Some of the most accomplished tech companies in U.S. history started from humble beginnings. Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs built the tech giant’s first computer model in a garage-and Dell’s founder started his $90 billion legacy from his dorm room. Another thing they have in common-they were both college dropouts.
While many businesses have modest beginnings,Dell says risk-taking focused his mind.
“If you want to really make it big, you better come up with something unique,” Michael Dell, the founder, chairman, and CEO of Dell Technologies told Fortune in a 2017 interview. “It better be differentiated-that nobody else is doing.”
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.
“If you go and ask people if it’s a good idea, most of them will tell you no,” Dell told Fortune.”So don’t go ask.”
To please his parents,dell took up pre-med at the university of Texas in 1983,according to Entrepreneur. 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. It was at the age of 19 that Dell started selling upgrade kits for personal computers to other students in his dorm-a move that launched his tech empire.
Taking a risk
Dell Technologies was born from risk. Only partway into his college career, Dell had just $1,000 to invest into the business, and his manufacturing team consisted of “three guys with screwdrivers sitting at six-foot tables,” he saeid in Direct From Dell.
“You have to embrace risk, and you have to accept failure,” Dell told Fortune.
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 (later acquired by the Houston Chronicle),and was hugely successful in learning how to target specific populations instead of purs
## From Near Collapse to $90 Billion: How Michael dell’s Risk-Taking revitalized His Company
Dell Technologies’ story is a remarkable turnaround,one where a company once predicted to fail,akin to Kodak or Motorola,has not only survived but thrived.This resurgence is largely attributed to founder Michael Dell’s willingness to embrace risk and innovate, a trait he believes is frequently enough stifled in larger corporations.By the early 2010s, Dell faced significant challenges.Competition in the PC market intensified, and the company struggled to adapt to the shift towards mobile computing. As Dell himself acknowledged in a company history published by Cascade, many industry observers believed Dell was on the brink of collapse.
A pivotal moment came in 2013 when Michael Dell, backed by private equity firm Silver Lake, took the company private in a $24.4 billion leveraged buyout – the largest of its kind since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. This move allowed Dell to restructure away from the intense scrutiny of public markets and focus on long-term strategy.
That strategy centered on diversification and expansion beyond PCs. In 2015, Dell completed the acquisition of EMC Corporation for $67 billion, the largest technology acquisition in history at the time. This acquisition dramatically expanded Dell’s presence in the enterprise IT market, especially in data storage and cloud computing.
The gamble paid off. Dell re-entered the public market in 2016 with a market capitalization of approximately $16 billion. As of November 17, 2023, the company’s market cap had soared to nearly $90 billion (companiesmarketcap.com). Michael Dell’s personal wealth has also seen a dramatic increase, with the Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimating his net worth at $150 billion as of February 26, 2024.
Dell attributes this success to a corporate culture that embraces risk. In an interview with *Fortune*, he explained, “Big companies generally [aren’t good at taking risks]. If you talk about risk, they’ll 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’t have risk, you don’t have innovation.”
He further elaborated that Dell actively fosters innovation through substantial investment in research and advancement. “We’ve got hundreds of projects, and they’re not all going to work out,” Dell told *Fortune*. “That’s okay.” This acceptance of failure as a part of the innovation process is a key differentiator for Dell, allowing the company to pursue ambitious projects and maintain a competitive edge in the rapidly evolving technology landscape.