KCFlyer
Veteran
- Aug 20, 2002
- 11,293
- 1,427
He worked for IBM. Before that he was in the military. His daddy didn't give him any "loans" or "seed money". He took the idea of data processing services and started EDS. He heard the word "no" a lot, but he kept pushing. He built a business. He sold the business to GM in the early 80's for $2.4 billion (over $5 billion today). He was on the board and making waves until the directors at GM paid him $750 million to go away. HIs biggest sin? He would go to the GM plant in Arlington Texas and ask the line workers what needed to be improved. Those silly underlings. But he believed that he people doing the work had the most knowledge on how to improve it.
After he was out of GM, he started another company (Perot Systems). That one was sold to Dell for about $3.5 billion.
In 1979, some EDS employees were held captive in Iran. Perot formed a team to get them out. He didn't tout what he did because his team got them out. The story of that is in Ken Follett's book 'On Wings of Eagles".
There wasn't anything gold plated at EDS headquarters in Dallas. Ross ate lunch in the cafeteria with the rest of his employees. I had lunch with him there because he asked if the seat was taken. What do you tell the owner of the company? The only nod to Perot's wealth was the helipad in front of the headquarters building.
