Bill Gates
Failed to develop a search engine and gave more priority to make its browser as no#1 in the world. As a net result Google won the race in search engine. Microsoft has woken late and has launched Bing which has a very small share in the market when compared to Google.
Steve Jobs
Apple was a partnership owned entirely by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. However due to decontrol Steve Jobs agreed to recruit John Sculley (head of Pepsi-Cola) and now dog fight started between two strong-willed men and board sided with John Sculley and Steve Jobs was fired from the company which he founded.
The moral of story is that do not lose control more than 49.9% and retain 51.1% to have decision in your favour. This will make sure that you are not struck in a situation like Steve Jobs and he died early also because of the stresses caused because of all these tormentous events.
The below video by Steve Jobs is a worth a look as these words come from none other than Steve Jobs.
Larry Page
Larry page founded Google in 1998 and missed on the social networking bus till they managed to settle with Google Plus.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook
The above sentence stirred up a small controversy when Zuckerberg posted it on his personal Facebook page in May 2011 that he has killed a pig and goat. it stirred the hornets nest among animal lovers.
Thus the moral of the story is that even mistakes are committed by Billionaires and these lost opportunities could have had made them more richer. the real moral of story is that one has to use forethought and planning to take the business to new heights and success should not get into the head.