Michael J. Saylor was born on 4 February 1965, in Lincoln, Nebraska USA, and is a business executive and entrepreneur, best known for being the chief executive officer of the business intelligence company MicroStrategy Incorporated. He is the co-founder of the company and also serves as its president, but all of his efforts have helped put his net worth to where it is today.
How rich is Michael Saylor? As of early-2017, sources estimate a net worth that is at $500 million, mostly earned through the success ofMicroStrategy. He also authored the bestseller entitled “The Mobile Wave: How Mobile Intelligence Will Change Everything”, and as he continues his career it is expected that his wealth will increase.
Michael Saylor Net Worth $500 million
As a child, Michael spent time at various Air Force bases because his father was a chief master sergeant. Eventually they settled in Fairborn, Ohio where he attended high school. After matriculating, he attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) thanks to an Air Force Reserve Officers’ Training Crops (ROTC) scholarship, undertaking a double major in science, technology and society, as well as aeronautics and astronautics. He became part of the ROTC’s jet pilot program and graduated in the top one percent of his class.
He originally planned to be a pilot, however a medical exam revealed that he had a benign heart murmur which prevented him from continuing that career path. He was sent to the reserves and eventually found a job at a consulting firm called The Federal Group, Inc. He joined the company in 1987 and would start to focus on computer simulation as well as software integration. The following year, he became an internal consultant at DuPont, helping the company anticipate market changes. Two years later, he was given a $250,000 independent consulting contract by DuPont, which helped increase his net worth significantly. He decided to use the money to found MicroStrategy, alongside Sanju Bansal.
The company started off developing data mining software and later transitioned to business intelligence. They provided consulting services, eventually getting a $10 million contract from McDonalds. His net worth would continue to increase, as in the following years the company would grow at a fast pace. He started becoming popular as well for his knowledge of technology trends and great business practices. In 1997, he founded the subsidiary Angel which he subsequently sold to Genesys Telecommunications for $110 million. MicroStrategy then went public until Saylor reportedly reached a net worth of $7 billion. However, due to inaccurate reporting, Saylor’s net worth would eventually fall to the millions. Despite that, the company still grew and earned significantly, being acknowledged as one of the Best Small Companies in the US by Forbes.
Michael successfully predicted the growing mobile market, and started to focus on mobile applications. He was also known to have cut his salary significantly to continue to grow the company. MicroStrategy now has big names as clients including Facebook, Netflix, and Starbucks. It is also reported that Michael has been granted at least 31 patents.
In 2012, he released the book “The Mobile Wave: How Mobile Intelligence Will Change Everything”, which made it to The New York Times Best Seller list as well as the Wall Street Journal’s Best Sellers list.
Thanks to his achievements, he’s received numerous honors including being named as the Software Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young. He’s also been named as an “Innovator Under 35” by the MIT Technology Review.
For his personal life, Michael is still a bachelor; it is known that Michael has given a lot of his money and time to charities. He revitalized the Friends of Lombardy and also made large donations to numerous organizations. He established The Saylor Foundation of which he is the sole trustee; his goal is to make free education available for all students – the organization has a website that provides free content from various universities.
