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Some of the most successful tech companies in U.S. history started from humble beginnings. Former Apple<\/a> CEO Steve Jobs built the tech giant\u2019s first computer model in a garage\u2014and Dell\u2019s founder started his $62 billion legacy from his dorm room. Another thing they have in common\u2014they were both college dropouts.\u00a0<\/p>\n While many businesses have modest beginnings, Dell<\/a> says risk-taking focused his mind.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf you want to really make it big, you better come up with something unique,\u201d Michael Dell, the founder, chairman, and CEO of Dell Technologies, told Fortune<\/em> in a 2017 interview<\/a>. It better be differentiated that nobody else is doing.\u201d<\/p>\n His other piece of advice for entrepreneurs is to take feedback with a grain of salt. Instead, he says he empowers people to trust their gut instincts on whether a new product or business idea will be successful in the long run.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you go and ask people if it\u2019s a good idea, most of them will tell you \u2018no,\u2019\u201d Dell told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cSo don\u2019t go ask.\u201d<\/p>\n To please his parents, Dell took up pre-med at the University of Texas in 1983, according to Entrepreneur<\/em><\/a>. But Dell had long been fascinated by computers and technology, having disassembled an Apple II model at the age of 15 to see how it worked, according to a 1999 biography, Direct from Dell: Strategies that Revolutionized an Industry<\/em><\/a>. <\/em>It was at the age of 19 that Dell started selling upgrade kits for personal computers to other students in his dorm\u2014a move that started his tech empire.<\/p>\n Dell Technologies was born from risk. Only part-way into his college career, Dell had just $1,000 to invest into the business and his manufacturing team consisted of \u201cthree guys with screwdrivers sitting at six-foot tables,\u201d he said in the Direct from Dell <\/em>book.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to embrace risk, and you have to accept failure,\u201d Dell told Fortune.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n Even before the inception of Dell Technologies, Dell had long had an entrepreneurial spirit. While attending Memorial High School in Houston, he sold subscriptions to the Houston Post <\/em>(later acquired by the Houston Chronicle<\/em>), and was hugely successful by learning how to target specific populations instead of just the classic cold-call sales technique. He made $18,000 in one year from that venture, which was even more than some of his high school teachers made, according to a 2021 Fortune <\/em>Leadership Next podcast<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Dell had figured out that newlyweds were more likely to buy newspaper subscriptions, so using FOIA requests, he found the marriage licenses\u2014and subsequently, addresses\u2014of the people he thought would be most likely to purchase a newspaper subscription from him.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cJackpot!\u201d Dell said in the 2021 Fortune<\/em> podcast. Dell then used those addresses to send direct-mail campaigns, and even hired a few friends to help him with his venture.<\/p>\n Growing from a dorm room operation into a full-blown tech empire, Dell remained steadfast in taking risks. By the age of 27, he had become the youngest CEO in the Fortune 500 in 1992\u2014and by 2001, Dell Technologies became the world\u2019s largest personal computer maker. The company\u2019s success in the 1990s owed a lot to what Dell learned selling newspapers, with a similarly innovative direct-marketing strategy.<\/p>\n The numbers tracking Dell\u2019s trajectory as a public, then private, then public company are headspinning. Valued at over $120 billion in 1997<\/a>, when Apple was floundering at $2.3 billion, the company\u2019s devotion to its core PC business threw it for a loop after the dotcom crash. By 2007, it was time for a change<\/a> amid slower sales and greater competition. \u201cThe direct model has been a revolution, but it is not a religion,\u201d Dell wrote in an April 2007 memo to his 80,000 employees. Even Dell admits in its company history<\/a> that \u201cmany believed that it was a dying company that would perish like Kodak or Motorola.\u201d That led to leadership changes and new corporate strategies, with Dell\u2019s knack for creative solutions ultimately breathing new life into his creation again and again.<\/p>\n The founder ultimately took Dell private in 2013 for $24.4 billion<\/a> in the biggest leveraged buyout since the Global Financial Crisis and with help from private equity sponsor Silver Lake, Dell retooled, especially via the highest-valued tech acquisition ever, EMC Corporation for $67 billion<\/a> in 2015. The company relisted again the next year at a $16 billion market cap, which had climbed to $62 billion as of February 22, 2024. And as for Michael Dell himself? His own net worth is estimated at $87.7 billion by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index<\/a>.<\/p>\n Dell told Fortune<\/em> that risk-taking has been his greatest advantage in business, and a downfall of other major corporations.<\/p>\n \u201cBig companies generally [aren\u2019t good at taking risks],\u201d Dell told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cIf you talk about risk, they\u2019ll talk about the risk reduction, and the risk committee, and the risk management, and all those say the risk is bad. Well, if you don\u2019t have risk, you don\u2019t have innovation.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, Dell says that his company actually does \u201call sorts of things internally to promote risk innovation,\u201d including investing billions of dollars in research and development.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve got hundreds of projects, and they\u2019re not all going to work out,\u201d Dell told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cThat\u2019s okay.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nTaking a risk<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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