Michael Dell, Founder, Chairman and CEO, Dell Inc.

so I indicated earlier we're very pleased and honored today to have Michael Dell as our special guest Michael is a legend in the business world but let me just give a little background Michael is now of course the founder and chairman and CEO of Dell Inc which is one of the largest IT service providers in the and companies in the world and it's a company that he started when he was 19 years old he was a college undergraduate University of Texas and began assembling computers in his dorm room built the started the company at 19 the company went public when he was 23 and he became a 27 the youngest CEO of any fortune 500 company and the company became well known for its personal computers business among other things and then he ran the company until 2004 and then stepped back as CEO to turn it over somebody else and then 2007 came back as the CEO and in 2013 decided to take the publicly traded company private in one of the largest buyouts of the of the era since the Great Recession it was the largest buyout about a twenty four billion dollar buyout and the company has done quite well since it's a privately owned company Michael is very involved as well in philanthropy and he and his wife have a foundations given away more than a billion dollars they're very involved in urban education urban poverty medical research and children's health among other causes Michael is also very involved in the computer and technology industry he's here in town part for CEO technology CEO Council among other things that he's doing in town and I would say that in the computer world and the IT world he is obviously one of the legends he is one of the few people who started the company let's say twenty some years ago in this industry who is still the CEO of a company in the industry so Michael if I could just start off by asking you you took your company private in 2013 and do you miss dealing with analysts and publicly Porter is that a problem you don't have to do no I don't miss that at all in fact for entertainment I listen in sometimes to my competitors conference calls and you know it's really fun so when you're when you're publicly traded you have to deal with quarterly earning statements and analysts and so forth so now that your private what do you focus on instead of quarterly numbers and how is your company run differently now that you're a privately owned company we focus on on our customers and we focus on the medium in long term and getting away from this 90-day shot clock has given us the freedom and the flexibility to invest in our business without let's say fear of the short-term targets and you know I think it's energized our team you know we had a very good year last year and you know it's really changed the the focus to be more long-term so at the time you were considering doing this I remember you and I were in Davos at the time and I was doing it I did a little TV interview and somebody asked me what I thought about your transaction that was pending and I said well most buyouts of that size don't really work so I wouldn't be that optimistic I wouldn't look at investing in it I didn't realize that we were going to have lunch later that day and I then apologized to you but there were other buyout firms that actually looked at it as well you did it was with Silverlake which is an excellent firm specialize in technology have you caught up all the buyout firms that didn't want to do the deal and tell them that they made a mistake have you done that yet no I wouldn't do that you know I think look our business you know has some volatility it's got some uncertainty that's why you know the the technology industry is so dynamic it's changing all the time and we've been actively changing our business and look when you're doing that in a in a short-term focused financial market it can be pretty difficult so at the time firms like mine said well this is a he's a PC manufacturer a personal computer manufacturer and that business is probably going down and there's probably too many people that manufacture them very cheaply and so this wouldn't be a great business what did people miss because there you're not just a PC company or what did people miss in miss analyzing the way that that your company would operate in the future well it as it relates to the the small computer systems PCs tablets workstations we've had eight quarters in a row of increasing our share of the overall industry right so you know that's clearly a good thing there there isn't necessarily a lot of growth there but by gaining share we can actually grow our business so there's somewhat of a consolidation there on the other side of our business in software and services and data center we have some pretty robust growth now we have spent over the last six or seven years roughly fifteen billion dollars acquiring 40 or so firms that themselves that acquired 150 companies and built pretty substantial capability in IT solutions software services data center to give you a sense for the this last year our deferred revenues grew more than 20% year-over-year which our sizing pretty hard to do many of our competitors you know similarly positioned would have had negative growth in the same period so we've been able to reshape the business pretty significantly and successfully so what percentage of your revenues have you can say roughly or now PC oriented them the manufacturing of PCs is that less than 50% of your revenues now it's still a little more than 50% but you know I also think of it as the tip of the spear particularly in the emerging world so if you think about you've got three and a half billion people in India China and Africa and while IT services and data analytics and you know the more complex type solutions are interesting it's not actually what they buy first what they buy first is infrastructure which is you know the actual machines that you know bring the data the servers that you know the network and then they get into these more complex areas so you know when I look at our you know small computer systems business with businesses and enterprise in these emerging developing markets which by the way still have relatively low penetration compared to the developed markets there's robust growth there in the developed markets it's kind of a replacement cycle business but you know to be able to bring an end-to-end solution I think you have to have both ends of the solution so we we we fundamentally believe in to be able to solve