Why did Bill Gates leave Harvard?

This question was raised by students at Parikrma School in Bangalore, India. Gates provides the answer in his new website: www.gatesnotes.com:

"I loved college. It was so exciting to have conversations with lots of really smart people my age and to learn from great professors. But in December of 1974, when my friend Paul Allen showed me the issue of Popular Electronics that had the Altair 8800 on the cover, we knew it was the beginning of a major change. The Altair was the first minicomputer kit that came with Intel’s 8080 microprocessor chip.

For a while, Paul and I had been talking about how that chip would make computers affordable for the average person someday. We had the idea that this would create huge opportunities to write really interesting software that lots of people would buy. Once the Altair 8800 came out, we wanted to be among first to start a business to write software for this new generation of computers. We were afraid if we waited, someone else would beat us to it.

It was a hard decision and I know my parents had their concerns. And while I would never encourage anyone to drop out of school, for me, it turned out to be the right choice."