Michael Bloomberg sold a machine that did not exist yet

Transcript

This guy sold Merrill Lynch a machine that didn't exist yet and built a $95 billion fortune. Meet Michael Bloomberg. In 1966, Mike's first Wall Street job is counting certificates in a vault so hot he works in his underwear. He gets in at 7 every morning before everyone but the boss, so the two of them end up talking every day. Within six years, he makes partner, then loses a power struggle and gets pushed into the computer room. When the firm is sold, he's fired from the only job he's ever had, but in that computer room, he's spotted something nobody else has. Traders still work out bond prices by hand with pencils and calculators, a computer could do it in a second and nobody's built one. So the very next morning, he starts a company to build it, but no bank has ever heard of him, so Mike does what he's always done, and gets in early. Every morning, he turns up at Merrill Lynch with coffee and asks strangers what they wish their screens could do until one day a boss asks if he can build that machine. It doesn't exist yet, but Mike promises it in six months and his tiny team delivers. Merrill buys 30% of his company for $30 million. He calls his machine the Bloomberg Terminal, and soon every bank wants one. Years later, Mike pays $4.6 billion to buy back the 30% he sold, and today, the guy who got fired from his only job is worth about $95 billion.

Transcribed automatically from the video, so small errors are possible.