Corp Law Blog has a great post on the IPO of Microsoft. This fact from the post speaks volumes about how well Microsoft has done.
Bill Gates sold 80,000 shares in the IPO for net proceeds of $1.6 million. Had he held on to those shares, he'd be worth another $656.6 million. Gates did not learn his lesson, however; he reportedly sells upwards of 20,000,000 shares each quarter. Had Gates never sold another share, his net worth would be double what it is today — increasing from $46 billion (as most recently estimated by the Forbes 400) to $92 billion.
Very impressive.
