Michael Bloomberg

Optimize for learning and skill development over immediate compensation early in your career. Higher compensation will follow naturally if you develop valuable skills.

Bloomberg advised young people to join the best firms available and focus on learning from the smartest people around them rather than chasing the highest salary. He emphasized that this approach compounds over time and leads to far greater lifetime earnings.

“Get back to work. Forget the money today. There's plenty of time for that later. Novices should go to the best firm they can get into and then listen and learn.”

Have a competitive moat based on unique information or data that others don't have. This allows you to capture outsized returns.

Bloomberg's moat was that their terminals gave traders access to unique data and analytical capabilities that nobody else had. For about 10 years, when they went to compete, they carried a gun to a knife fight. This data advantage compounded and remained defensible for decades.

“With the closed proprietary system we built, Solomon got what no one else had. For 10 years, when Solomon went to a knife fight, it carried a gun.”

Differentiate your product by being the only company doing something customers actually need. Competition in undifferentiated commodities destroys value.

Bloomberg was convinced from the start that Bloomberg was doing something nobody else could do and nobody else was trying to do. This differentiation allowed the company to command premium pricing (eventually $22,000 per year for the terminal) and high margins. Without unique value, he would have competed on price.

“From the beginning, I was convinced we were doing something nobody else could do, nor was anyone else trying.”

Become indispensable by being the person who understands your industry better than anyone else. Deep knowledge is your competitive moat.

Before starting Bloomberg, Michael spent 24 years learning Wall Street and 15 years in the securities business. He developed knowledge no one else had about how traders, salespeople, and financial institutions actually worked. This deep domain expertise is what enabled him to see an opportunity everyone else missed.

“A good question to ask yourself is, what do I do better than anyone else? I would start a company that would help financial organizations. But nobody had more knowledge of the securities and investment industries and of how technology could help them.”

Create a company culture where people understand the mission and feel responsible for it. Paint a picture of why the work matters and what you're building.

From day one, Bloomberg communicated that the mission was to democratize access to market information and give smaller investors the tools they needed to compete with large institutions. This mission attracted people willing to work weekends and endure uncertainty because they believed in the cause.

“We were motivated by an idea that we could build something new that just might make a difference in the world of finance.”

Hire people smarter than you in their domains. Give them autonomy and demanding, fair feedback. The best product development comes from collaboration with smart, demanding customers.

When Merrill Lynch deployed traders to work with Bloomberg's development team, Bloomberg initially worried they'd be obstacles. Instead, he realized they were invaluable because they could precisely identify what wasn't working and help fix it. He learned to prefer smart, fair, demanding partners over nice, mediocre ones.

“I'd always rather have a smart, fair, honest, demanding client than a nasty dummy.”

Identify smart, honest, demanding people and make them smarter by surrounding them with even more talented people. Intelligence compounds in a community.

Bloomberg's pitch to recruits was that he hired the best people, paid them well, and surrounded them with others equally committed to excellence. He believed that the quality of people you surround yourself with compounds over time. This virtuous cycle of talent attraction created a durable competitive advantage.

“All of them are workaholics once they come they stay for the rest of their lives because they love it. They've built the better mousetrap. They're doing something important.”

Don't appoint managers based on hierarchy or titles. Instead, let talented people compete for leadership by putting them in situations where their capability becomes obvious.

Rather than appointing managers for new ventures, Bloomberg would throw all interested people into the deep end and observe who performed best. The natural leaders would emerge through their actions, not through a formal selection process. This approach prevented promoting the wrong person.

“We don't appoint a manager at the beginning. We simply throw everyone interested into the deep end of the pool and then stand back. It becomes obvious very quickly who the best swimmers are.”

Build relationships with decision-makers by making yourself indispensable through early arrival, late departure, and willingness to do what others won't. This accelerates your advancement.

At Salomon Brothers, Bloomberg arrived before everyone except the managing partner Billy and stayed later than everyone except the number two executive John. By being omnipresent and available for their needs, he built relationships with both the top decision-makers, which accelerated his career despite starting in a clerical position.

“I came in every morning at 7 a.m., getting there before everyone else except Billy. At age 26, I became a buddy of the managing partner. I've never understood why everybody else doesn't do the same thing.”

Decisive leadership with openness to input creates clarity and speed. Make the decision yourself after listening, don't endlessly consult all parties.

Bloomberg contrasted two leaders at Salomon. Billy Salomon was decisive: he listened to everyone's views but made clear decisions and committed fully. John was more egalitarian but slower, consulting too many people, which made the firm less effective. Bloomberg clearly modeled his leadership on Billy's approach.

“He was decisive and consistent as a leader. If he said we were going left, we went left. And when he said right, right it was. We didn't have to prepare for both directions.”

Lead by example. Set the standard through your own behavior, not through rules that apply only to others.

Bloomberg observed that the best leaders at Salomon Brothers demonstrated the values and work ethic they expected from their teams. There were no different rules for leadership. This modeling approach created a culture where high standards were self-evident.

“He led by example. What he said, he did. And the rest of us did as well.”

Become the face and personality of your company, especially when you're small and competing against larger, anonymous competitors. Personal branding creates defensibility.

Bloomberg realized that while competitors had dead founders, he was alive and actively selling and speaking. He intentionally made his name synonymous with the product, renaming 'Market Master Terminal' to 'Bloomberg Terminal' and eventually naming the whole company Bloomberg. This personal brand created a competitive advantage that his larger rivals couldn't match.

“The choice was me. Since I spent so much time demonstrating our product, people had begun to mentally interchange me with the terminal.”

