Michael Dell

Michael Dell, born February 1965, started the road to success out of his University of Texas dorm room in 1984 with just $1,000 and an idea to provide affordable personal computers to college students. Dell is now Chairman and CEO of his company with a net worth of over $30 billion.

"You don't have to be a genius or a visionary or even a college graduate to be successful. You just need a framework and a dream."-Michael Dell

Following the simple idea that by selling customized personal computer systems directly to customers he could best understand their needs and provide the most effective computing solutions to meet those needs, Dell has made Dell Computer Corp. the world's leading direct computer systems company.

Dell's parents wanted him to be a doctor. But by the time he was in junior high, Dell was hooked on computers. While most of his classmates were tinkering under the hoods of old cars, Dell loved to tinker with his Apple IIe.

To please his parents, Dell enrolled as a premed student at the University of Texas in 1983, but by then his only real interest was in computers. During his first semester, Dell spent his spare time buying up remaindered, outmoded PCs from local retailers, then upgrading and selling them from his dorm room. He was so successful, that one day his roommate piled his ever-growing inventory up against the door of their dorm room.

Dell took this as a sign it was time to move his burgeoning business off campus. His parents were furious when he told them he wanted to drop out of college, so to appease them, Dell agreed to go back to school if the summer's sales proved disappointing. In his first month in business, Dell sold some $180,000 worth of PCs. He never returned for his sophomore year.

While looking for ways to expand his fledgling start-up, Dell concluded computers would soon become a commodity, and with commodities, what matters most is price and delivery. Dell saw that the quickest way to achieve both goals was to cut out the middleman. He realized that he could buy components and assemble the whole PC himself more cheaply. Then he could sell each machine over the phone directly to customers at a 15 percent discount to established brands. This technique, which came to be known as "the direct model of selling," would revolutionize the industry and make Dell a multibillionaire in the process.

The 19-year-old Dell dubbed his venture PCs Ltd., and the Austin-based company soon became one of the fastest-growing enterprises in the country. Rather than flooding the market with hundreds of thousands of "plain brown wrapper" computers, the company would focus on what it did best-creating customized machines to order.

His idea was to sell computers directly to the consumer without going through retailers, and in the process design and deliver a computer based upon the customer’s own specifications. Thus, in 1984, Dell founded the Dell Computer Corporation with $1,000. In 18 years, Dell has grown into a $31.2 billion company. Today, Dell's average earnings are $40 million per day, and it is the largest online commercial computer seller in the world.

Now Dell is the world's largest PC manufacturer, growing from $6 million annual revenue to over $40 billion in only sixteen years. It employs over 40,000 people in over 170 countries worldwide. Dell’s product line has diversified to includes not only PC’s and network servers, but storage systems, printers, hand-held computers, MP3 players, and televisions, plus a wide selection of computer services. Dell is the largest online computer retailer, selling an average of $30 million a day