The Exchanges

Q Yeah, amazing. So you, so you, uh, obviously you graduate high school, um, and then you go to university to, to UT Austin, right?

A Yes. I was a pre-med major, and, you know, some of this was the programming from my parents, um, Because, you know, my father was a doctor, my older brother was a doctor, you know, a lot of my cousins were doctors, and I always thought I'd be a doctor, and, and, uh, when I started going to school, you know, my parents weren't around all the time, right, because I'm, I'm in Austin, they're in Houston, and you're pretty far away, so you got a lot of free time on your hands, so I start exploring this whole computer thing further, And one of the things that I noticed about the computer business was that it was very inefficient. It took a really long time for the technology to get from the people that made it to the people that were buying it, and it was actually rather expensive and, and slow to occur, and to me that was sort of frustrating.

AI assessment note: “Yes. I was a pre-med major, and, you know, some of this was”

Q Wow. That, I mean, that's just an insane amount of money. I mean, did you tell your parents that you were, that you were making this much money?

A Uh, no. No, I didn't. Um, now, you know, they, they eventually, going back to late 83, you know, they became very upset with me, and, um, Said, you have to stop this and, and focus on your studies. Said, you got to get your priorities straight, you know, what are you doing with your life and all that stuff. And, you know, I agreed to do that. You know, it was like going cold turkey or something. It just, it lasted about 10 days, and I actually realized that this was more than a hobby or A nice way to make some extra cash on the side while I was going to school, but actually something I was very passionate about. So during those 10 days, I, I sort of mapped out, you know, the beginnings of how I was going to, you know, finish up my freshman year, but then launch this as a real official business, and, you know, I eventually made a deal with my parents that I would do that, and if it Worked out, I would continue, and if it didn't, I'd go back to school.

AI assessment note: “Uh, no. No, I didn't.”

Q And at that point, like the late eighties, what did you have in mind for the future? Like, what was, what were your ambitions for the company?

A Well, we had some pretty big aspirations. The first one was we said, we want to expand globally. It was pretty clear to us that, you know, if you were only successful in the United States, that wouldn't be good enough. Uh, the second was that we had to go after selling to big companies, because if you didn't sell to the really big companies and the biggest governments in the world, well, you weren't gonna be a relevant company. Yeah. And then the third one was we said we had to differentiate on the basis of service, and we created this thing called on-site service, and Today would be a very common thing, but back then, you know, if your computer broke, you had to put it in the trunk of your car, take it back to the computer store, and then they would take it, and then they'd ship it off somewhere, and you'd wait weeks and weeks, and you'd supposedly get it back, and so we came up with this program where you, you know, call us on the phone, this is before the internet, and if you had a problem, we'd help you resolve it on the phone, and if we weren't able to resolve it on the phone, We'd send a technician with parts to your location to fix your computer on site, and we did that all across the United States, and, you know, we thought the minute we announced this, our sales will double, you know, because it was, like, so much better than what we were doing before, and they didn't …

AI assessment note: “we had some pretty big aspirations. The first one was we said, we want to expand globally.”

Q Yeah, amazing. So you, so you, obviously you graduate high school, um, and then you go to university to, to UT Austin, right?

A Yes. I was a pre-med major, and, you know, some of this was the programming from my parents, um, Because, you know, my father was a doctor, my older brother was a doctor, and I always thought I'd be a doctor, and, and, uh, when I started going to school, you know, my parents weren't around all the time, right, because I'm, I'm in Austin, near Houston, and you're pretty far away, so you got a lot of free time on your hands, so I start exploring this whole computer thing further, And one of the things that I noticed about the computer business was that it was very inefficient. It took a really long time for the technology to get from the people that made it to the people that were buying it, and it was actually rather expensive and, and slow to occur, and to me that was sort of frustrating.

AI assessment note: “Yes. I was a pre-med major, and, you know, some of this was”

Q That, I mean, that's just an insane amount of money. I mean, did you tell your parents that you were, that you were making this much money?

A Uh, no. No, I didn't. Um, now, you know, they, they eventually, going back to late 83, you know, they became very upset with me, and Said you have to stop this and, and focus on your studies. You got to get your priorities straight. You know, what are you doing with your life and all that stuff. And, you know, I agreed to do that. You know, it was like going cold turkey or something. It just, it lasted about 10 days. And I actually realized that this was more than a hobby or A nice way to make some extra cash on the side while I was going to school, but actually something I was very passionate about. So during those 10 days, I, I sort of mapped out, you know, the beginnings of how I was going to, you know, finish up my freshman year, but then launch this as a real official business, and, you know, I eventually made a deal with my parents that if it Worked out, I would continue, and if it didn't, I'd go back to school.

AI assessment note: “Uh, no. No, I didn't.”

Q I, I wonder, Michael, how much of your success has to do with, you know, your hard work and your brains and, you know, intuition, and how much of it is luck?

A Good question. I don't really know. Uh, you know, I, I'm sure there's some, you know, element of, of luck there. I, I, I've probably been lucky a lot. Um, you know, I feel like I was really lucky to be born in the United States. That's probably the biggest stroke of luck right there, because I think in the United States, you know, you have an opportunity to start a business, and when you're 20 years old and you show up and you want to sell something to somebody, you know, they, they don't look at you too funny. So I, I think that was my biggest stroke of luck was just being born here in this country and having the opportunity and the freedoms that that's afforded me.

AI assessment note: “I think that was my biggest stroke of luck was just being born here”

Q Did it cost the company money? Did it affect the stock price?

A Sure. Yeah, all that. You know, around the same time, we also had a wildly ambitious engineering program that our team had cooked up, and it was too big of a technical leap, and the project failed. It was a project called Olympic. We had problems with our inventory control early on. You know, we had all kinds of mistakes. Fortunately, none of them were fatal. And one of the things I learned a long, long time ago, you know, when you find a problem, fix it as fast as you find it. And look, when you're pioneering in a new area with a new business model, there's no playbook. There's no, uh, you know, you, you have to just Learn by doing, and you have to intuit and experiment your way through the problem.

AI assessment note: “Sure. Yeah, all that.”