The first rough draft

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This whole business of ours, a newspaper publisher once said, is nothing but the first rough draft of history.

On Friday, I was working on this thing about the 20th anniversary of Bill Gates stepping down as CEO of Microsoft.

I published it on Inc.com Sunday. You can read it here, if you like.

But, I realize now it was one of those “rough drafts.” I wrote hard, but I only scratched the surface of what I was trying to discover.

Along the way, I read a 2009 Wall Street Journal article about what it was like to be Gates's parents. Here's what leapt out at me:

"[T]he family shared many details of the family's story for the first time, including Bill Gates's experience in counseling as a child...

One night when Bill Gates was around 12 … he shouted at his mother, in what today he describes as "utter, total sarcastic, smart-ass kid rudeness."… Mr. Gates Sr., in a rare blast of temper, threw [a] glass of water in his son's face.

He and Mary brought their son to a therapist. "I'm at war with my par…