Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews's 1993 biography of Bill Gates, published by Doubleday. Written with far more cooperation from Microsoft than the contemporaneous Hard Drive (Wallace and Erickson), this book focuses on the technical decisions and internal strategy debates inside Microsoft during the DOS-to-Windows transition. Manes was a PC Magazine columnist and Andrews a Seattle Times technology reporter; the book is considered the more technically literate of the two 1993 Gates biographies.
The Gates foundation file describes it as "the other 1993 biography, by two technology journalists with far more access than Wallace and Erickson had. It is the more technically literate of the pair and better on how Microsoft actually made decisions in the DOS and Windows years."
For a founder, the key difference between this book and Hard Drive is the lens: Manes and Andrews had access inside Microsoft and focus on decision mechanics — how the company evaluated competing technical approaches, how it managed the OS/2 partnership with IBM while building Windows as a competing product, how Gates personally reviewed code and specifications. A founder who wants the narrative of Microsoft's rise should read Hard Drive; a founder who wants to study how Microsoft made product and strategy decisions under uncertainty should read this book.