With an initial investment of one-thousand dollars, the company grew to conglomerate status with over thirty-five thousand employees in thirty-four different countries. It even blew Compaq Computer out the water by grabbing the top spot as the world's largest PC builder. Michael Dell's business methods were so common sense, yet revolutionary, that many others could not believe the meteoric rise of the company. And, to provide a blueprint of the company's unbelievable success, Dell published a book in 1999 entitled "Direct from Dell: Strategies That Revolutionized the Industry".
People close to Michael Dell say he is quite shy, which makes his rise to super-entrepreneur that much more incredible. In the early days, he was the only one doing the marketing and promotion, and he obviously served both the customers and the company well. And, even though he had retired from the company a few years ago, the board encouraged him to return.
Michael Dell changed how we bought computers, by in fact, making them available to the masses at large, and at affordable prices. Not only did he sell the computers by word-of-mouth, but he encouraged the public to buy from the company's online store, which is reputed to sell forty million dollars worth of inventory on any given day.