Paul Allen's net worth: Paul Allen was an American industrialist, investor, musician, sports equipment owner, and philanthropist who had a net worth of $ 20 billion at the time of his death on October 15, 2018. Paul Allen earned the majority of his personal fortune by be a co-founder of the software conglomerate, Microsoft. Allen co-founded the software company with his childhood friend Bill Gates.
Early life: Paul Gardner Allen was born on January 21, 1953 in Seattle, Washington to Kenneth and Edna Allen. Her sister Jody was born in 1959. She attended Lakeside School, a private high school in Seattle where she met and befriended Bill Gates. The two shared an interest in computers. Despite their two-year age gap, they became fast friends who started coding and hacking, thanks to the access they had to a mainframe system owned by their school. The school infamously bought what it hoped would be a year of time on the mainframe, only to discover that Allen and Gates had used that time in just three weeks. Not long after, Allen was looking for ways to sneak into the computer labs and log in as an administrator. Allen even posed as a graduate student at the University of Washington in order to get some extra programming time. Finally, he was caught and expelled from the laboratory.
Allen received a perfect 1600 SAT score and enrolled at Washington State University, where he joined the Phi Kappa Theta fraternity. He dropped out of college after two years to work as a programmer for Honeywell in Boston, near Harvard, where Gates was a freshman. Allen convinced Gates to leave Harvard to start a software company together. That software company was Microsoft.
Race: Allen and Gates settled in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1975. Their big break came when they saw an article about the Altair 8000 in Popular Electronics magazine. The computer was small and inexpensive and ideal for home computing. The two men contacted the manufacturer of the computer and offered to design a programming language for the Altair 8000. That language was called BASIC, and its development opened their eyes to the potential opportunity that existed to create a language. programming. Oh, and yes, they designed it for a computer that not only did they not have, but had never seen before. Unbelievably, it was a success and his language worked.
Allen and Gates registered the Microsoft trademark on November 26, 1976. The company went public on March 13, 1986. After the first day of trading, Allen's 25% stake was worth $ 195 million. He was 33 years old. As you know, in the coming decades, Microsoft became one of the most valuable companies in the world and made its founders extraordinarily wealthy. Paul left Microsoft in the mid-1980s after an administrative dispute with Bill Gates, but he remained a member of the company's board of directors until 2000.
Allen invested the proceeds from his Microsoft shares in his private venture, Vulcan Capital, which he founded with his sister Jody Allen in 1986. Today, Vulcan owns the car care brands Maaco and Meineke. He has developed nearly 7 million square feet of real estate and was a founding investor at Dreamworks SKG film studio.
Vulcan Aerospace, founded by Allen, funded the SpaceShipOne effort and won the $ 10 million Ansari X Prize in 2004. Allen sold the technology behind SpaceShipOne to Richard Branson. (Which later became SpaceShipTwo.) At the time of his death, Allen & # 39; s Vulcan Aerospace was building the largest airplane in the world. It was intended that this aircraft be used as a platform for launching orbital rockets.
Allen owned three professional sports teams: the Seattle Seahawks, the Seattle Sounders FC, and the Portland Trailblazers. He bought the Seahawks in 1997 for $ 194 million when former real estate owner and developer Ken Behring threatened to move the Seahawks to Southern California. During Allen's years of owning the Seahawks, he built a new stadium, hired former USC coach Pete Carroll, won a Super Bowl, and generally worked to please a legion of fans considered among local bases. most rabid in the NFL. He did it on that.
At the time of his death in 2018, Paul Allen was the president of Charter Communications. Allen had a multi-million dollar investment portfolio that included investments in more than 40 other media, technology and content companies.
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Health and death Allen was diagnosed with stage 1-A Hodgkin lymphoma in 1982. Although his cancer was successfully treated by several months of radiation therapy. In 2009 Allen was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Similarly, the cancer was successfully treated until it returned in 2018, ultimately causing her death from septic shock on October 15, 2018. She was 65 years old.
Personal life: Allen was heavily involved in philanthropy, making contributions worth more than $ 2 billion for the advancement of science and technology, and for organizations related to health and human services.