the problems that customers have out there it's a combination of hardware software and services together okay so private equity firms like Silverlake usually when they make an investment they like to exit at a nice profit and then maybe three or four or five years so what will you do to help so we're like exit will you take the company public again or if you had an for that and how would you give them an exit if you didn't do an IPO you know they haven't shown any desire to exit anytime soon but there are many ways for that to occur and you know going public wouldn't be your highest priority that again would you know you know I think you know you think about why do companies go public I mean we you know there's certainly a rule for public markets and when we went public in 1988 it was really the only way to get the amount of capital we needed for our growing company okay and you know but you know we don't really need capital now we generate lots of capital our brand is also very well known by our customers and so the reasons to go public aren't really there so I find it much more enjoyable to be a private company I think the flexibility that we have is tremendous and we can you know take on investments with an uncertain outcome and and and that's actually quite quite attractive in our business so instead of having to to manage to try to hit a particularly quarterly target don't care about that so we're you know we're much more about this no long term before it went public private your company you owned about personally about twelve and a half percent is that more or less 15 pristine sounds like now you own about 75% 70% 70% okay is it too late to invest in the IPO we're company now I mean it's too late for carlão to invest in it well David yeah I think it might be a little bit late but uh okay all right so let me go back to when you began the company as I mentioned earlier at you were 19 years ladder by the interest though well it's uh we always liked good investments unfortunately too missed this one but at 19 you're in college and your freshman University of Texas you grew up in Houston and you're you're a pre-med student your father as an orthodontist yes and you have a medical background in your family lots of people done medicine so you were preordained to go to medical school I assume so what happened when that led you to start fixing computers or how did I actually start in your dorm room as I understand it you were assembling computers how did that actually come about yeah it actually goes back a little bit further than that you know when I was in junior high school I was in this math class and my my math teacher had this teletype terminal and you could type in programs and the answer would come back I just became it for Auld with this idea of machines that would calculate and sort of threw myself into all that fast forward to 1981 I'm 16 years old IBM introduces the IBM PC and it was clearly aimed at business and what was interesting to me about that is okay now you have this computer for a few thousand dollars that any business could buy not any business but but a lot of businesses could buy and it was incredibly empowering it was it was exciting and you know kind of threw myself into all that as I as I took the computer apart what I realized is that they were selling $500 worth of parts for $3,000 which seemed to me like a kind of criminal enterprise almost it just seemed unfair right it's like man how could it be you know $3,000 you know they're $5 with the parts and so so I started you know mapping out what all the parts cost and then and then started upgrading you know like people would upgrade cars and things I was upgrading computers and you know that ultimately led me to to starting the company and making our own computers but you were in your collar so you have two parents who thought you were going to medical school nice Jewish parents and they out no matter that what they didn't go over so well so you tell your parents and you're dropping out of college to start a computer company what did they say I said you're bananas it did not go over well but so you know we basically made a deal and the deal was that I would you know take a semester off and at University of Texas you can take a semester off and go back and you know if the business did well enough then I continued and if it didn't I just go back to school and so after 90 days I had financial statements you know business was was booming and thriving and I continued so the name Dell is very simple name and sounds like it would always work you know four letters suppose your last name had been Rubinstein would you pick what do you think the company would have worked as well or how did you come to name it Dell yeah I didn't it the the I don't think Rubinstein Computer Corporation what I would I would but the the name was actually a bit of an accident I when I was in my dorm room I had a trade name called pcs limit so I was a sole proprietor doing business as pcs limited and I had this customer who was a lawyer and he you know was kind of saying hey your business is thriving it's growing maybe you should incorporate he said what I want to do that you know and he kind of explains to me the benefits of being a corporation and I said well so what's involved here as well how about you know you install another hard disk drive for me and I'll do your incorporation okay that's the deal and so I install the hard drive and he says well there's two problems first is you can't incorporate the name pcs limited because it's too generic so I this is the lawyer speaking called the company Dell Computer Corporation doing businesses pcs limited I said okay fine whatever okay then he says the second thing is you need a thousand dollars because you can't start a corporation unless you have a thousand dollars I said well like it's going to take me a few days to go sell some more stuff I'll come back the thousand dollars and so so that that was May 3rd 1984 company was incorporated the thousand dollars as Dell computer corporation fast forward three years we embarked on our global expansion right in in the UK hire hire a guy in the UK he actually didn't show up for work so the second command was was was promoted to be the head of the UK and and he's he's calling back to headquarters he says I can't make pcs limited limited in the UK because that makes no sense at all so what should I call this company meanwhile back in Texas business is booming worth you know we're too busy we just