Reid Hoffman: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Bill Gates (Part 2)

In part two of this special two-part episode with Bill Gates, we’re talking about the biggest success story ever told on the podcast – and not just for Bill Gates, but for humanity. And it was achieved not through Microsoft, but through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Bill & Melinda Gates have built the foundation into one of the world’s single largest private philanthropies and they’ve done it by taking lessons learned at Microsoft – on how to massively capitalize on inflection points – and applied them to the nonprofit world. Here’s how. 

• Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation’s success in reducing childhood deaths by 50% in two decades demonstrates how partnerships, innovation, and funding can drive remarkable efforts for change and impact humanity positively.
• In developing countries, a lack of incentive to develop drugs and vaccines for fatal childhood diseases led to an absence of success measurement and celebration. Through involvement in the Millennium Development Goals, measurable goals were established to reduce child mortality.

• Collaboration and data are critical tools for solving social issues. In dealing with the lack of data on child mortality, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation used innovation to find a solution and worked with affected families to collect valuable data for prevention.
• When faced with multiple challenges, founders must be willing to pivot and address the root causes of issues rather than solely focus on developing new solutions. Access and financing issues must be tackled in tandem to achieve long-lasting success.

Collaborating with governments in developing countries as partners while also influencing them to improve healthcare systems is essential to ensuring effective delivery of vaccines and drugs. However, challenges remain in reaching everyone in need.

Gates is hopeful for new vaccines but stresses the importance of effective distribution. Common views with co-founders and a mix of skills in teams can lead to success.

Bill Gates recognized that the lack of attention to fatal childhood diseases in developing countries is due to the market’s lack of incentive to develop drugs and vaccines for these diseases.

He saw the potential for biotechnology and its emerging tools to create new vaccines and drugs; however, he found that the global health community lacked the measurement and celebration of great successes and discussions of great failures that exist in private markets. Without knowing what children were dying from, he couldn’t save their lives or measure success. 

My assumption was that the same type of measurement and celebration of great successes and discussions of great failures would exist in this global health community as they do in private markets. In fact, the underinvestment in knowing how many children died and what they died of was unbelievable. 

Governments in rich countries, even now in middle-income countries, are pretty amazing. We kind of take it for granted that the water system, electricity system, education system, justice system—these things work pretty darn well.