People and Technology - MicroStrategy Inc.

People and Technology: MicroStrategy Inc.

Home Base: Vienna, Virginia
Year Founded: 1989

Monday afternoon in a ballroom at a Marriott in Falls Church, Virginia: This is the first day of boot camp, a grueling six-week introduction to MicroStrategy's business model and technology. Forty such events are scheduled this year. The first day always ends the same way: with a welcome from Michael Saylor, the company's 35-year-old CEO. "Heaven for me," Saylor once quipped to the "Washington Post," "is a microphone and a captive audience." He walks to the front of the room. With his sweater-vest, open collar, and dark hair, he could easily pass as a boot camper himself. Or a young whiz-kid professor. He picks up the microphone and looks out on row after row of new hires. Heaven.

Walk into virtually any young, Web-based company, and you'll find a dynamic leader, or someone who's trying to be one. Saylor, however, is the genuine article. Employees feed off of his passion and dedication as well as his confidence in ideas -- such as the one that he calls a "personal-intelligence network." Saylor matter-of-factly describes a future in which an intelligent wireless network will tell you which way to turn to avoid traffic, or if your flight has been changed, or if a doctor has prescribed medicine that's incompatible with another drug you're taking. It will be, he says, like "a guardian angel whispering in your ear." Sure those ideas sound far-fetched today, but what advance doesn't seem improbable before it's accepted?

His work ethic is legendary: the marathon hours, the weekends at work, the hundreds of prospectuses he read while preparing to take the company public in 1998. "He's the most intense person," says Sanju Bansal, 34, Saylor's longtime friend and MicroStrategy's COO. Bansal recalls the summer following graduation from college, when he and Saylor spent six weeks driving around California. "We debated George Will for 30 or 40 hours straight," Bansal recalls. "Mike is a big Will fan. We debated like hell. The thing about Mike is that he's very flexible mentally. After a while, he'd flip around and take the opposing side."

The cardinal rule of marketing, the CEO tells employees, is never be boring. That's not a problem for Saylor. He's erudite, opinionated, and unafraid of being grandiose. He's a voracious reader and a history buff. At MIT, he graduated with highest honors in aeronautics and astronautics as well as in science, technology, and society.

He's a big believer in the enduring power of a mission -- both for an individual and for a company. Small missions produce small companies, he says. But great institutions survive because their missions are "timeless, ethical, and imperative" like his personal favorite, the Roman Empire, whose mission was to spread civilization. The MicroStrategy mission isn't to sell more products or to improve efficiency by a few percentage points. "Our mission is to make intelligence accessible everywhere," Saylor tells the boot campers. "Call some friends tonight, and ask what their company's mission is. Then ask yourself, Would I follow that organization to the ends of the earth? Or is it simply a place to spend 40 hours a week?"

The talk lasts a little more than two hours, which is brief for Saylor. He ends the boot-camp session with the story of a bridge in Alcantara, Spain that has been standing since the days of the Roman Empire -- nearly 2,000 years. As the bridge's cornerstone attests, Caius Julius Lacer, the architect, intended it to stand for all time. Now that's an admirable mission. "We have the ability to turn the economy upside down, to enhance lives, and to drive the civilization forward -- the same way that bridge was built to serve generation after generation," Saylor says. "You have the power to make us succeed or fail."

Strategy.Com -- The Power of Personal Intelligence

Welcome, campers, to MicroStrategy Inc., a company that is setting the agenda for leveraging digital technology to create a fast, focused, and well-run organization; to strengthen relationships with customers, suppliers, and partners; and to cultivate new market opportunities. The MicroStrategy strategy: Convert all sorts of information into intelligence, then distribute it widely, anytime and anywhere, through wireless devices. By any standard, that strategy is working remarkably well. The company is one of the fastest-growing software developers around. Every year for the past four years, it has nearly doubled its revenues, reaching $205 million in 1999. And at last count, its workforce had reached 1,779. Its market capitalization is a stunning $11 billion, making Saylor (who owns 57% of the shares) one of the country's youngest billionaires.