Bill Gates explains why philanthropy matters when you’re successful in tech in a new podcast with Daniel Petre

StartGiving, the not-for-profit organisation inspiring a new culture of giving in the Australian innovation community, has launched a podcast and vodcast series for tech founders looking to start or scale their giving.

Hosted by StartGiving founder and chair Daniel Petre and CEO Antonia Ruffell, the series features leaders in the tech and philanthropy spaces generously sharing their experiences.

Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and co-founder of Microsoft, sits on the StartGiving advisory board and joins as the podcast’s first guest.

Gates and Petre go back over 30 years when the Australian was a VP on Microsoft’s Seattle campus in the 1990s.

In a wide-ranging conversation, they cover the fulfilment the original tech billionaire philanthropist has experienced from philanthropy, the benefits of giving now versus later and how much of their wealth Australian founders should consider giving away.

Gates shared that he has found the most success in signing people from the tech sector up to the Giving Pledge, the movement he founded with Warren Buffett and Melinda French-Gates to encourage the world’s wealthiest people to commit most of their money to charity.

“When you first say to them…hey, you should give $50 million to this, it’s like what? You know, a million is a gigantic amount of money. I’ve never spent $1,000,000 on anything!” Gates told Petre.

“But, you know, because their fortune is so vast, you say…hey, you might be able to give 5% of that away every year pretty much for the rest of time.”

The next episode of the StartGiving podcast, due out in mid-September, will feature Peter Singer, the world-renowned moral philosopher and bioethicist.

Catch Bill Gates’ episode of the StartGiving podcast and vodcast on the StartGiving website, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.