Valve co-founder Gabe Newell is a billionaire, but what does he attribute to his business success? Speaking to Zalkar Saliev on YouTube (via GamesRadar), Newell said it comes down to “luck” and “being surrounded by really great people.”
Newell is reported to own a fleet of yachts, and he is known to work from one of his ships, taking breaks from time to time to go scuba diving. While Newell may be a billionaire, he said he is not one to “study the subject of billionaires and so on.”
As for specific people that Newell credits with helping him along the way, he called out Neil Konzen, Doug Klunder, and Jeff Harbers, all of whom he worked with in the early days of Microsoft. Newell and Konzen worked on early versions of Microsoft Windows, while Klunder created Microsoft Excel. Harbers, meanwhile, developed early versions of Microsoft Office–he died in a plane crash in 2006.
