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Staff post about: Michael Dell Become an Author

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It's through curiosity and looking at opportunities in new ways that we've always mapped our path at Dell. There's always an opportunity to make a difference.

There are a lot of things that go into creating success. I don't like to do just the things I like to do. I like to do things that cause the company to succeed. I don't spend a lot of time doing my favorite activities.

Our business is about technology, yes. But it's also about operations and customer relationships.

20 years and $40 billion. They seem like good round numbers.

The interesting thing is when we design and architect a server, we don't design it for Windows or Linux, we design it for both. We don't really care, as long as we're selling the one the customer wants.

We have enormous potential to keep growing. It provides lots of learning opportunity for me and it's fun to see how so many people, so many communities are affected in a positive way by what we're doing here. I love my job and I'm not giving it up.

At the root of it, I was probably just opportunistic. I had and still have a great interest in computers. There was a business opportunity [with] this product that I really liked, and it all kind of lined up together.

I saw that you'd buy a PC for about $3,000, and inside that PC was about $600 worth of parts. IBM would buy most of these parts from other companies, assemble them, and sell the computer to a dealer for $2,000. Then the dealer, who knew very little about selling or supporting computers, would sell it for $3,000, which was even more outrageous.

Well, we started the company by building to the customer's order. And interestingly enough, we didn't do it because we saw some massive paradigm in the future. Basically, we just didn't have any capital [to mass-produce].

One of the things I benefited from when I started this business was that I didn't know anything. I was just instinct with no preconceived notions. This enabled me to learn and change quickly without having to worry about maintaining any kind of status quo, like some of my bigger competitors.

I had to give it a full go and see what happened. I couldn't resist the opportunity. The deal was, I would start into business full time in May, and at the end of August we would take a look and decide if it was doing well.

Sometimes you just have to belly up to the bar and take a chance. We made some mistakes, but we also had the strength to work our way out.

I think the '90s are going to see a greater integration between the human mind and the computer. Today, you have to communicate with a computer by a keyboard that is somewhat awkward and clumsy. We are working on other ways to do this. The best computer is the one you don't even know is there.

Don’t spend so much time trying to choose the perfect opportunity, that you miss the right opportunity.

Recognize that there will be failures, and acknowledge that there will be obstacles. But you will learn from your mistakes and the mistakes of others, for there is very little learning in success.

Whether you’ve found your calling, or if you’re still searching, passion should be the fire that drives your life’s work.

The key is to listen to your heart and let it carry you in the direction of your dreams. I’ve learned that it’s possible to set your sights high and achieve your dreams and do it with integrity, character, and love. And each day that you’re moving toward your dreams without compromising who you are, you’re winning.

They were probably $800 or something like that, not super expensive and not very powerful either. They had cassette drives instead of hard-disk drives. It was even before the floppy disks. (I'd) largely do programming with Basic. I was kind of fascinated with the computing power and what that could do and what that would mean. It was just an enchanting device for me.

I dropped out of college because that's what I thought would happen. So, that for me was in 1984 and I started a company around that idea, believing that more and more people would know how to use PCs, that they would become easier to use, that even people could buy them without going to a store. We had a sense for it in the early '80s but certainly couldn't say we imagined it. It is just the way it happened

I was, you know, rebellious--an 18, 19-year-old and just did what I wanted to do and all worked out OK.

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