stamp magazines and soon noticed that stamp prices were going up. The nature of my interest gradually shifted from the simple joy of owning to the idea that there was more to stamps, which my mother, who worked as a stock broker, would call "lost profits."

IN нашем доме невозможно было остаться в стороне от «коммерческих интересов». IN 1970-е годы за обеденным столом у нас велись беседы о том, что делает председатель Федеральной резервной комиссии и как это влияет на экономику страны и темпы инфляции, о нефтяном кризисе, о том, в какие компании стоит вкладывать деньги и какое сырье продавать и buy first. Houston was in its economic heyday at the time, and there were plenty of collectibles. INсе, что я читал или слышал, подсказывало мне, что стоимость марок будет расти, и, будучи довольно предприимчивым ребенком, я увидел в этом возможность получения прибыли.

My friend and I have already had to buy stamps at auction, and, since even then I guessed that people rarely do anything for nothing, it was quite natural to assume that auctioneers profit from it. INместо того, чтобы отдавать им деньги за покупку марок, я подумал: «Было бы забавно устроить собственный аукцион». Then, in the process, I could not only learn more about the brands, but also earn a commission.

I was about to embark on one of my earliest commercial ventures.

First, I persuaded several people in the area to trust me with the sale of their stamps. Then he advertised the Dell Stamps in Linn's Stamp Journal, a popular philatelic magazine at the time, typed out twelve pages of the catalog with one finger (I didn't know how to type yet and didn't have my own computer), and sent it out wherever I could.

To my own surprise, I made $2,000. This was my first and most important lesson in the value of working without intermediaries. In addition, I became convinced that if a good idea comes to mind, it is worth making the effort to implement it.

INхождение в систему

A few years later, I had the opportunity to take advantage of an even better "commercial opportunity." IN шестнадцать лет я устроился на лето распространять подписку на газету The Houston Post. It happened then as follows: the newspaper gave its distributors a list of new numbers recently connected to the telephone company, and offered to call them in turn. It seemed to me an ineffective method of finding new subscribers.

INскоре, основываясь на информации, получаемой во время телефонных бесед, я заметил в поведении потенциальных подписчиков определенную закономерность. Two types of people almost always agreed to purchase a newspaper subscription: those who were recently married and those who had recently moved into a new house or apartment. Accordingly, I wondered if it was possible to somehow find all the people who are going to have a wedding or take out a loan to buy a home?

After asking around, I found out that if a couple is going to get married, they must go to the district court and get a marriage license. At the same time, they inform the authorities of the address to which the permit should be sent. IN штате Техас эта информация является открытой для публики, поэтому я нанял парочку school friends, and we visited the courts of sixteen counties around Houston, collecting lists of those who were recently (or only about to) get married.

Then I discovered that some companies were making lists of people applying for mortgage loans. As a rule, the lists were compiled in order of decreasing amount. It was easy to identify to whom large loans were made and to address these most likely potential subscribers first.[2] It was on them that I focused my attention, sending each a personal letter with an offer to subscribe to the newspaper.

In the meantime, summer was over and it was time to go back to school. Of course, I understood that I needed to study, but now study has become an obstacle to obtaining a stable income. Having worked hard to create a successful business, I did not want to give up its fruits so easily, so I tried to cope with the bulk of the work after school, and on Saturday mornings finished what could not be done during the week. The number of subscribers was already measured in thousands.

One day, a teacher who taught history and economics for us gave us an assignment that required us to enter data from our tax return. My income, including subscription work, was about $18,000 that year. At first, the teacher corrected the figure, thinking that I had missed a comma. When it turned out that there was no mistake, she experienced a great shock.

IN тот год я заработал больше, чем она.

The advent of the computer

In the meantime, I have a new hobby: computers. In fact, my interest in them arose much earlier. IN семь лет, когда я купил свой первый калькулятор, идея машины, умеющей считать, глубоко поразила мое воображение. IN средних классах я записался в группу углубленного изучения математики и в клуб Number Sense, участники которого решали сложные примеры в уме и соревновались в математических олимпиадах. Our supervisor, a math teacher named Mrs. Darby, installed the first teletype terminal in the classroom. After the lessons, you could play with it, making simple programs or simply entering equations and getting an answer. It was the most amazing instrument I have ever seen.

I started hanging out in Radio Shack stores playing on their computers. And I I started saving up to buy my own. IN то время в Соединенных Штатах были наиболее популярны персональные компьютеры Apple, кроме того, для них существовало самое обширное программное обеспечение, а это, как вы понимаете, было чрезвычайно важно. The great thing about the Apple II is that it wasn't quite as complex as today's computers. Each circuit was located on a separate board, and, having opened the case, it was easy enough to understand how it works. Byte magazine regularly published detailed descriptions of the latest components, and electronic companies issued manuals with complete information about specific microcircuits. It was possible, for example, to take such a book and read what the 74LS07 chip is intended for, what is fed to it at the input and what is obtained at the output. I remember finding an article in Byte magazine about the first 5-inch floppy drive. It seemed to me then that it was incredibly cool.

I constantly pestered my parents to let me buy a computer, and finally, when I was fifteen, they agreed. I didn't have a driver's license yet, but I was so eager to get my hands on a computer that I talked my dad into taking me to a local delivery service and picking it up straight from there. As soon as we parked in front of the house, I immediately jumped out of the car, climbed up with my precious cargo to my room and, with great pleasure, dismantled it into its component parts. The parents were furious.

An Apple computer cost a lot of money back then. It seemed to them that I destroyed it, but I just wanted to know how it works.

As happened with brands, my passion for computers soon turned from a hobby into a business for me. IN 1981 году IBM выпустила модель PC, и я переключился с Apple на IBM. Although at that time there were many more games for Apple, the IBM PC had better features. He had programs designed for business people, and although I didn’t know much about business yet, it was enough to understand that in the future these computers would be the choice of a business person.

For now, I wanted to learn as much as I could about the PC, so I bought all these things that were supposed to improve it, like more memory, disk drives, bigger monitors, and faster modems. (This all happened before computers had a hard drive, so there weren't that many opportunities.) I tinkered with the computer, perfecting it to conceivable perfection, the way others upgrade their cars, and then selling it for a profit and starting all over again. I soon began talking directly to dealers and buying parts in bulk to keep costs down. Mom complained that my room looked like a car repair shop.

Luckily, the 1982 National Computer Conference (NCC) was held in June at the Astrodome in Houston, four months after I got my license. (Onзвание этого ежегодного мероприятия успело измениться: NCC превратилась в Comdex.) IN ту неделю я прогулял почти все занятия в школе, чтобы присутствовать на выставке, слава Богу, родители были в неведении. This event was a real revelation for me.

I've spent a lot of time in computer stores and I've talked to dealers about parts, but I haven't really had any contact with the computer industry so far. At the NCC, computer makers across the country showcased their latest designs and evaluated technologies that were yet to hit the market. It was there that I saw the first 5-megabyte hard drive. (Dell today sells computers with a 37 gigabyte hard drive every day—7,400 times more!) I remember walking up to the Seagate booth and asking how much it would cost. It seemed to me that it should cost at least several thousand dollars. INместо ответа они спросили: «INы о OEM?» I didn't even know what OEM was.[3]

The period of training in computer business began.

Over time, I saved up enough money to buy a hard drive and used it to set up an online bulletin board to exchange information with other computer enthusiasts. Comparing my observations with those of other people, I found a lot of disagreement as far as