Michael Saylor

Michael Saylor

Michael J. Saylor is the co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of MicroStrategy, a software company specializing in business intelligence, enterprise reporting, and online analytical processing. The son of an Air Force sergeant, he spent his childhood living around the world, and graduated high school at the top of his class. In 1987, Saylor earned his degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics and Technology from MIT on an ROTC Scholarship, but a benign heart murmur kept him from becoming a pilot. While at MIT, he took a "system dynamics theory" class, which gave him the initial idea of a computer modeling business with non-linear mathematics. After graduating from college, he worked as a venture manager at DuPont. The time he spent creating computer simulations at MIT prepared him for his new job at DuPont, where he constructed models to simulate business interactions. Saylor went onto co-found MicroStrategy in 1989, at the age of 24, with a consulting contract from DuPont, which provided him with $250,000 and office space. MicroStrategy's early focus was on data mining software for companies. His company secured a relatively large deal with McDonald’s early on, inspiring Saylor to take the company in the direction of business intelligence (BI). In 1998, he took the company public, and its meteoric growth often put Michael Saylor (with a net worth of $7 billion) and his company in the spotlight. Saylor soon became a household name in business and technology. In 2000, however, the SEC brought charges against Saylor for inaccurate reporting of results, and his personal stock lost 90% of its value in a few weeks and Saylor's personal net worth plummeted $6 billion on March 20, 2000 (and he was labeled as the person who "had lost more money in a single day than anyone in history other than Bill Gates"). Saylor's sanction was to pay $350,000 in penalties and a personal disgorgement. By the fiscal year 2008, Saylor and his company celebrated its 10-year anniversary as the leading independent provider of open systems business intelligence software. By 2009, the annual company revenues were nearly $400 million and, in 2010, they released a Mobile BI product for the iPhone, the iPad and Blackberry. This reflects Saylor's belief that mobile technology will shape a "new class of applications that will change the way we think about our business." He is the inventor or co-inventor on 29 patents in the areas of business intelligence, wireless security, and speech automation. Michael J. Saylor participated in the 1999 Achievement Summit in Washington, D.C. and spoke to the student delegates about his "ten secrets for life."