Michael Saul Dell was born on February 23, 1965, in Houston, Texas. He is an American businessman and the founder and CEO of Dell computer company. He was born in to an upper-class Jewish family and attended Herod Elementary School in Houston, Texas.

Michael Dell had his first encounter with a computer at the age of 15 when he broke down a brand new Apple II computer and rebuilt it, just to see if he could. Dell attended Memorial High School in Houston where he did not excel scholastically. During that time he did however exhibit formidable business instincts selling subscriptions for the Houston Post. Dell found $18,000 in an untapped customer base; those “windfall profits” earned him a BMW and a computer.

As of 2007, Michael Dell’s net worth is estimated to be at least $17.2 billion. Michael Dell had a public war of words with Apple CEO Steve Jobs, starting when Jobs first criticized Dell for making “un-innovative beige boxes”. On October 6, 1997, when Michael Dell was asked what he would do if he owned then-troubled Apple Computer, he said “I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”