Michael Dell turned $1,000 and a college dorm room into a $302 billion company. His advice to founders seeking validation: ‘Don’t go ask’

Some of the most successful tech companies in U.S. history started from humble beginnings. Steve Jobs cofounded Apple in a garage—and Dell’s founder started his $302 billion legacy from his dorm room. Another thing they have in common: They were both college dropouts. 

While many businesses have modest beginnings, Dell says risk-taking focused his mind. 

“If you want to really make it big, you better come up with something unique,” Michael Dell, the founder, chairman, and CEO of Dell Technologies, told Fortune in a 2017 interview. “It better be differentiated—that nobody else is doing.”

His other piece of advice for entrepreneurs is to take feedback with a grain of salt. Instead, he says, he empowers people to trust their gut instincts on whether a new product or business idea will be successful in the long run.

“If you go and ask people if it’s a good idea, most of them will tell you no,” Dell told Fortune. “So don’t go ask.”

To please his parents, Dell took up pre-med at the University of Texas in 1983, according to Entrepreneur. But Dell had long been fascinated by computers and technology, having disassembled an Apple II model at the age of 15 to see how it worked, according to a 1999 biography, Direct From Dell: Strategies That Revolutionized an Industry. It was at the age of 19 that Dell started selling upgrade kits for personal computers to other students in his........

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