Michael Saylor is an entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist famous for strong views on Bitcoin. As a well-established inventor, Saylor also has over 40 patents to his name. Back before he was thrust into the mainstream finance media, Michael published a book called ‘The Mobile Wave: How Mobile Intelligence Will Change Everything.’ He is the founder of MicroStrategy and operates Saylor Academy.
Michael Saylor’s Net Worth
Saylor is passionate about technology, and by combining this passion with business, he became a self-made billionaire in the late 1990s. Thanks to his equity stake in MicroStrategy, Saylor grabbed a lot of media attention during the dot-com bubble. According to Forbes, Saylor has an estimated net worth of $1.6 billion. His wealth has dropped by over a billion dollars due to Bitcoin falling from $60,000 to $20,000.
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 in different parts of the world. By the time he was a teenager, his family had settled at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base outside Dayton, Ohio.
Michael graduated as valedictorian in high school and attended MIT. He received a scholarship from the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps and finished with the highest honors. In his MIT days, he was a member of the Theta Delta Chi fraternity. This is where he met Sanju K. Bansal, the man who would later become 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 got 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 has become 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.
Bitcoin
Saylor has become known over the last two years for investing billions into Bitcoin. On 11 August 2020, MicroStrategy announced it purchased 21,454 bitcoins at an aggregated price of $250 million to use as a “primary treasury reserve asset”. Since then Saylor continues to keep buying Bitcoin like a mad man. Saylor personally owns 17,732 BTC worth over $405 million and MicroStrategy owns 130,000 BTC worth nearly $3 billion!
Philanthropy
As seen from his creations, Michael is a philanthropist at heart. He launched The Saylor Foundation in 1999, 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, which 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.
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 has once again risen to his former stable financial situation.
