The Employee Who Became a Billionaire
This is the Steve Ballmer story. Right now he’s worth more than $100 billion. That gets him into the top 10 in the world in terms of net worth. He owns the LA-based NBA team Los Angeles Clippers, which was alone worth around $3.9 billion in 2022, according to statista.com. But Ballmer was not a founder or founding member of a company, he was an employee for the company he worked for. So how did he reach the financial stratosphere?
Well, he was Employee No. 30 at Microsoft. And he didn’t just happen to stumble upon that opportunity. He was in college with Bill Gates and Paul Allen, the co-founders of Microsoft. I guess attending Harvard University helps in making a competent and exceptional network.
Ballmer joined Microsoft in 1980, after dropping out of the MBA program at Stanford University, as I said, as Employee No.30. The structure of Microsoft was changed subsequently, after which Ballmer owned 8% of the company, while Gates had more than 50% ownership. Ballmer took control of the Operating System division at Microsoft when he joined in 1980.
The company went public in 1986, which would have made Ballmer a multi-millionaire. Over the years, he held a number of positions at the company, eventually becoming President of Microsoft in 1998, a position he held onto till 2001. He also took over from Gates as the CEO in the year 2000. He led Microsoft to record, rising profits during his tenure as CEO. He stepped down in 2014, and was succeeded by Satya Nadella.
The way he got rich in the first place was not through some stock or real estate investments, nor was it from being a startup founder or relative to a founder. He became rich by receiving stock options during his tenure at his company. While it is true, his company was and is one of the biggest in the world, you can imagine the skill level required to first, be wanted by people like Bill Gates and Paul Allen at their company and second, to be CEO of that very company for 14 years.
Getting rich this way means, provided you’re not a founder yourself, you have to get into a company that you think would go on to do great things, and which would stay in the market for enough time for you to be able to contribute to them becoming something people talk about 10 years later. Maybe then you can join Steve Ballmer and Roberto Goizueta as employee billionaires and you too own a sports team and have it not make a dent in the bank account.
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