10-03-2006, 09:31 PM
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#1 (permalink)
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Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 132
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What a Baller
Michael Dell... holy shit.
Quote:
At age 12 he enters the business world with his own stamp auction. In order to bypass the traditional auctioneers and earn a bigger commission he convinces a bunch of his neighbors to consign their stamps to him, and advertises “Dell’s Stamps” in Linn’s Stamp Journal. He then types a 12 page catalogue with one finger and mails it out. He earns $2,000 at age 12, in 1977. Here comes Michael Dell.
At age 16 he lands a job selling subscriptions to The Houston Post. Every month he gets a list of people to cold call and comes to the realization that the two kinds of people that almost always want to buy are those that are recently married or just moved into a new apartment or house. He hires a bunch of his college buddies to canvass mortgage and marriage license lists, draws up a personalized letter, and earns $18,000 in a year; more than most of his teachers. By graduation, he is driving a BMW.
At age 18 he bought computer components from IBM dealers, and selling them 15%-20% cheaper. Eventually he sold IBM clones under the name PC Limited and by avoiding retail markup, and once again cutting out the middleman, he could sell PCs at about 40% the price of IBM. He took leave of absence from college, and with a $1000 investment borrowed from family he moved into a condo and sold $80,000 worth of computers during the second semester of his freshmen year. And to think there were those that laughed when he said he would one day overtake IBM…
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