What Are Michael Dell's Remarks?

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KATHERINE CORBETT: We'd like to welcome everyone here and we're quite lucky to have Michael Dell here with us today.
(Applause)but there's still a great deal of

MICHAEL DELL: Thank you. I'm very happy to be here. When I was in the 7th grade, it was actually the first time that I got to use a computer. And that start, when I was first ex-posed to seeing how a computer worked and learning how a machine like that could calculate things and compute things very, very fast, that really got me energized about the possibilities of how the world would change with computers. And there's obviously been lots of change that's occurred since I was in 7th grade, change still to occur.

So you all are in a great place here at this wonderful school with access to technology that's going to give you the skills that you need for your future. So I would encourage you as you're in school, learn as much as you possibly can and soak up4 the knowledge and then get ready to learn even more when you enter the workforce, because it's always changing and learning is a continuous journey. That's how we all stay competitive and add value, ...
... through knowledge and through learning. Having these skills will be very important for your future.

STUDENT QUESTION: How were computers when Michael Dell used them?

MICHAEL DELL: Well, have you ever seen a movie in black and white? (Laughter) They weren't very powerful. In fact, the computing power has essentially multiplied by about two times every year for the last 20 years or so. And that power is going to continue to improve, so there are all kinds of things you could do today with graphics and sound and video and moving pictures that wasn't available before. That's going to continue to progress.

STUDENT QUESTION: What was the biggest break in creating your company and what was your hardest struggle?

MICHAEL DELL: When I started the company, the idea that we had was that computers used to be sold in stores and my idea was that if we sold them directly to the customer, either on the telephone or with a salesperson that would go and visit the customer, that that would provide not only better service but be less expensive than having lots of stores. Now, what I didn't know was that the Internet would come along and now people can go on the Internet and they can go to Dell, com and buy a computer and that makes it a lot easier. So the start of the company was pretty simple. We sold upgrade kitsfor computers. We sold memory kits and hard disk drives and then we started de-signing our own computers. We had plenty of struggles along the way. We did things that didn't work out so well. But we didn't let those mistakes keep going. Every time we made a mistake we said, hey, this isn't working, let's just stop doing it and we went on and corrected things. And I'd say the most important thing we did was we listened very carefully to our customers. We asked, what do they want, what do they need and how can we meet their needs and provide something that's really valuable to them. Because if we could take care of our customers, they'll want to buy more products from us, and they have.

STUDENT QUESTION: What inspired you to start Dell?

MICHAEL DELL: I was inspired by how I saw computers being sold. A computer cost at the time about $ 3,000 but there were only about $ 600 worth of parts inside the computer. And so I figured9, hey, what if you sold the computer for $ 800? You don't need to sell it for $ 3,000. And so we changed the whole way computers were being sold by lowering the cost of distribution and sales and taking out this extra cost that was inefficient. So I was inspired by the ability to make the cost of computers lower and I was also inspired by looking at what computers were doing in terms of changing the world, changing healthcare and education and medicine and architecture and any kind of business or activity. And you could look at the technology and see that it was at the very beginning stages then, but it's going to continue to improve and no-body quite knew how big or how large the industry would become then, but it was very, very exciting. It still is exciting.

STUDET QUESTION: What inspired Dell to come together with the board of education?

MICHAEL DELL: We created this Tech Know program to help kids gain access to computers and learn how computers could change their lives, especially for kids that don't have computers at home. There's no larger school system in the' United States than New York City, so this is the biggest program we've ever done with Tech Know. I guess you could say we've tested it in 12 smaller cities and now we're ready for the big time here, to roll this out in a very big way in the largest school district in the country10. What we hope to do also, is work with large companies on the program , too. Let's get them into the Tech Know program so kids who don't have computers at home get a chance to learn how to use a computer and then take it home.