we don't know you figure it out so so the guy the UK says well I'm going to call this no computer corporation because that's the name of the company so we were Dell computer corporation in the UK and we were Dell Computer Corporation doing business as pcs limited in the US for a period of time and then a bunch of folks came to me and said you should just have it be Dell Computer Corporation I was reluctant but it's all worked out I would say so but so you're in your college dorm do you have a lot of your friends from your college dorm era who had said this was really their idea and they've sued you and said you know you took their idea that hasn't happened right no no I maybe maybe maybe they weren't that clever but but you know I had this one roommate who really got upset with me because there were boxes everywhere and he the UPS man also hated me because you know like enormous numbers of boxes you know and so one day my roommate piled all the boxes in front of my door you know and so I couldn't get out of the room and so I saw I moved to a different so what happened what happened to him I mean I don't know her pride I think he's a lawyer somewhere so knives I remember it when you started the company the the thing that was very clever and I was unique is you would say I'm going to bypass the middleman I'm not going to go to the retail store to buy my computer somebody would just send you an order and you would make the computer to water and is that essentially right you made them to order if we created a a direct business model and that enabled us to create all kinds of efficiencies in our supply chain customer information you know today we we have a what we call omni-channel where we we have channel partners and relationships with customers kind of combined together okay so today as I mentioned earlier in 2004 at your relatively young age I guess you were in I don't 40 or so or something like that 39 39 39 you're 50 or just turned 50 years old so in their 50 club 50 okay at 50 to go at 39 you say I you know I'm tired of being CEO I'll step upstairs and you did that for a couple years was that very difficult to kind of step back as the CEO and have somebody else running it I guess so because you came back in three years but what did you miss as the CEO or why did you come back as a CEO a couple years later well I was actively involved in the company you know I think the the industry rate of change started to accelerate and the board asked me to come back as CEO and you know I think we needed to make some relatively swift changes in our in our strategy and I was happy to do that that's what we did okay so you came back let's talk about the industry today what do you see the biggest challenges for the American technology industry the industry that's not only in Silicon Valley obviously in Texas in other parts of the United States where people are building companies that are technology leaders do you see foreign challenges that are great and what do you think for example in your company the biggest challenge you face I think if you step back what's interesting about our industry and the way our customers are using the technology is there was this enormous wave of let's make existing businesses more efficient more productive using technology and all of us have been doing that for a long long time that's been going on now you're seeing this you know how do you reinvent things or invent them completely new given all this new technology that's out there and you know in the technology sector we kind of live and breathe this all the time but now I think it's showing up in sort of all industries you know for for any company in our sector you have to you know change or die you have to evolve for us that's meant aggressively growing in these new areas like software services understanding the challenges our customers have like in cybersecurity and helping to to go you know build solutions to go to go solve those problems okay now still make a lot of PC's as we mentioned do you make tablets we do is that a growth business you think that's going to replace PCs the tablet business certain you know I I think I think of the tablet as a lineal descendant of the notebook the notebook is a lineal descendant of the desktop there are many different you know shapes and sizes for the products you've got workstations virtual machines tablets notebooks desktops gaming machines we make them all let you know let let customers decide but I think I think with the enormous growth in mobile devices particularly smart phones there was I think maybe a bit of a swing to believe at some point that all those devices would replace the PC I think the reality is it's more of a multi-device world and actually it's not just the PC and the smartphone and the tablet it's now all these embedded computers that wearables the internet of things so you're kind of going from this world of let's say a billion connected devices to a hundred billion connected devices as the cost of semiconductors comes down you have this instrumentation and kind of making everything smart and intelligent that creates all this data has to be turned into insights and knowledge and that's really the big opportunity that all organizations have out there is how do you use this data to make what you're doing you know more more productive or reinvent it so I'm talking about big data you you because you have so many customers you know what they're interested in among other things so do you take the data and use it for some other purpose that you can make another business out of all the data you you have sure we use it you know to improve the efficiency of our own sales and marketing and and services and you know increasingly with with data scientists that work for us help our customers be more productive efficient and would better outcomes in whatever it is they're doing whether it's healthcare education banking finance manufacturing etc now you don't make manufacture smart phones is that correct we do not and the reason is a lot of ways to make money in IT other than smart phones so you know the level set this IT industry is about a three trillion dollar industry and of that roughly two point seven five trillion is commercial business enterprise public sector and 250 billion is consumer we're much more focused on the 2.75 trillion and so you know from from a device standpoint you know what does it mean PCs tablets and embedded you know workstations then we get into the data center all the infrastructure