In 2013 Allen and his band, The Underthinkers, released their debut blues-rock album, Everywhere At Once. Allen plays a bad electric guitar and does it with friends like Joe Walsh of the Eagles and Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders.
Allen's properties are in a living trust that he established in 1993. He had no spouse or descendants, so his sister Jody Allen and his children are his beneficiaries. Allen's real estate is so rare and so valuable that Jody and her children are likely to keep it. For example, the Seattle Seahawks are in the Paul G. Allen Trust, of which Jody is the president, and there are no plans to sell the franchise.
Net worth details: Paul Allen was known for his stake in Microsoft, although the exact amount has not been reported since 2000 because it fell below 5 percent. His fortune was primarily tied to the real estate, private equity, and energy sectors. Allen owned more than 1 million square feet of commercial, office, and industrial space in California, New York, Washington, and Oregon. He was involved in Uber, DreamWorks, Plains All America, and Ticketmaster. Allen is said to have lost $ 8 billion trying to expand broadband too soon.
Real estate: Allen left a large portfolio of real estate. From a Manhattan penthouse to a 4,000-acre Idaho retreat to a mega yacht, Allen had a home for any mood.
Allen purchased the former property of artist Georgia O & # 39; Keefe, Sol y Sombra in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2000. The 20-acre property is located three miles outside of Santa Fe. When Allen purchased the property, It had a five-bedroom, 9,685-square-foot 1930s main house, as well as a 5,000-square-foot cabin, guest house, and garage. It was listed for $ 12.2 million when Allen bought it.
Allen purchased Trees Ranch, a 2,066-acre property in southern Utah in 2013. The Tree Ranch is surrounded on three sides by public land. Zion National Park is to the north and east and the Canaan Mountain Wilderness and the Office of Land Management are to the south. Allen bought the ranch for a little below the list price of $ 25 million.
Allen bought a Silicon Valley property with his sister in Atherton in 2013. They paid $ 27 million for a 22,005-square-foot, six-bedroom, six-bath home on a 1.97-acre lot. The house has a spa, a home theater, seven fireplaces, a five-car garage, two bedrooms, a guest house, a pool, and the caretaker's house.
Allen bought the penthouse at 4 East 66thStreet, a 1920s limestone building on Fifth Avenue and 66thStreet in 2011 for $ 25 million. I was above 11thFull-story flat that he bought in 1996 for $ 13.5 million.
Allen purchased two properties near the small town of Tetonia on the Idaho side of the Tetons 80 miles from Jackson, Wyoming in 1993. One of the properties was 2,400 acres of land on the edge of the Targhee National Forest, which borders the Grand Teton National Park. Allen paid $ 7.25 million for the property. Approximately 15 years later, Allen purchased a 1,200-acre property for $ 3 million. The property included the Teton Ridge Ranch, a 10,000-square-foot pine lodge. Before the Teton Ridge Ranch closed in 2007, it was considered one of the best luxury resorts in the world, with rooms costing $ 690 a night.
Allen purchased a 10.3-acre complex in Kailua Bay on the Big Island of Hawaii for $ 11 million in 1997. The property is close to the Four Seasons Hualalai Resort. In 2011, a concert pool, garage, and three new buildings were added, including a 9,080-square-foot house with five bedrooms and five bathrooms and a 2,968-square-foot house with six bedrooms and five bathrooms. The property also includes a small port.
Allen bought an 18-room mansion in Cap Ferrat in southern France in the 1990s. The mansion, called Villa Maryland, was the site of a pirate-themed party Allen had during the 1996 Cannes Film Festival .
Allen purchased the 387-acre Sperry Peninsula on Lopez Island, Washington, for $ 9 million in 1996. It had previously been the site of a children's camp since 1945. Allen constructed a series of cedar and stone buildings, including its 13,000 feet square, five-room house, a 5,400-square-foot cabin with nine rooms, a 3,150-square-foot beach house, another two-room house with 3,160-square-feet, a two-bedroom, 1.24-square-foot caretaker's cabin, and a pool.
Allen owned eight houses on 10.8 acres of land on 13 lots on Mercer Island, the wealthy suburb of Seattle along the shores of Lake Washington. Mercer Island has 24,000 residents and only one bridge to the mainland.