Steve Ballmer was Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft from January 2000- February 2014, and is the current owner of the Los Angeles Clippers NBA basketball team. As of July 15 2017, Forbes reported his net worth to be $32,800,000,000($32.8 billion), which put him at #32 on the list of the worlds richest people (Wikipedia, 2017).
Early Life
Steve Ballmer was born March 24, 1956 in Detroit Michigan. Ballmer grew up in Farmington Hills, Michigan. In 1973, he attended college prep and engineering classes at Lawrence Technological University. He graduated valedictorian from Detroit Country Day School, which is a private college preparatory school in Beverly Hills, Michigan with a score of 800 on the mathematical section of the SAT and was a National Merit Scholar. He is now on the school’s board of directors (Wikipedia,2017). He also graduated with a bachelor in applied mathematics and economics from Harvard University. He later went to Stanford for business school before dropping out to start working at Microsoft.
Career at Microsoft
Steve Ballmer started working at Microsoft in 1980. He was the first business manager hired by Bill Gates, he had actually became Microsoft 30th employee. In the 20 years following his hire, Ballmer headed several Microsoft divisions, including operations, operating systems development, and sales and support. He was later promoted to President of Microsoft, a title that he held from July 1998 to February 2001, making him the de facto number two in the company to the chairman and CEO, Bill Gates (Wikipedia, 2017).
On January 13, 2000 Ballmer was officially named chief executive officer. As CEO, Ballmer handled company finances and daily operations, but Gates remained chairman of the board and still retained control of the "technological vision" as chief software architect. Gates relinquished day-to-day activities when he stepped down as chief software architect in 2006, while staying on as chairman, and that gave Ballmer the autonomy needed to make major management changes at Microsoft (Wikipedia, 2017).
Upon becoming CEO, Ballmer required detailed business justification in order to approve of new products, rather than allowing hundreds of products that sounded potentially interesting or trendy. In 2005, he recruited Kevin Turner from Wal-Mart, who was the President and CEO of Sam’s Club, to become Microsoft's Chief Operating Officer. Turner was hired at Microsoft to lead the company's sales, marketing and services group and to instill more process and discipline in the company’s operations and salesforce (Wikipedia, 2017).
While Ballmer was CEO, Microsoft revenue went from $25 billion to $70 billion, while its net income increased as well. His performance at Microsoft surpassed other well know CEOs that had business in the world of technology. He also built many other business within Microsoft such as Xbox entertainment and oversaw the acquisition of Skype. Ballmer also constructed the company's $20 billion Enterprise Business, consisting of new products and services such as Exchange, Windows Server, SQL Server, SharePoint, System Center, and Dynamics CRM, each of which initially faced an uphill battle for acceptance but have emerged as leading or dominant in each category (Wikipedia, 2017).
Life After Retirement
After saying in 2008 that he intended to remain CEO for another decade, Ballmer announced his retirement in 2013, after losing billions of dollars in acquisitions (Wikipedia, 2017). In 2014 Ballmer bought the Los Angeles Clippers NBA basketball team for $2 billion. He also bought a 4% stake in Twitter in 2015 (Forbes,2017). He is presently rated in the top 20 on Forbes list for Billionaires and he is also rated #7 for being considered one of the Richest in Tech.
Just Recently in April of 2017 Steve Ballmer spent 10 million dollars to build a free website called USAFacts.org. The site takes government data from 70 different government sources to create a financial report on the government (Bort, 2017). The site makes it easy to find out everything, from how much taxes we all really pay to crime and divorce rates (Bort, 2017). Steve was inspired to create USAFacts from a simple conversation he had with his wife Connie Snyder. She wanted him to get more involved in philanthropic work. He thought it made sense to first find out what government does with the money it raises. Where does the money come from, where is it spent, whom does it serve and most importantly, what are the outcomes. With his business background, Steve searched for solid, reliable, impartial numbers to tell the story but eventually realized he wasn’t going to find them. So therefore, he decided to put together a small team of people whom were professional economists, writers, researchers and got to work(USAFacts,2017). He currently lives in Hunts Point, Washington, he has been married to his wife Connie since 1990 and he is a father of three.
Steve Ballmer
Steve Ballmer was Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft from January 2000- February 2014, and is the current owner of the Los Angeles Clippers NBA basketball team. As of July 15 2017, Forbes reported his net worth to be $32,800,000,000($32.8 billion), which put him at #32 on the list of the worlds richest people (Wikipedia, 2017).
