Paul Allen said Bill Gates tried to cut his Microsoft stake to almost nothing while he was fighting cancer.
Allen kept the shares.
They later made him worth $40 billion.
In the video below, Allen explains what he heard while walking past Gates’s office during radiation therapy.
“They were basically talking about how they were planning to dilute my share down to almost nothing.”
Steve Ballmer was in the room. Allen walked in and confronted them.
Ballmer came to his house later that night to apologize. Gates did not.
Allen left Microsoft shortly after, but he kept all of his shares.
He was 30, cancer-free, and still owned nearly a third of the company. When Microsoft went public, that stake made him one of the richest people on Earth.
At one point, Allen was worth an estimated $40 billion.
Could you ever trust your co-founder again after hearing that conversation?