Originally published 2007, part of a series I did for a biography website. Can’t even remember who now, but it’s long gone.
Michael Dell is among the top 100 richest persons in the world and the founder and CEO of the computer company Dell, Inc. His net worth is estimated by Forbes to be $28 billion USD.
Michael Dell was born February 23, 1965, in Houston, Texas. His father was an orthodontist. Michael had no formal education beyond high school; however, as a child he showed an unusual aptitude with both computers and entrepreneurship. His first computer experience was when he took apart and reassembled his Apple ][ computer at age 15, just to see if he could do it. As for business, he sold subscriptions to the Houston Post newspaper. Many kids go into the newspaper business; few of them discover an untapped customer base by marketing to newlyweds who are just moving in together and, as a result of this strategy, he earned $18,000 with which to buy a BMW and a new computer. Michael Dell had that kind of eye for marketing.
Michael Dell did attend at the University of Texas at Austin, but while there, he seeded $1000 start-up money to start his own computer business, called “PC’s Limited.” He ran it literally out of his dorm room. In the year 1984 at age 19, his family extended him $300,000 investment capital and he dropped out of the University to run his computer business full-time, first as PC’s Limited, then as Dell Computer Corporation, and finally as Dell, Inc.
He found that assembling computers and selling them directly to the customer allowed him to be more in touch with the customer’s needs. He allowed customers to check from a list of options and then built the PC custom-made on the spot, a tradition still evident in the practices of the company today. In 1985, Dell launched the first computer of its own design, the Turbo PC, which retailed for under $800 and ran an Intel 8088-compatible processor running at a speed of 8 MHz. They advertised in industry magazines and the Turbo PC became popular for the cheapest possible computer with the most “bang for the buck” at the time. How successful was this strategy? The first year they made $73 million gross.
The company assumed the name of Dell Computer Corporation by 1988. Dell was simply in the right place at the right time when the PC revolution hit, and the business branched out into international markets in just four years. By 1992, Fortune magazine listed Dell in the list of the world’s 500 largest companies. By 1996, Dell was first to tap the Internet commerce sphere by selling computers directly through its website. By 1999, Dell had overtaken Compaq, its chief competitor, to become the leading seller of personal computers in the United States.
In the year 2000, Michael Dell again took the role of the industry’s innovator by doing something first suggested by Ralph Nader: offering PCs with an alternative operating system, specifically the Linux system. This reflected the rise of the people’s open-source OS as the new preferred choice, in what has been a growing demand for Linux ever since.
However, the effort to market Linux quickly folded. It has since come to light that Microsoft, makers of Windows, put pressure on Dell to stop selling Linux, in spite of the anti-trust conviction against Microsoft. According to the case of “Joe Comes, et al vs Microsoft Corporation”, 2006, the testimony of Microsoft executive Joachim Kempin revealed to the public his plan of retaliation and coercion to shut down competition from Linux. He stated that he had thought of “hitting the OEM harder than in the past with anti-Linux actions.” and that he would “further try to restrict source code deliveries where possible and be less gracious when interpreting agreements – again without being obvious about it.”
Since then, Dell, Inc. has made many attempts to market Linux computers without being black-balled out of the market by Microsoft, which abused its position then as a monopoly to threaten to withdraw Microsoft licenses from computer manufacturers. Michael Dell’s preferred Linux system is the popular Ubuntu. His strategy to dodge around Microsoft’s tactics was to offer a bare computer without any software and a boxed Linux software kit, after which time the company will send a technician to the customer’s home to install the software. That is how badly Dell wanted to give his customers what they want.
Michael Dell today still resides in Austin, Texas with his wife, Susan, and their four children. Dell, Inc., has branched out into other technology products besides computers, but computers are still their main product. Dell’s savvy advertising message, including the “Dude, you’re getting a Dell!” commercials and the ads with the slogan “The computer is personal again.” ensure that they will remain a heavy player in the PC market for some time to come.
