Dell founder shows how a $100 billion empire started 42 years ago — CEO says ‘This one page changed my life’
Michael Dell, the founder of Dell Technologies Inc., shared his company’s quarterly earnings report dated July 31, 1984, saying, “This one page changed my life.” The billionaire said on his X post that the numbers on that piece of paper convinced his parents that they didn’t need to go back to college. He started the company in 1984, originally known as PC’s Limited, in his dorm room at the University of Texas at Austin, upgrading PCs and building clones of IBM PCs from stock parts.
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As we see from his X post below, his venture seemed to be successful from the get-go, with Dell selling almost a million dollars’ worth of parts and computers, which resulted in a net income of $134,762.75 for just one quarter — equal to $433,150.05 in 2026 dollars. This is an achievement for any startup not backed by millions of dollars, much less by a 19-year-old college freshman backed by just $1,000, with the investment returning 13,500% in less than a year.
Dell went public four years after it was founded, but after a quarter of a century of being listed on the stock market, Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners decided to take the company private again in 2013 in a $24.9 billion deal as it struggled with the rise of smartphones and tablets. After five years without mandatory quarterly reports, Dell decided to go public again, and it currently has a market capitalization of around $261.92 billion.
This one page changed my life.42 years ago today, it convinced my parents I shouldn’t go back to college.I started by upgrading PCs from a dorm room.Today @Dell is helping build the infrastructure that powers AI, from the edge to some of the world’s largest AI factories.… pic.twitter.com/OF3KTMrBeHJuly 31, 2026
The fledgling dorm-room startup has turned from a niche supplier of off-brand IBM-compatible computers into a massive tech giant. It owns iconic computer brands like Alienware and XPS, and has also jumped on the AI bandwagon, supplying servers to hyperscalers and data centers. Its latest income statement also lists total net revenue of $43 billion and a net income of $3.4 billion. Dell’s risk in 1984 also paid handsomely for him. He’s currently the fifth richest person on Forbes’ real-time billionaires list, with a net worth of $229.2 billion.
The computer company has also had its fair share of controversies. This includes an SEC investigation into improper accounting practices in 2005, a lawsuit and massive recall related to laptop batteries catching fire in 2007, and a security vulnerability in 2015 that could have exposed customer data to bad actors. Despite all that, the company continues to thrive today and release new products like the $699 XPS 13 and an affordable OLED gaming monitor in the Alienware AW3426DW. Dell has made a significant impact on PCs, laptops, and other systems for gaming, productivity, enterprise, and more.
