent guitarist), sports (he owned the NFL Seattle Seahawks and the NBA Portland Trailblazers),
research (he purchased a yacht called the Octopus for rescue and research missions. It was over 400 feet long and had two helipads, a pool, and its own two submarines) and developments geared toward getting the entire world online.
His philanthropy started foundations in medical research, visual and performing arts, community service, and forest preservation. Just this year, he invested $30 million in a homeless center in Seattle. In 2014, he spent $100 million to combat Ebola in West Africa.
Allen lived on Lake Washington's Mercer Island, near Seattle. Once estimated at around $40 billion, his fortune stood at around half that when he passed away on Monday. He never married. He lived in a 10,000 square foot mansion on Mercer Island in Washington state, among other dwellings around the world.If you are reading this, you are still among the living, which Paul Allen, for all his goodness, for all his accomplishments, yea for all his money, cannot claim to be. Notice that everything above is in the past tense. We are in the present and we should enjoy being that way.
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