As a well-established inventor, Michael Saylor has over 40 patents to his name. Aside from that, he is also an entrepreneur, investor, executive, philanthropist, and author. His most famous written work is ‘The Mobile Wave: How Mobile Intelligence Will Change Everything.’ He leads Saylor Academy and the world-renowned tech company MicroStrategy.
Michael Saylor’s Net Worth
Saylor is passionate about technology, and by combining this passion with business, he became a self-made multibillionaire in the late 1990s. Thanks to his ownership in MicroStrategy, he was one of the most well-known executives of the dot-com bubble. Today in 2021, Saylor has an estimated net worth of $2.5 billion.
Early Life
In 1965, Michael was born to a military family in Lincoln, Nebraska. He spent his youth on several U.S. military bases in different parts of the world. His family had settled at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base outside Dayton, Ohio, by the time he was a teenager.
He graduated as valedictorian in high school and went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT). He received a scholarship from the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps 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 become his partner in founding a very successful business idea.
Establishing MicroStrategy
MicroStrategy was built on Saylor’s concept of assisting businesses in delivering intelligence to every location. The company grew steadily, going public in 1998, by using graphical operating systems and client-server computing. They also pioneered a novel method to business intelligence dubbed Relational Online Analytical Processing (ROLAP).
MicroStrategy has grown to become a global leader in enterprise analytics and mobility software, aiding thousands of enterprises across the world under Saylor’s guidance.
He pushed MicroStrategy’s forays into distributed analytics, mobile identity, online analytics, mobile analytics, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things. In 1992, the rising company was awarded a $10 million contract with McDonald’s.
Bitcoin
Saylor has become well-known over the last year for investing large sums 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 men. Personally Saylor owns 17,732 BTC worth over $1.1 billion and MicroStrategy owns 114,042 BTC worth over $7 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 many causes such as environmental conservation, refugee relief, children’s health, and education.
The Saylor Foundation is the one that administers the Saylor Academy, which provides free college education as well as continuing professional development (CPD) courses to students all around the world. More than 650,000 learners 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.
