Michael Dell is most famously known as the founder and CEO of Dell Inc., one of the world’s leading sellers of personal computers. Although he is now 57 years old, he started Dell Inc. as an 18-year-old student at the University of Texas at Austin. He began his computer business at the beginning of his freshman year with $1,000 in startup money. By his second semester of freshman year, he had sold $80,000 worth of computers to consumers. Once he turned 19, he dropped out of college to focus on Dell Inc. full time. He went public with Dell Inc. in 1988. At this time, it was called PCs Limited, then later the name was switched to Dell Inc. once their product variety grew and included more items than just personal computers.
When Dell was younger in the beginning of Dell Inc., he hired experienced people to work as executives. These people served as personal mentors to him and showed him the ropes in the industry. In 1992 Michael Dell became the youngest CEO in history to have his firm enter Fortune Magazine’s list of the top 500 corporations.
Michael Dell is truly remarkable for founding one of the pioneer companies in the computer industry at such a young age. This is so inspiring and motivating because it shows that people who are our age create ideas that revolutionize the world that we live in.
As a college student, I would hesitate to call him a “college dropout” (while it’s technically true) because what he pursued is the kind of thing that college is supposed to train someone to do!
I think it is very interesting that someone that already went out and created a very profitable business on their own decided to go out and hire others who he thought he could still learn things from. This shows that getting feedback from others can only help to continue to grow in areas that you were lacking knowledge in.
I enjoyed this article on a remarkable entrepreneur. Today it seems impossible to imagine someone creating a PC company with only a $1,000 to start! Dell was wise to rely upon experienced leadership some young entrepreneurs do to much of the management and get outside by investors like Steve Jobs in the 1980s.