cloud computing the software-defined network storage you know you know compute then then we focus on the the systems management the security the big data and then ultimately one of the most exciting areas is services because you know we find more more customers wants to help them and implement all these systems run them for them and help them you know make use of all the tools and we think the combination of all these things together are really so you bought one of your acquisitions was perot systems I think that might have been your biggest did you deal with Ross Perot and negotiating that or how did that come about I need to personally deal with him in a negotiation but he still comes to work every day at our office really yeah all right so if you tell them what to do or not really no I don't think anybody tells Ross Woodsboro so what about the Apple has said they're going to come out with a wearable watch are you going to make a watch no so you know I think the the here's a way to think about the smart phone for every 50 smart phones that get put into the world a new server pops up and the reason is server pops up is because when you get a smart phone it actually doesn't have anything on it and you put stuff on it it comes over the network where does it come from usually not another smart phone it comes from a server and so this massive buildup you know so you think about the the companies that are providing the the services that you know users are using on their mobile phones we're providing the infrastructure and the equipment to be able to power those as a young a man when you're running the company you presumably met with Steve Jobs you presumably met with Bill Gates so how did you compare the two of them are they different personalities and were you competing with them or your customer of theirs or their customer viewers pretty different you know some some form of collaboration you know and/or competition with with either of them okay and today you were in Washington recently for meeting with government leaders yeah on techno party the technology co council so you met with President Obama and what would you say the technology CEOs said to President Obama about technology were you concerned about something What did he say to you did he ask you for any free computers or anything no and he could buy didn't ask me for any free computers but I did wonder how come there's there's no computer in the Oval Office but that maybe maybe one day there was probably hidden arts probably over yeah so something like that but you know we we focused on a couple of issues I think you know trade promotion Authority you know we are exporters and you know us technology industry has done very well and to do that to continue to do that we think trade promotion Authority is very important we talked about immigration and certainly focus on the STEM skills that we need in our business is a big one we talked about taxes and you know how do you keep the sector that we're in competitive you know all of our foreign competitors don't you know deal with this repatriation problem and then cyber security there are number of bills that are being worked on that will help help us address this challenge the cyber challenges is a big one we we see on behalf of our customers about a hundred and twenty billion events per day and I've really built a threat intelligence to be able to understand what's going on you have state-sponsored groups you have criminals you have activists you have espionage you know and you have terrorists you know that are all you know using the the cyber domain as a big attack vector so you met with members of Congress were you impressed with any of the members of Congress that you met with or all very for us do they do they seem to know technology very well or they you're just kind of you know teaching them a little bit about technology or they more knowledgeable than I might have suspected you know I think I think they're they're they're more and more knowledgeable we met with some of the incoming freshmen and you know actually some of them came from our industry and had pretty refreshing insights into our sector I think you know we're pretty proactive about coming and explaining what challenges we see and communicating what the you know the the opportunities are but look it's a it's a it's it's a frustrating environment you know there isn't anybody who would tell you something other than that so you know people always want to know what the next big thing is so you know in technology if I wanted to make an investment in the next big thing what area would I put my money in what would you say would be a good good investment I think there there probably many next big things I mean the this idea of the data economy called Big Data machine to machine communication machine learning we think that is an enormous opportunity for not only our customers and organisations but for the IT industry to our calculations roughly a trillion dollar opportunity for the IT industry in you know turning this data into real insights and the the availability the cost to acquire the data just keeps going down dramatically now you started your companies I mentioned earlier by bypassing the middleman and the fact or the retailer you went directly to the customer and but Apple for example they have a lot of stores now in the United States there have retail stores and I think Microsoft does as well you have no stores the United States are you considering having stores the United States well again our our business is about 85% commercial business enterprise public and 15 percent consuming we do have stores that actually are operated by partners in the emerging markets so for example China which is our largest country to sell our products in to outside the United States we have 1500 Dell exclusive stores we just opened our 400 store in India we're opening one every 16 hours there and you know business is booming in the in the emerging world as a percentage of revenues though just you get half more than half your revenues from United States still it's it's about 5050 and today as you look at your life you have the opportunity to give away a fair amount of money if mentioned you're very involved in philanthropy to atone for your sins and not having gone to medical school you have still working on that now you have created you're creating a new medical school at the University of Texas why are you doing that doesn't Texas have enough medical schools or why did you decide