Original subtitles

[Music]

thank you

i want to thank harvard for this honor

i'll be changing my job next year and it

will be nice to finally

have a college degree on my resume

i applaud the graduates for taking a

much more direct

route to your degrees from our my part

i'm just happy that the crimson called

me harvard's

most successful dropout

i guess that makes me valedictorian of

my own special class

i did the best of everyone who failed

but i also want to be recognized as the

guy who got steve ballmer

to drop out of business school

a bad influence that's why

i was invited to speak at your

graduation

if i'd spoken at your orientation

fewer of you might be here today

[Applause]

harvard was a phenomenal experience for

me

academic life was fascinating i used to

sit

in on lots of classes that i hadn't even

signed up for

and dorm life was terrific i lived up at

radcliffe in careerhouse

[Applause]

there were always a lot of people in my

dorm room late at night

discussing things because everyone knew

that i didn't worry

about getting up in the morning

that's how i came to be the leader of

the anti-social group

we clung to each other as a way of

validating our rejection of

all those social people radcliffe was a

great place to live

there were more women up there and most

of the guys were math science types

the combination offered me the best odds

if you know what i mean

that's where i learned the sad lesson

that improving your odds doesn't

guarantee success

one of my biggest memories of harvard

came in january 1975

when i made a call from courier house to

a company in albuquerque new mexico

that had begun making the world's first

personal computer

i offered to sell them software i

worried they would realize

i was just a student in a dorm and hang

up on me

instead they said we're not quite ready

come see us in a month which was a good

thing

because we hadn't written the software

yet

from that moment i worked day and night

on the extra credit project that marked

the end

of my college education and the

beginning of a remarkable journey

with microsoft what i remember

above all about harvard was being in the

midst

of so much energy and intelligence it

could be

exhilarating intimidating sometimes even

discouraging

but always challenging it was an amazing

privilege and though i left early

i was transformed by my years at harvard

the friendships i made and the ideas i

worked on

but taking a serious look back

i do have one big regret

i left harvard with no real awareness

of the awful inequities in the world the

appalling disparities of

health and wealth and opportunity

that condemn millions of people the

lives of despair

i learned a lot here at harvard about

new ideas

and economics and politics i got great

exposure

to the advances being made in the

sciences

but humanity's greatest advances are not

in its discoveries

but in how those discoveries are applied

to reduce inequity

you