Michael Dell
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American business magnate

Michael Saul Dell (born February 23, 1965) is an American billionaire businessman and investor. He is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Dell Technologies, one of the world's largest technology infrastructure companies.[1]

He is the 10th-richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with a net worth of $124 billion as of March 2024.[2] As of October 2023, according to Forbes, approximately $50 billion of his net worth was derived from his 50% stake in Dell and 40% stake in VMware, with the rest being held by his family office DFO Management.[3]

In January 2013 it was announced that he had bid to take Dell Inc. private for $24.4 billion in the biggest management buyout since the Great Recession. Dell Inc. officially went private in October 2013.[4] The company once again went public in December 2018.[5]

Early life and education

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Dell was born in 1965 in Houston to a Jewish family. His parents were Lorraine Charlotte (née Langfan), a stockbroker,[6] and Alexander Dell, an orthodontist. Michael attended Herod Elementary School in Houston.[7] In a bid to enter business early, he applied to take a high school equivalency exam at age eight.[8] In his early teens, he invested his earnings from part-time jobs in stocks and precious metals.[9]

Dell purchased his first calculator at age seven and encountered an early teletype terminal in junior high. At age 15, after playing with computers at Radio Shack, he got his first computer, an Apple II, which he promptly disassembled to see how it worked.[10] Dell attended Memorial High School in Houston, selling subscriptions to the Houston Post in the summer.[11] Dell's parents wanted him to be a doctor and in order to please them, he took up pre-med at the University of Texas in 1983.[12] Dell continued learning to target specific populations for newspaper subscriptions rather than just making cold calls.[13] He discovered that people who were most likely to get a subscription were newlyweds and people moving to a new home. After collecting the contact information of this population from public records, he sent direct mail appeals and earned $18,000 in one year.[11] He hired several employees, and after earning a gross profit of nearly $200,000 in his first year of business, Dell dropped out of the University of Texas at age 19.[14]

Business career

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While a freshman pre-med student at the University of Texas, Dell started an informal business putting together and selling upgrade kits for personal computers in Room 2713 of the Dobie Center residential building.[15][16] He then applied for a vendor license to bid on contracts for the State of Texas, winning bids by not having the overhead of a computer store.[17][18][19]

In January 1984, Dell believed that the potential cost savings of a manufacturer selling PCs directly had enormous advantages over the conventional indirect retail channel.[20] In January 1984, Dell registered his company as "PC's Limited". Dell’s strategy was to sell directly to customers by manufacturing computers only after they were ordered.[21] Operating out of a condominium, the business sold between $50,000 and $80,000 worth of PC upgrades, kits, and add-on components. In May, Dell incorporated the company as "Dell Computer Corporation" and relocated to a business center in North Austin. The company employed a few people as order takers, a few more to fill the orders, and, as Dell recalled, a manufacturing staff consisting of "three guys with screwdrivers sitting at six-foot tables". The venture's capitalization cost was $1,000.[22][23] During the formative years of Dell Computer, Dell was mentored by Morton Meyerson.[24]

In 1992, aged 27, he became the youngest CEO of a company ranked in Fortune magazine's list of the top 500 corporations.[25] In 1996, Dell started selling computers over the Web, the same year his company launched its first servers. By March 1997, Dell Inc. reported about $1 million in sales per day from dell.com.[26][27] In the first quarter of 2001, Dell Inc. reached a world market share of 12.8 percent, surpassing Compaq to become the world's largest PC maker. The metric marked the first time the rankings had shifted over the previous seven years. The company's combined shipments of desktops, notebooks and servers grew 34.3 percent worldwide and 30.7 percent in the United States at a time when competitors' sales were shrinking.[28]

On March 4, 2004, Dell stepped down as CEO, but stayed as chairman of Dell Inc.'s board, while Kevin Rollins, then president and COO, became president and CEO. On January 31, 2007, Dell returned as CEO at the request of the board, succeeding Rollins.[29]

