Michael Dell – Invest America Act Becomes Law, AI Talent Wars, Compute Demand, Market Update | BG2

**Brad Gerstner** (0:00)
Are the productivity gains from this going to be as big or bigger than what we saw from personal computers in the internet?

**Michael Dell** (0:09)
It's far bigger. It's far bigger. Yeah, I feel 98% confident.

**Brad Gerstner** (0:28)
Hey, guys, great to see you both. Bill, maybe, I don't know, you're up in Tahoe or something, and we're thrilled to have one of our great friends, Michael Dell, on to chop it up with us. Happy Fourth of July, you guys. Most of you know Michael. He's built, obviously, one of the most iconic technology companies. Starting in his dorm room, I don't know what, 40 years ago, Michael, I think you just had your 40th anniversary.

**Michael Dell** (0:49)
41 years ago.

**Brad Gerstner** (0:51)
41 years ago. And now a major player in AI.
You spun off VMware, of course, and now you're a major owner of Broadcom, and Dell remains a $100 billion business. I think you own, like Larry Ellison, you own a lot of the business, maybe half of the business. And it's one of the largest builders of AI servers on the planet. And obviously, in addition to that, you and your incredible wife Susan have an amazing foundation. You do great work in Texas and around the country. I saw that you just contributed to the disaster relief. What a tragedy in Texas. And so, kudos to you both for all the good work you do on so many issues, but particularly in the state of Texas. And then, of course, it was great to have you and Susan as partners on Invest America. I know we're going to talk about that today. And everybody should run out and read your book, Play Nice, But When. I'm anxious to ask you.

**Bill Gurley** (1:43)
I would recommend they listen to it because Michael took what I understand to be a very painful process for an author to read their entire book, but it's Michael's voice. And the inflection and you get nuances I don't think you would get just with the writing.

**Michael Dell** (2:00)
Well, thank you for saying that, Bill, and appreciate the kind introduction, guys. Look, I think if you're going to take the time to write a book, which is a major endeavor if you really do it yourself and do it right. I did have somebody helping me by the way, so I'm not going to take full credit for it. I think you should take the additional time to record the audio book because you can display the motion intonation and really tell the story in your own voice, and it's a powerful way to convey thoughts and emotions at the same time.
I love audio books. I love going outside and walking, hiking, and turn on a good audio book is a great way to do it.

**Brad Gerstner** (2:48)
Totally. Well, in the spirit of storytelling, Michael, do you remember when you first met Gurley?

**Michael Dell** (2:54)
Yeah, I do remember when I first met Gurley. This was in the 90s, and Bill had written this research report that was super thick. I'm reading the support, I'm like, how the bleep, bleep, bleep? Does this guy know more about our business than we do? I was like, what? We must be totally screwing up here.
And he had uncovered a whole bunch of analysis and thoughts about our business, and we were so busy kind of distracted by growth that we had missed a few things, and Bill shined a massive light on that, and it was super helpful. So I became a fan instantly of his work, and have been a fan ever since.

**Bill Gurley** (3:44)
Brad, that was 32 years ago.

**Michael Dell** (3:46)
Even though when I read the report, I was like, damn, we should have figured this out.

**Bill Gurley** (3:55)
This is 32 years ago. I was 28, Michael was 29, and running a public company. And I've always cherished the fact that Michael is a year older than me, so I always have time to catch up.

**Michael Dell** (4:09)
It's great to be here with the kids.

**Brad Gerstner** (4:14)
Bill, tell us just a second about, because the 90s, I think, has some parallels to the period that we're living in now. So Dell was growing incredibly fast, obviously building low cost, high quality computers. What inspired you to start covering Dell? And then what led you to these insights? Did you just focus on that company?
Was this a breakthrough piece of work for you?

**Bill Gurley** (4:42)
Well, Michael's heard this before, so I'll hopefully won't bore him. But I had worked in the PC industry. I spent over two years at Compaq in Houston. And interestingly, I think being inside of Compaq, we had a view of Dell that wasn't as respectful as it should have been. And once I got outside and was able to look at the numbers in a different way, I was able to see things more clearly. But the gentleman that made this all click in terms for me was Michael Mobeson, who you know of. But he had taught me to look at return on investing capital. That's part of what Michael was referring to. The company had insane balance sheet turnover in a way that the cash flow relative to the earnings was really high and the ROIC was 10x. Anyone else in the business?