Gabe Newell

Microsoft and Business

Gabe Newell talks business 

Gabe Newell learned about business from his first employer, Bill Gates,  "that success in software comes from getting outside developers to write programs that sell more copies of your own". Gabe Newell is listed as the 271st employee at Microsoft, he share's something in common with the Founder Bill Gates, respectively they both dropped out of Harvard University, unlike Gate's, Newell dropped out after being talked into joining Microsoft by Steve Ballmer, who at the time was Head of Sales for Microsoft. Newell spent thirteen year's working for Microsoft, because of this he became a "Microsoft Millionaire" (A Term used to recognize someone who's earned over One Million dollars working at Microsoft), Newell described his job at Microsoft as the "Producer of the first three releases of Windows". While Newell worked at Microsoft he was running program management on the Windows OS, Specifically, Newell held several positions in the Systems, Applications and Advanced Technology divisions that worked on the first two releases of Windows and was a driving force in the introduction of Windows NT and server edition. 

Founding Valve

The Valve at Valve Headquarters

In 1996 Newell and co-worker Mike Harrington left Microsoft as "Microsoft Millionaires" with fortunes from the success of the OS. Newell was inspired by Michael Abrash, Abrash is another employee of Microsoft who left to work on Quake at id Software. Together they founded Valve Corporation. They signed the LLC agreement on the same day Newell got married, making both the company and his wedding anniversaries share the same date. Two years later they released their first game, a sci-fi FPS called Half-Life. Newell's role at Valve is Managing Director of Game Development with an emphasis on technology rather than game design. Newell was particularly involved with the creation of Steam, a digital game distributor initially released in 2003 and supplying hundreds of games to over 15 million accounts.
 

 Indie Game, Bought by Valve!

Throughout the year's Newell has also been somewhat of a "Talent Scout", Valve listens to pitches and pays close attention to the Modding and Indie communities, because of this he's found smash hit's like Team Fortress  (Created by Robin Walker) and Portal. Portal has become one of the best selling game's on Steam and is the only Puzzle game Valve has ever made, Team Fortress on the other hand is the best selling Class Based FPS, it's had three releases on Steam (Team Fortress 1.5, Team Fortress Classic and Team Fortress 2). Gabe Newell unlike other company owners is very open and honest with his community, if somethings going to be delayed he'll tell them it's delayed, he also has an open form of communication via a Publicly Available Valve Email that he responds to in a timely manner.
 

Gabe also relies on his community for Ideas, Suggestions and Feedback, he actively reads the Steam Forums and various other message boards, he's been known to post and even ask for assistance when it comes to Valve related issues, as an example view this topic from a while ago when someone stole the HL-2 Source Tree.    

Gabe Newell's Personal Life

Bouncer Gabe

 Newell lives with his wife and two sons in Long Beach, Washington along the Pacific Ocean, a ways West from the Valve Corporation headquarters in Bellevue, Washington outside of Seattle. Besides making Computer- and Videogames Gabe also has a weakness for collecting knives. His collection includes round about 600 knives. His wife's name is Lisa Newell, he has two sons aged 11 and 8, the name's of his two sons are unknown to the Internet but we assume they're something like Gordon and Barney.
 
Gabe Newell's estimated wealth is in the tens of millions of dollars, originally when he founded Valve he was already a Millionaire due to owning a large amount of Microsoft stock but because he founded Valve he has increased his wealth by roughly 700 - 800%.

Gaming Habits

Quotes

"George Lucas should have distributed the 'source code' to Star Wars. Millions of fans would create their own movies and stories. Most of them would be terrible, but a few would be genius."  
 
Newell was once quoted as claiming that developing processes for the PS3 in general was "a waste of everybody's time" and "a disaster on many levels ... I'd say, even at this late date, they should just cancel it and do a do over. Just say, 'This was a horrible disaster and we're sorry and we're going to stop selling this and stop trying to convince people to develop for it'."