American History 1988
Chapter 313 - 303 Entering the Top Ten

Chapter 313: Chapter 303 Entering the Top Ten

Compared to 1992, the changes in Forbes’s 400 list of 1993 were even greater.

Last year’s number one richest man in America, Bill Gates, was overtaken by someone else this year.

The magazine in Dean’s hands provided a fairly detailed introduction to each of the top ten.

This year, taking first place was Buffett, whose stake in Berkshire Hathaway had brought his net worth to 8.3 billion US dollars.

This figure had nearly doubled compared to last year, with his ranking having soared from eighth to first.

The reason for Buffett’s net worth to have doubled was mainly due to the soaring stock price of Berkshire Hathaway.

At its peak, the increase was as high as 70%, along with other investments, Buffett easily doubled his assets.

However, even though he had a wealth of 8.3 billion dollars, Buffett stated that his assets would be inherited by his own charitable foundation.

This money would also be entirely used in the field of philanthropy, and his family would receive only a small part of the earnings.

Honestly, Dean greatly admired Buffett’s approach; he at least earned the title of philanthropist more than those so-called philanthropists.

Despite possessing immense wealth and even being called a legendary investor who could sway the stock market,

Buffett himself led a very simple life, breaking the stereotype people had of super-rich tycoons.

He rarely went on vacations and lived in an unremarkable house.

Even the clothes he wore were often creased, not to mention he had no luxury cars at all.

An average breakfast would not cost him more than 3.3 dollars, and watching baseball league games seemed to be his only entertainment hobby.

Whether his actions stemmed from genuine charity or peculiar life habits,

Dean admired such self-disciplined people, especially since he himself was accustomed to being surrounded by beautiful women.

The Forbes magazine also extensively praised Buffett’s philanthropic actions, believing his estate would balloon to 100 billion dollars within 20 years.

If this money were all invested in charitable causes, it would make the families such as the Rockefellers, Fords, and Carnegies seem insignificant in comparison.

Well, even though Dean held respect for this stock market wizard, he would never follow his methods.

This luxurious life of occasionally mingling with Hollywood actresses, wasn’t that delightful?

He made a birthday wish at his 18th birthday party to live lavishly for a lifetime.

His gaze continued down the list in the magazine; Gates was ranked second.

His net worth was estimated at 6.16 billion US dollars this year, lower than last year’s 6.3 billion dollars.

The reason was that Gates had cashed out some of his stocks plus fluctuations in stock prices, so his wealth shrank slightly.

Ranked third was still the entertainment mogul John Kruger, whose net worth was 5.9 billion dollars this year, not much of an increase.

Following closely in fourth was Ray Easton, another media magnate with a net worth valued at 5.6 billion dollars.

He was a new face in the top ten, having been ranked outside the first eleven last year.

Then, from fifth to ninth place, were all occupied by the Walton family, with their net worth estimates being very close to each other.

They were all within the 4.5 to 4.6 billion dollar range, and these five members have secured half of the list since 1991.

If anyone else couldn’t surpass their wealth, their ranking would instantly be pushed out beyond five places.

Like Dean Price, now ranking tenth on the list.

Alright, finally seeing myself.

According to Forbes’s estimate, Dean’s net worth this year was 4.47 billion dollars.

No doubt, most of it was contributed by Byte Company, whose current market value approached 10.8 billion dollars.

In fact, after Intuit successfully went public in July, Byte’s market value also broke the 10 billion dollar mark.

The capital markets reacted very swiftly, especially Wall Street, which was very clear on the relationship between Intuit and Byte.

So when Intuit went public, Byte’s stock also rose accordingly.

Of course, Byte’s strategic plans had been carried out methodically over the past few years, which was one of the main factors for its market value increase.

The speed at which a new office software was released each year was unmatched by any competitors.

Although the sales of these office software wouldn’t explode suddenly like popular consumer goods,

They were steady in sales, which is precisely the kind of revenue growth pattern Wall Street loved to see.

Therefore, with the market cap of Byte at 10.5 billion dollars during that period, Dean’s net worth instantly shot up to around 3.9 billion dollars.

Additionally, according to publicly accessible information, Dean also held stakes in AOL, Intuit, and Cisco, at 9%, 20%, and 5.8% respectively.

All three were listed companies, with AOL’s current market cap around 1.5 billion dollars, Intuit’s 1.3 billion, and Cisco’s 2.2 billion.

After conversion, the stock value Dean held in them, totaled 520 million dollars.

Adding Byte Company to that, Dean’s total assets in the stock market would be 4.41 billion dollars.

Finally, when tallying up the data, apart from these stocks, Dean’s tangible assets were also taken into account.

Such as his well-known estate in San Francisco and the private jet he had just taken delivery of.

These two items were valued at sixty million dollars and were included in his personal asset valuation.

These were the main assets of Dean that could be checked through public means, and Forbes’s calculation was 4.47 billion dollars.

