#385 Michael Dell

Founders

David Senra

Steve Jobs, Founders, James Dyson, Company Builders, Technology, Henry Ford, Elon Musk, Business Professional Biography, How I Built This, The History Of Entrepreneurship, Jim Clark, Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurs, History, Founder, Business Autobiography, Jeff Bezos, Entrepreneur, Biography, Biographies Of Entrepreneurs, Biographies, Business, Business Biography

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2025

⏱️ 108 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is one of the most extraordinary founder stories you will ever hear. Michael Dell started his company with $1000 when he was 19 years old. The revenues for the first 16 years of Dell look like this: 1984 $6M 1985 $33M 1986 $67M 1987 $159M 1988 $258M 1989 $388M 1990 $546M 1991 $890M 1992 $2B 1993 $2.9B 1994 $3.5B 1995 $5.3B 1996 $7.8B 1997 $12.3B 1998 $18.2B 1999 $25.3B Dell had been profitable for every quarter of its existence. By 2012 the story had changed. The consensus was that Dell was dead. Michael Dell certainly didn't think so — and besides—he was incapable of giving up on the company that bears his name. As he said at the time "I will care about this company after I'm dead!" Michael takes his company private, completes the largest acquisition in technology history, and remerges perfectly positioned for the age of AI. Michael Dell has been working on his company for over 40 years and it feels like he's just getting started. In his autobiography he shares the most important lessons he's learned. It's a treasure trove for entrepreneurs and leaders. This episode is what I learned from reading Play Nice But Win: A CEO's Journey From Founder to Leader by Michael Dell and Direct From Dell: Strategies That Revolutionized an Industry by Michael Dell.

Transcript

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0:00.0	There's a book that Ken Griffin recommends reading. It's called Hardball. And the subtitle of that book is, are you playing to play or are you playing to win? It is a book about extreme winners and some of the best operators in business. There is a line in that book that sounds like it could have been written by any of the almost 400 founders that you and I have studied on the podcast so far. And the line says, if you have not
0:20.9	examined your cost in detail, it is very likely that there exists lurking somewhere in your
0:25.5	cost structure, a major opportunity to improve your profits, weaken your competitors,
0:30.5	and expand your influence. The first move is to drive down your costs faster than your
0:36.0	competitors can and use that cost savings to
0:38.7	upset their strategy. That sounds like the author was describing Dell, as you will hear me
0:44.0	mention. In his autobiography, Michael Dell says that one of the ways he was able to outcompete
0:48.7	his better funded competitor compact was with a structural cost advantage. Compact's operating costs were 36% of their
0:56.9	revenue compared to Dell's 18% of their revenue. 40 years later, Dell is thriving and
1:03.6	compact no longer exists. There is something that history's greatest founders have in common.
1:09.2	They know their business from A to Z and their
1:11.2	costs down to the penny. Ramp makes doing this effortless. Ramp gives your business easy to use
1:16.7	corporate cards for your entire team, automated expense reporting, and cost, control, all on a
1:21.9	single platform. RAM's corporate cards are fully programmable. That means you can set limits so the
1:26.8	spending of your team never gets out of hand.
1:29.3	Most companies only find out about excessive spending after the fact.
1:32.3	With RAMP, you can stop it before it happens.
1:34.5	Matt Paulson, who listens to founders and is the founder of MarketBeat, recently switched to RAMP, and this is what he said about it.
1:39.7	Ramp is the best. The amount of money that you will save from unwanted renewals and employees who
1:44.3	think company credit card equals buy whatever you want will far exceed the best credit card
1:49.4	rewards program. Matt is talking about the importance of cost control. There's a line in Andrew
1:54.6	Carnegie's biography that says cost control became nearly an obsession. Ramp helps you make it an obsession.
	...

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