Michael Saylor is an entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist famous for strong views on Bitcoin. As a well-established inventor, Saylor has over 40 patents to his name. Back before he was thrust into the mainstream finance media, Michael made his wealth through founding MicroStrategy, a business intelligence company.
Michael Saylor’s Net Worth
Saylor became a self-made billionaire in the late 1990s from his equity stake in MicroStrategy. His wealth exploded during the dot-com bubble but also lost $6 billion in a day! According to Forbes, Saylor has an estimated net worth of $1.7 billion.
Early Life
In 1965, Michael was born to a military family in Lincoln, Nebraska. Young Saylor spent his youth on several U.S. military bases across the world and by the time he was a teenager, his family settled at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base outside Dayton, Ohio.
Michael graduated as valedictorian in high school and attended MIT. Here he received a scholarship from the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps and finished with the highest honors. During his MIT days, he met Sanju K. Bansal, the man who later became his business partner.
Establishing MicroStrategy
MicroStrategy was built on Saylor’s concept of helping businesses gain value from mining data. In 1992, the company got its first big win when they secured a $10 million contract with McDonald’s. The company grew steadily over the next few years and went public in 1998.
They started off using graphical operating systems and client-server computing. They also pioneered a novel approach to business intelligence dubbed Relational Online Analytical Processing (ROLAP).
MicroStrategy is a global leader in enterprise analytics, helping thousands of companies. He pushed MicroStrategy’s forays into distributed analytics, online analytics, mobile analytics, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things. The firm currently has a market cap of $7.66 billion.
Bitcoin
Saylor has become known over the last three years for investing billions into Bitcoin. On 11 August 2020, MicroStrategy announced its purchase of 21,454 bitcoin at an aggregated price of $250 million to use as a “primary treasury reserve asset”. Since then Saylor continues to buy Bitcoin like a mad man. Saylor personally owns 17,732 BTC worth roughly $687 million and MicroStrategy owns 174,530 BTC worth around $6.7 billion as reported by CoinDesk.
Losing and Regaining Riches
Michael Saylor’s venture towards success wasn’t always on the positive side. After the dot-com bust happened in the early 2000s and improper accounting led to a restatement of financial results, he lost his billionaire status. But thanks to timely bitcoin investments, he is back in the billionaire’s boys club.
Bizarrely, Saylor has made over $100 million from acquiring and selling domain names. During the early days of the internet, he spotted the opportunity to buy valuable one word domains. MicroStrategy picked up domains such as strategy.com, hope.com, courage.com and voice.com. In 2019, Voice.com sold for $30 million to Block.one.
Philanthropy
As seen from his creations, Michael is a philanthropist at heart. In 199, he launched The Saylor Foundation, which has since donated millions of dollars to causes such as environmental conservation, refugee relief, children’s health, and education.
The Saylor Foundation runs the Saylor Academy and provides free college education as well as continuing professional development (CPD) courses. More than 650,000 people have benefited from the academy’s free education programs.