They were just behind the Walton family’s 4.5 billion dollars, leaving Dean to settle for tenth place.

Of course, these were not all of Dean’s assets; at least the stocks he held in Intel and Microsoft were something few people knew about.

And even if they did know, they wouldn’t understand the specific figures; moreover, Forbes didn’t take into account his other properties elsewhere.

Because although Dean had bought them, he hardly ever lived in them, so naturally the media had no clue.

Not to mention Netscape and Price’s List, which were still in the startup phase, they were worthless before they gained market approval.

Yet despite this, with a net worth of 4.47 billion US dollars, Dean officially entered the top ten on the list, shocking most of America.

He was the youngest on the list and the only super-wealthy individual in his twenties.

What’s more impressive, compared to Bill Gates, Dean was the quintessential representation of a self-made entrepreneur.

Because he had no banker grandfather, no lawyer father, and no mother who held a high position at IBM.

He was a bona fide poor kid from the Rust Belt of Ohio.

It could be said, aside from Buffett, Dean was the most legendary among the ten people on the list.

He was living in the moment, and everyone witnessed his rise.

A few months ago during the asset survey, Forbes magazine had invited Dean for an interview.

But he declined, as this kind of magazine that only calculated book value held little significance for Dean.

On the contrary, he accepted the invitation from Fortune magazine. To him, it seemed to have some depth and would benefit the promotion of Byte Company.

Tossing the magazine beside him, Dean started to think about the acquisition of MicroPro again.

The company, as Chambers had said, was now on the verge of bankruptcy.

Byte had already begun contacting them two months earlier, but due to pricing issues, both parties were still in negotiation.

MicroPro was hoping to sell itself at a high price, even harboring a slim hope of regaining market control.

After all, once a dominant player in the word processing market, it was very hard to accept such a downfall in just a few years.

But such is reality; if you can’t stay on top of the market, you risk being eliminated.

MicroPro had made a series of strategic mistakes, among which the partnership with AT&T had completely dashed their last chance for a comeback.

This isn’t to say that AT&T had screwed over MicroPro, on the contrary, it was purely founder Rubinstein’s self-destruction.

Around 1985, MicroPro received a large order from AT&T, which, after its antitrust split, was gearing up to make a major push into the computer market.

Therefore, they needed mature office software for their Unix system, and MicroPro, as a well-known brand in the industry, was AT&T’s first choice.

Faced with such a lucrative deal, why would Rubinstein refuse?

He didn’t even consider his company’s internal resources before signing the contract.

However, when they started to get ready for development, they realized that the company’s technicians weren’t skilled in Unix systems.

MicroPro’s previous WordStar was developed for the DOS system, which used a different programming language than the Unix system.

But the contract had already been signed, and MicroPro wouldn’t push the business out the door.

So, Rubinstein simply found a programmer who had developed a WordStar clone for UNIX.

After some negotiations, MicroPro acquired this team.

Then they made minor adjustments to their cloned version of WordStar and handed it over to AT&T.

But soon after, they faced a dilemma: the newly hired team and the original team were each developing a new generation of WordStar.

The functionalities of the two versions did not completely overlap, each having their pros and cons, and they could not be integrated.

As AT&T’s computer sales began to take off, these two versions acquired some users.

After much consideration, Rubinstein decided to sell both versions.

However, this decision left customers in a quandary.

This "either-or" approach caused all the company’s resources, from development to sales, to split in two.

The internal fighting between these two products goes without saying, culminating in entire teams walking out.

The internal struggles consumed too much of MicroPro’s resources.

This led to their next generation of word processing software providing a very poor user experience, with customer complaint calls nearly submerging MicroPro’s customer service hotline.

If the word processing software market were still dominated solely by MicroPro, perhaps this wouldn’t be an issue.

After some time, internal adjustments would be made.

Unfortunately, the reality was different. By then, Microsoft had already started a bloody battle with MicroPro over Word.

The latter was already fraught with internal conflicts, and the new generation product turned out to be a disaster.

Naturally, the final outcome of the competition is self-evident—last year, MicroPro was ordered by Nasdaq to delist.

Once boasting sales of hundreds of millions of dollars at its peak, today it couldn’t even reach the threshold of 10 million dollars.

The package price for Byte Company to acquire it was 40 million dollars, which was already inflated.

If Rubinstein still wouldn’t budge, then Dean would have no choice but to give up on this struggling former powerhouse.

If it wasn’t for the experienced development team they had, Dean wouldn’t waste his time with this has-been.

It’s Microsoft that needed careful attention; the document collaboration software wasn’t ready to be launched yet.

Of course, compared to the acquisition of MicroPro, the situation with Mosaic in Illinois was even more concerning to Dean.

It was uncertain how they would react upon learning that the hypertext language had been made open source.

Search the lightnovelworld.cc website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.