Today it’s a $12 billion company, but in your book, you describe some dark days early on, when there was an embezzlement. Was that before or after Al Gore invented the Internet? So in 1990, I started this company called World Wide Technology with five people and 4,000 square feet. I decided that I want to be a part of the technological revolution. One day I asked, “What business am I in? Am I in the business of auditing freight bills on railroads? Or am I in the business of using technology in a new and innovative way?” That was the lightbulb moment. Was there a moment when you saw how the advent of computing power was going to transform American business? Your first business involved stitching together technology to audit freight bills. Let’s talk about the origin story for your company. Subscribe to The Leadership Brief by clicking here. One day I asked, 'What business am I in? Am I in the business of auditing freight bills on railroads? Or am I in the business of using technology in a new and innovative way?' - Dave Steward, chairman of World Wide Technology So have you turned away a lot of investment bankers over the years? How do you rebuff them?Īs I think about investment bankers, I think about them from the standpoint, How can we make you better as an investment bank? And when you see new technology that you think is something really good, how can we help you make it even more valuable and take the risk out of it? I heard you were a good salesman! So when you are pitched for an IPO, you turn it around into a sales call for your company? Investors in the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ or anywhere else, they’re not very patient. How do we continue to improve, how do we invest in a way that’s long term, that 50 years from now, not a quarter from now. And my whole goal and objective is not all about the money, it’s about how we serve our clients better than anybody else. The question is, Why would we? The only shareholder that we’re concerned about is me. But also I think that culture matters, and we have a set of core values that we all believe in and we feel are vitally important and very inclusive. And we haven’t increased that cost in 10 years, longer than that, 15 years. I will challenge anyone to find a health care plan that we have and benefits plan that we have in place, where we cover the spouse and everybody in the entire family at minimal cost to the employee. No, we haven’t because we’re consistently ranked as one of the best places to work by Fortune and Glassdoor.

Louis.” Do you have any issues recruiting top tech talent to live in St. Your slogan is “Experience Silicon Valley in St. We can’t find the right people fast enough. We’re adding employees across the full spectrum of our business, from networks to architecture to engineering. So are you adding head count to your cybersecurity team? So the bad guys are pivoting to digital too?

David steward black billionaire