to do that you know interestingly enough the the University of Texas system with its main campus in Austin did not have a medical school which many regarded as a real oversight and opportunity and so we've been working for quite some time to bring this together so now we have a new medical school a new teaching hospital that you know over the course of 2016 2017 we'll really get going right so at your age Bill Gates step back as CEO from his company though he was still involved as chairman and so forth you have any plans to step back as the CEO or you're still happy to be the CEO for quite some time into the future very happy to keep doing what I'm doing it's a it's a lot of fun very energized by by the whole privatization I think that's a made made life much more enjoyable so you you and your wife have a foundation as I mentioned is given away a great deal of money when you and your wife just to thinking about things if you disagree on where the money should go how do you decide that you know if we disagree we just don't do it you know and and you know fortunately we we have we have a lot of the same values and beliefs and and that's been you know certainly some great ingredients for a fantastic marriage and maybe married 25 years 25 years for children for kids and you know the the foundation is something we we do together and and it's it's a it's a lot of fun very rewarding she spends more time on it than I do I've you know spending my time basically I'm dealt well so explain this to people here everybody would say all right this man has a perfect life he's built a great company he's got a great marriage for kids got a lot of money to give away what's not perfect in your life to make us feel better let's just make us make us feel that that there's something not perfect that we can say okay he's not a perfect life for anything you can say that's frustrating or you know well look I feel very fortunate and grateful to be born in this country and the opportunities that that that that I've had I don't really have a lot of complaints so so I you know that you know there's nothing you should really feel sorry for me about so all right all right well I like that for example do you play golf and you have a high handicap would that make us feel better I'm undefeated at golf undefeated wow I've never never played on play go all right okay all right so for outside activities what do you do to here obviously in pretty good shape you exercise a lot I mean what do you like the elements the outside you know move around whether it's whether it's a hiking walking running cycling and if people want to get a hold of you they can email you or what's that how do you stay in touch with your office just regular telephone communication or emails or what is your well we we go to the office you know and so we that that's that's one way and certainly we you know it's all the normal ways right so right now email you think it'd be as easy today for Michael Dell to start a company today or be easier than than it was then you know if you were to start today let's say you're 19 all over again today and what would you be your advice be for young entrepreneurs some of them wants to start a company today what should they do should they drop out of college should they get their degree if your children came to you and said we're going to drop out of college and start a company what would you say well I'd want to hear what their ideas you know so I don't think dropping out of college is for everyone you know it worked for me didn't work for Charles Manson you know so probably right but you know look I mean if I was 19 I would be trying to figure out what company I would gonna start if if in the process of going private somebody had bought the company from from me which was a very real possibility I probably would have started another company at the time Carl Icahn was saying something like he might make an offer I don't think he actually did but suppose somebody had done that you would have just cash in your chips and start another company if if somebody had done that that very like that would have started another company in the computer area her technology area not going to say okay what what what the company would be but but yeah like likely in the computer and that's what I love it's what I know so in the philanthropy area your most of your philanthropy in the United States or is it some of it outside how do you decide how much to put in the United States versus outside started in the United States it's been expanding around the world we've been very active in India and also in South Africa and you know we we continue to expand what we do again the focus on children and urban poverty we've done a lot in the education sector using insights that you know we've gained from from from the Dell experience in terms of how do you use data and knowledge to inform progress so for example in education there is a standard that's been adopted by over half the states here in the u.s. called EDI which essentially is a way of normalizing all the all the information that a district may have about a student's performance and outcomes and the challenge here is you know kid goes from third grade to the fourth grade what does the fourth grade teacher know about the the student from the third grade and the answer is it depends you know did the teachers talk you know we're records kept that information can be incredibly helpful the other challenge you have is that you know two kids can go into two different classrooms in the same school you know learning the same subject and and have very different outcomes and and so how does a principal a district parents actually you know begin to understand all that data and start to do something about it so we've been very focused on on those kinds of those kinds of so in the philanthropic area or business area what would you like your legacy to be I mean at ten twenty thirty years from now what would you like people to say about what you've actually accomplished the goal we've set for ourselves is to figure out how to make a bigger impact on the world through our philanthropy than we have through through our business don't exactly know how to do that I think we're off to a reasonable start and you know the foundation has done done some done some great work like you and I talked about before earlier you know it's it's not easy to do it really well and and you know we we treat it like an investment activity with real measurement of results and