In 2013, Michael Dell with the help of Silver Lake Partners, Microsoft, and a consortium of lenders took Dell, Inc. private. The deal was reportedly worth $25 billion and faced difficulties during its execution. Notable resistance came from Carl Icahn, but after several months he stepped aside. Michael Dell received a 75% stake in the company.[30]

On October 12, 2015, Dell Inc. announced its intent to acquire the enterprise software and storage company EMC Corporation. At $67 billion, it has been labeled the "highest-valued tech acquisition in history".[31][32] The acquisition was finalized September 7, 2016.[33]

Penalty

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In July 2010 Dell Inc. agreed to pay a $100 million penalty to settle SEC charges[34] of disclosure and accounting fraud in relation to undisclosed payments from Intel Corporation. Michael Dell and former CEO Kevin Rollins agreed to pay $4 million each and former CFO James Schneider agreed to pay $3 million to settle the charges.[34]

Accolades

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Accolades for Dell include "Entrepreneur of the Year" (at age 24) from Inc. magazine;[35] "Top CEO in American Business" from Worth magazine; "CEO of the Year" from Financial World, IndustryWeek and Chief Executive magazines. Dell also received the 1998 Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement[36] and the 2013 Franklin Institute's Bower Award for Business Leadership.[37]

Affiliations

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Dell serves on the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum, the executive committee of the International Business Council, the U.S. Business Council. He previously served as a member of the U.S. President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.[38]

In April 2020, Governor Greg Abbott named Dell to the Strike Force to Open Texas – a group "tasked with finding safe and effective ways to slowly reopen the state" during the COVID-19 pandemic.[39] He also serves as an advisor on the COVID-19 Technology Task Force, a technology industry coalition founded in March 2020 collaborating on solutions to respond to and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.[40]

Writings

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Dell's 1999 book, Direct from Dell: Strategies That Revolutionized an Industry (by HarperBusiness), is an account of his early life, his company's founding, growth and missteps, as well as lessons learned. The book was written in collaboration with Catherine Fredman.[41]

Dell's second book, Play Nice But Win: A CEO's Journey from Founder to Leader (by Portfolio), is a story of inside battles that defined him as a leader. The book was written in collaboration with James Kaplan.[42]

Wealth

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In 1998, Dell founded MSD Capital L.P., later renamed DFO Management, to manage his family's investments.[43]

In February 2018, it was reported that in 2014, Dell had paid $100.5 million for Manhattan's One57 penthouse, which was then a record for the most expensive home ever sold in the city.[44]

On March 1, 2024, Dell's net worth crossed the $100 billion mark, after Dell, Inc. reported an earnings beat, pushing the stock up 32% in the trading day and adding $13.7 billion into his fortune from $90.6 billion to $104.3 billion according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, making him the 12th-richest person at that time.[45][2][46]

Personal life

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Dell married Susan Lieberman on October 28, 1989, in Austin, Texas; the couple reside there with their four children.[47]

Philanthropy

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In 1999, Michael and Susan Dell established the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, which focuses on causes related to health and education.[48] Dell is also behind the founding of the Dell Jewish Community Campus in the Northwest Hills neighborhood of Austin.[49] With his wife, Dell was the third-largest donor in America in 2023 with total giving of $975 million. Dell and his wife have been among the top three most generous donors in America previous in 2003 and 2017.[50]

References

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Further reading

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Dell, Michael; Catherine Fredman (1999). Direct From Dell: Strategies that Revolutionized an Industry. New York, New York: HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 0-88730-914-3.

Koehn, Nancy F. Brand New: How Entrepreneurs Earned Consumers' Trust from Wedgwood to Dell (2001) pp 257–306.

Magretta, Joan. "The power of virtual integration: An interview with Dell Computer's Michael Dell." Harvard Business Review (1998): pp-73+. online[dead link]