Early Life
Steve Ballmer was born March 24, 1956 in Detroit Michigan. Ballmer grew up in Farmington Hills, Michigan. In 1973, he attended college prep and engineering classes at Lawrence Technological University. He graduated valedictorian from Detroit Country Day School, which is a private college preparatory school in Beverly Hills, Michigan with a score of 800 on the mathematical section of the SAT and was a National Merit Scholar. He is now on the school’s board of directors (Wikipedia,2017). He also graduated with a bachelor in applied mathematics and economics from Harvard University. He later went to Stanford for business school before dropping out to start working at Microsoft.
Career at Microsoft
Steve Ballmer started working at Microsoft in 1980. He was the first business manager hired by Bill Gates, he had actually became Microsoft 30th employee. In the 20 years following his hire, Ballmer headed several Microsoft divisions, including operations, operating systems development, and sales and support. He was later promoted to President of Microsoft, a title that he held from July 1998 to February 2001, making him the de facto number two in the company to the chairman and CEO, Bill Gates (Wikipedia, 2017).
On January 13, 2000 Ballmer was officially named chief executive officer. As CEO, Ballmer handled company finances and daily operations, but Gates remained chairman of the board and still retained control of the "technological vision" as chief software architect. Gates relinquished day-to-day activities when he stepped down as chief software architect in 2006, while staying on as chairman, and that gave Ballmer the autonomy needed to make major management changes at Microsoft (Wikipedia, 2017).
Upon becoming CEO, Ballmer required detailed business justification in order to approve of new products, rather than allowing hundreds of products that sounded potentially interesting or trendy. In 2005, he recruited Kevin Turner from Wal-Mart, who was the President and CEO of Sam’s Club, to become Microsoft's Chief Operating Officer. Turner was hired at Microsoft to lead the company's sales, marketing and services group and to instill more process and discipline in the company’s operations and salesforce (Wikipedia, 2017).
While Ballmer was CEO, Microsoft revenue went from $25 billion to $70 billion, while its net income increased as well. His performance at Microsoft surpassed other well know CEOs that had business in the world of technology. He also built many other business within Microsoft such as Xbox entertainment and oversaw the acquisition of Skype. Ballmer also constructed the company's $20 billion Enterprise Business, consisting of new products and services such as Exchange, Windows Server, SQL Server, SharePoint, System Center, and Dynamics CRM, each of which initially faced an uphill battle for acceptance but have emerged as leading or dominant in each category (Wikipedia, 2017).
Life After Retirement
After saying in 2008 that he intended to remain CEO for another decade, Ballmer announced his retirement in 2013, after losing billions of dollars in acquisitions (Wikipedia, 2017). In 2014 Ballmer bought the Los Angeles Clippers NBA basketball team for $2 billion. He also bought a 4% stake in Twitter in 2015 (Forbes,2017). He is presently rated in the top 20 on Forbes list for Billionaires and he is also rated #7 for being considered one of the Richest in Tech.
Just Recently in April of 2017 Steve Ballmer spent 10 million dollars to build a free website called USAFacts.org. The site takes government data from 70 different government sources to create a financial report on the government (Bort, 2017). The site makes it easy to find out everything, from how much taxes we all really pay to crime and divorce rates (Bort, 2017). Steve was inspired to create USAFacts from a simple conversation he had with his wife Connie Snyder. She wanted him to get more involved in philanthropic work. He thought it made sense to first find out what government does with the money it raises. Where does the money come from, where is it spent, whom does it serve and most importantly, what are the outcomes. With his business background, Steve searched for solid, reliable, impartial numbers to tell the story but eventually realized he wasn’t going to find them. So therefore, he decided to put together a small team of people whom were professional economists, writers, researchers and got to work(USAFacts,2017). He currently lives in Hunts Point, Washington, he has been married to his wife Connie since 1990 and he is a father of three.
References
USAFacts,(2017)https://www.usafacts.org, Date sourced July 21,2017
Bout, Julie, (2017) http://www.businessinsider.com/why-steve-ballmer-spent-10-million-on-usafactsorg-a-website-about-america-statistics-2017-6, Date sourced July 21, 2017
Wikipedia, (2017) Steve Ballmer, https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/#1750e1577e2f, Date sourced July 15, 2017
Wikipedia,(2017) Steve Ballmer, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ballmer, Date sourced: July 9, 2017
Forbes, (2017) Steve Ballmer, https://www.forbes.com/profile/steve-ballmer/, Date sourced: July 9, 2017