returns and we also look for projects where we can change the trajectory you know make a meaningful difference and then leave and have it continue without us so being Michael Dell when you're living in Austin you're obviously well known they're well known everywhere but can you go into a 7-eleven and not have people say I have a good idea for a computer or or here's a new technology idea or people just leave you alone when you're walking around shopping if you ever shop you don't shop that much probably I I like to shop online find that's a lot easier but if you ever walk into an Apple store for example and we wouldn't do that right you wouldn't go into an Apple store and they would know who you are right away I guess right I haven't had that experience but you know people generally you know leave you alone III don't I don't find it's a big problem which is good and have you had role models in the business world that you would say that you have aspired to be like them or people that you really admire in the business world or technology world yeah I think I think you can you can learn from just about anybody a positive or negative and certainly you know in the tech sector we've had some some great folks know but before us who have you know paved the way and and lead through all sorts of various challenges I've been fortunate to have known and worked worked with just about all of them so is we talking about at breakfast you seem like a very even-keeled person you don't seem to raise your voice very much don't seem to get it upset you don't like I understand to throw things so when people are when you're mad how do you tell people you know that they're not doing a good job what are your what is your way of actually showing anger to somebody they're not doing a good job I don't think you have to throw things you know would seem like a good idea I'm direct you know in in my communications with our teams spend a lot of time on making sure that you know certainly for the for the executive team that I work a lot with that you know we're all aligned on what it is we're trying to accomplish everybody knows you know how they're doing relative to the objectives that we have and there's there's no no confusion you know about about where we are and I I think I think having a constant kind of realistic assessment of where you are and what is working well what's not working so well what needs to change it is super important so if when you met with the president the other day he said I'd like you to come into the government serve as a senior Cabinet officer be an advisor to me full time would you ever consider going to government or no thank you no ever consider running for office no thank you no and so what you'd like to do to help your country is what you're doing now build a good company operate it pay taxes and philanthropy I think I think I could be much more helpful with that yes you know I I have taken on various roles from time to time where I think it can be helpful so for example the United Nations asked me recently to be their ambassador for entrepreneurship and you know in the fall the General Assembly is going to vote on the sustainable development goals and my goal my you know job is to convince world leaders that job creation and entrepreneurship ought to be one of the sustainable development goals sustainable development goal number eight if you happen to be voting okay so and you know I mean my my experience around the world is that if you look at new jobs 70 to 90% of them are created by entrepreneurial businesses small growing businesses and you know governments can can or cannot do things that can it can help that and I've lived in seeing some interesting experiences so we have a site for example in Morocco and and I was there you know relatively recently we have 2,000 young excited people that are energized and love what they're doing and I remember when we were deciding whether to put that site in Morocco or Tunisia it was pretty close it was maybe 60 percent Morocco 40 percent Tunisia and the Moroccan government you know did a few extra things to kind of make it a little better and we decided that was that was a good place to go but I you know I think I think we should be thinking a lot about where do the next 500 million jobs come where do the next billion jobs come from I believe they come from these small and entrepreneurial businesses and we also should be thinking in these sort of conflict zones where we have a lot of young unemployed people how do we figure out how to get them jobs because if you have a new government new administration but you still have a lot of unemployed young people you haven't really solved the problem and you know what I also worry about is these places where we've been let's say droppin bombs for a few decades once all the smoke clears you still have a lot of young unemployed people unless they can go back to their families and explain that tomorrow is going to be better you've still got a problem and there's no new administration or whatever that can solve that problem so I think we ought to be thinking how do we go create some jobs over there because that to me is the root problem so any regrets in your career some remarkable career in business and philanthropy and personal life so any regrets that again to make us feel good that that there's something you think you didn't do right there no well I mean you could have done this because of that but that's just not how I live so right so final question if I want to go out today and buy a PC which one would be the best value for money for me if I wanted to spend a couple thousand dollars you have anything you'd recommend well David I understand you're reasonably well-off I'm not compared to you so you know what I would recommend for you you know given that you're traveling all over the world and you're you know you want to have the latest and greatest is our newest XPS 13 okay and that costs roughly depending on the configuration call it $1,000 or something like that okay all right no discounts but Stella dollars all right I don't get a discount okay everybody gets it this everybody gets it okay Michael I want to thank you very much for a great interview let me go

Channel: The Economic Club of Washington, D.C.

Views: 138,532

Keywords: Michael Dell, Dell Computer, 2014 - 2015 Speaker Series, Economic Club of Washington, David M. Rubenstein

Id: uaBvJlHevAQ

Length: 47min 11sec (2831 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 04 2015