Lessons from Paul Allen’s life and career worth more than his billions

Paul Allen was the kind of billionaire we all hope we would be, should we ever have the good fortune to be one.

He did lots of civic and philanthropic good with his money, but he also had fun with it, indulging in various interests, fascinations and even whims, many of which contributed to civic life and employment at least as much as his business ventures.

But he did it in an unassuming style. If it’s possible to describe someone who owned a 414-foot megayacht as “unostentatious,” Allen fit the characterization.

Occasionally someone would try to hang the adjective “reclusive” on him, but that wasn’t the right word. Allen didn’t live a Howard Hughes-like existence, but he was no Richard Branson either. He was a celebrity without actively calling attention to himself, his wealth or his activities.

That’s not easy to do, as illustrated by the typical behavior in just one of his business realms — professional sports-team ownership (for Allen, the Seattle Seahawks and the Portland Trail Blazers; he also was a co-owner of the Seattle Sounders).

You sports fans in the reading audience: Suppose you were of sufficient wealth to own a major-league team. Do you believe you could resist the temptation to be constantly on the phone with the team president, the general manager or the head coach, demanding that they trade for this guy, fire that guy, run this play?

Of course not. What would be the point of owning a sports team if you couldn’t actively manage it?

If Allen was prone to meddling, he and everyone else kept quiet about it. If Allen ever chewed out Pete Carroll for the play call that deprived the Seahawks of a second consecutive Super Bowl victory, it was done privately.

There are arguments to be made that a more public, active and forceful owner would generate more success; there also are arguments, and good examples, of that approach driving away people and driving a team, a company or an organization into the ground.

Allen’s management style is one of the lessons and observations to take away from his career and passing — other than the obvious one that life is a lot easier and more fun with billions of dollars in wealth.

Here are a few more:

▪ Allen was a big deal locally, but every city and state has big-deal names that would prompt people elsewhere to ask “who?” He hasn’t been involved with Microsoft for decades; Bill Gates (himself no longer in active management at the company he co-founded with Allen) was the public face of MSFT. For all his activities, Allen kept a low public profile, so it was an open question whether front-page news around here would be a short inside-page item everywhere else. It’s hard to gauge from here.

Interestingly enough, Allen’s death was front-page news, not just in the sports, tech and business communities but for general-news sites as well. It turned out that people elsewhere did know who Paul Allen was and thought his passing was worth more than a note.

▪ Allen and Gates represent the middle of a three-chapter story of modern business history for this region, one of three major shifts that transformed a remote port city into a major economic center. The first was Boeing. Then came Microsoft; it didn’t create the tech scene here, but its growth and presence in almost every computer made this place an internationally recognized center for tech.

The third chapter is being written by Amazon and the other post-Microsoft tech companies, along with nationally and globally significant companies such as Starbucks and Costco. It has made for a much larger, more economically diverse region, with all the benefits and headaches that growth comes with.

Is there a fourth chapter to be written, and if so what will it say? If there is, it’s likely to be written by the next Paul Allen, currently in his (or her) formative years.

▪ That, of course, is if the region is lucky enough to produce its own next Paul Allen or import one (as happened with Jeff Bezos).

There’s a lot of political and societal kvetching about billionaires and concentrations of wealth these days. But billionaires, especially ones willing to spend money, are handy to have around when trying to tackle major projects or transform a community. Ask the cities that don’t have one.

▪ Allen did not leave a spouse or children, but even if there were obvious heirs, the disposition of his wealth and his various ventures and investments would be a daunting task, not only for the size but the breadth of sectors and activities in which he … “dabbled” isn’t the right word, when you’re talking about rocket launchers, sports teams, medical research, real-estate development and museums, to name a few.

Given his nature, and his previous brushes with life-threatening illness, it seems likely he had some plan in mind and on paper. Maybe it’s entirely conventional or, reflecting the man’s individuality, it has some wrinkles no one aside from him and his estate planners saw coming.

The life of Paul Allen proved to be an interesting existence. The aftermath of his passing promises to be fascinating as well.

This story was originally published October 20, 2018 at 7:00 PM.