Bromance diaries: When Bill Gates, Larry Page, and others became friends with business partners

Mixing personal life with business may not be the best idea — but it has worked wonders for these friends-turned-business partners-turned billionaires:

Bill Gates and Paul Allen
Friends for: Over 40 years

Gates (62) and Allen (64) were childhood school friends. While Gates went off to Harvard, Allen plotted a business idea for months. The duo finally took the plunge and created Microsoft in 1975. While their friendship did turn bitter for a while, all seems to be well now.


(Image: BCCL & Twitter/@PaulGAllen)

"There's a bond there that can't be denied and I think we both feel that." — PAUL ALLEN

Beyond the boardroom: In their early days at Microsoft, the two used to participate in several hackathons.

Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett
Friends for: Over 50 years


(Image: www8.hp.com)

Hewlett and Packard were classmates in Stanford's engineering program. After graduation, they went on a two-week camping trip where they became close friends. Shortly after, with the encouragement of their professor Fred Terman, the duo started HP.

"I think our common interest in the outdoors had a lot to do with our developing friendship." — DAVE PACKARD

Beyond the boardroom: The two spent many weekends camping and fishing in the wilds of the Colorado mountains.

Evan Williams and Biz Stone
Friends for: Nine years


(Image: Getty Image & Twitter/@biz)

Williams had been working at Blogger when it was sold to Google. And it was under Google's new reign that Williams hired his ex-colleague and friend Stone. The pair was then approached by Jack Dorsey with an idea, which developed into Twitter.

"We started out as rivals but became great friends… When Evan left Google for Odeo, I was like, 'What? You're leaving me?' So I followed him." — BIZ STONE

Beyond the boardroom: Both have a weakness for movies. Stone said they would stay up to watch old classics during brain storming sessions.

Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal
Friends for: 18 years


(Image: BCCL)

The Flipkart founders are from Chandigarh and graduated from IIT-Delhi. They worked in different companies for a year, before ending up together at Amazon in Bengaluru, where they came up with the idea for Flipkart.

"The most important part of having Binny as my co-founder and friend is that he is a shoulder to cry on" — SACHIN BANSAL

Beyond the boardroom: While working with Amazon, the two shared an apartment together with some friends.

Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal
Friends for: 17 years


(Image: BCCL)

The Snapdeal co-founders go way back — from friends in school to starting a business together. After Bahl returned from the US post his MBA, and Bansal graduated from IIT, the two brainstormed business ideas, which gave birth to Snapdeal.

"Food and Maths were the common interests that got us together. We were both quite nerdy, but we enjoyed being that." — KUNAL BAHL

Beyond the boardroom: Bansal, in an interview, revealed that they both used to weigh 100 kg each and enjoyed eating. It was after hanging out with Bahl that Bansal, a pure vegetarian, turned into "a pakka nonvegetarian".

Larry Page and Sergey Brin
Friends for: 22 years


(Image: Getty Image)

The two met at Stanford's PhD program in 1995, but they did not instantly become friends. Despite their bickering, they found themselves working on a research project together. Their paper, 'The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine', became the basis for Google.

"We both found each other obnoxious. But we say it a little bit jokingly. Obviously we spent a lot of time talking to each other, so there was something there." — SERGEY BRIN

Beyond the boardroom: Brin used to experiment with different lock-picking techniques along with Page. They also used to attend trapeze performances, a few years into launching Google.