Bill Gates Is a Walking Example of the Power of Branding

How Gates managed to shed his proto-Bezos skin.

Illustration: Surian Soosay

Before Bezos became Literal Lex Luthor, there was Bill. The first megastar of the digital revolution (back when it was called the Personal Computing Inch-along the Cyberspace Highway, or something), Gates became the world’s youngest ‘self-made’ billionaire in 1987 after founding a little company called Microsoft.

For ‘self-made…