Michael Dell’s journey to a $148 billion fortune began with a $1,000 investment

• Michael and Susan Dell are investing $6.25 billion into “Trump accounts.”
• Trump accounts are also set to receive a $1,000 grant from the federal government.
• For Dell, a $1,000 investment helped launch his computer company from his dorm room in 1984, now worth $90.6 billion.

Michael and Susan Dell are pledging to invest billions of dollars into “Trump accounts,” which will also receive a $1,000 seed from the federal government.

For Dell, $1,000 has a special resonance.

It’s the same amount of money that he initially invested in his company, Dell Technologies, as a student at the University of Texas in 1984. Today, the entrepreneur is the 11th wealthiest person in the world, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, with a net worth of $148 billion as of December 1.

In his 2021 book, “Play Nice but Win,” Dell marvels at the early success of his business despite its relatively modest initial investment.

“Our sales were growing by the week, as was our ragtag band of mercenaries and buccaneers. On the face of it, it made no sense,” Dell wrote. “Here I was, twenty years old, a college dropout with a capital base of $1,000, saying: ‘Hey, who wants to come work in this company?'”

Dell launched the company in 1984 as PC’s Limited. It became one of the fastest growing companies in the country, raking in more than $6 million in sales in its first year of business. The company was renamed to Dell Computer Corp. a few years later in 1987, and went public in 1988, raising $30 million.

Today, Dell Technologies has a market cap of $90.6 billion.

In 1999, Dell revisited his old dorm room and was photographed in it.

Of course, $1,000 isn’t quite what it used to be: That amount in 1984 is the equivalent of nearly $3,200 today, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’s Inflation Calculator.

“Trump accounts” are guided by the idea that a modest initial investment can grow over time and serve as a way for younger Americans to grow wealth.

“It enables every newborn child in America to experience the enormous benefits of compounded growth, and to accumulate significant resources with the passage of time,” Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, an early proponent of the idea, told Business Insider in May. “It creates a generation of new capitalists.”

The Dells are pledging a total of $6.25 billion in charitable contributions to Trump accounts.

In addition to the $1,000 from the government, the Dells will pay $250 into the accounts of children who are 10 years or younger, born before January 1, 2025, and who live in zip codes where the median income is $150,000 or less.

Dell has also said that his company will match the $1,000 contribution from the federal government for Dell employees.