Use multiple media channels to reach customers because each channel can demonstrate your product's value in different contexts. Repurpose your core information across every format.

Bloomberg didn't just create a terminal subscription service. He built a news organization, TV network, radio station, website, and magazine because each one could showcase the data and analytical capabilities of the Bloomberg terminal to different audiences. Every story is an advertisement for the core product.

“Bloomberg is in the business of giving its customers the information they need, in whatever form is the most appropriate. With all methods at our disposal, we do better.”

Each marketing touchpoint should be a product demonstration. Use free content to showcase the value of your paid product and convert a small percentage of the audience.

Bloomberg built Bloomberg News as a way to advertise the terminal's capabilities. Free news stories attracted millions of readers, a tiny percentage of whom would eventually pay $22,000 a year for terminal access. This gave Bloomberg leverage: massive reach and brand awareness with minimal customer acquisition cost.

“Each news story is a product demo. With our terminal functions included, each of our news stories would be more informative than the competition and more people would want access to them.”

Love what you do. This is the hidden leverage that determines whether you'll work hard enough to win. If you don't love it, you'll lose to someone who does.

Bloomberg repeatedly says he loved his work at every stage. This love drove him to arrive early, stay late, and keep working for 50 years. He pitied people who didn't love their jobs because they struggled unhappily and got worse results, reinforcing the cycle. Love is the fuel that enables the hard work necessary for success.

“I've always loved my work and put in a lot of time, which has helped make me successful. I truly pity people who don't like their jobs. They struggle at work so unhappily for ultimately so much less success.”

Show up consistently and outwork competitors. The majority of success comes from showing up when others don't, not from superior intellect alone.

Bloomberg repeatedly emphasizes that 80% of life is just showing up. He attributes much of his success to being willing to work 12-hour days, six days a week, and doing the work when his peers went home or took breaks. This consistency over decades compounded into massive advantage.

“80% of life is just showing up. I believe that. The more you work the better you do. It's that simple. I've always outworked the other person.”

Study history to understand what's possible and to avoid mistakes others have already made. Historical knowledge gives you massive advantage over those who ignore it.

Bloomberg constantly references historical precedents: he studied Kodak to understand the error of confusing your product with distribution, studied newspaper founders to understand how to enter media, and studied financial history to understand markets. This historical literacy informed every major decision he made.

“I developed a sense of history and its legacy and remain amazed at how little people seem to learn from the past, how we fight the same battles over and over again.”

You can control how hard you work, but you can't choose your starting advantages, genetics, or intelligence. Therefore, use your effort as your primary leverage.

Bloomberg came from a middle-class background with a father who never made more than $6,000 a year. He couldn't control his genetics or starting point, but he could control his work ethic. This became the variable he optimized for throughout his career.

“You can't choose the advantage you start out with, and you certainly can't pick your genetic intelligence level, but you can control how hard you work.”

Break complex problems into small, digestible pieces and assign each piece to the person best suited to solve it. This approach scales from startup to large company.

When facing massive software engineering challenges in the early days, Bloomberg and his team broke the problem into small components and assigned each to the person most capable. This modular approach allowed them to manage complexity despite limited resources.

“We took the problem and broke it down into little manageable digestible pieces then each of us took responsibility for the ones for the part that we were best suited to do.”

For the first several years, do everything yourself: sell, negotiate, run the company, hire, fire, and handle operations. This gives you unique understanding that you lose when you delegate.

Bloomberg personally sold the product, negotiated contracts, managed the company, hired and fired, paid bills, wrote checks, emptied wastebaskets, and wrote paychecks for the first three to four years. This hands-on involvement gave him deep knowledge that informed decisions for decades. He describes this as the most fun period.

“For the first three or four years in business, I did all of these functions. Never before or since did I have as much fun or as challenging a time in business.”

Never mistake your product for the device that delivers it. Understand your core business and stay focused on that, regardless of how distribution technology changes.

Bloomberg studied how Kodak failed by thinking they were in the camera and film business rather than photography. He applied this by recognizing his business was data and analytics, not hardware. When PCs took off, he switched away from building proprietary hardware to using the PC platform, keeping his core product intact.

“We knew our core product was data and analytics, not hardware. Look ahead or fall behind.”

Stay flexible and adapt to what the market actually wants, not what you predicted it would want. Real customers and unexpected uses matter more than the original plan.

Bloomberg built many products expecting certain uses, but customers found different applications. Rather than forcing customers to use his products as originally conceived, he adapted and doubled down on what actually worked. This flexibility prevented him from being locked into bad original assumptions.

“Often in the process, things worked that we hadn't planned on. Unforeseen uses arose for our products. Customers appeared whom we hadn't known existed. You can only accomplish what's possible when you get there.”

Getting fired can be the best thing that happens to you if you have the resilience and vision to turn it into an opportunity. Do not linger on setbacks or look back.

Bloomberg was fired from Salomon Brothers at age 39 after 15 years of intense work. Rather than view this as a disaster, he saw it as liberation. He received $10 million as severance and used it to fund his startup, never questioning the decision once it was made.

“Was I sad on the drive home? You bet. But I would have never left voluntarily. Afterward, I didn't sit around wondering what was happening at the old firm. I didn't go back and visit. I never looked over my shoulder. Once finished, gone. Life continues.”

The surest way to get rich is to build a business customers love, not to be an investor or trader. Entrepreneurs create lasting value through serving concrete customer needs.

Despite making $10 million at Salomon Brothers, Bloomberg chose to build a company rather than invest the money. He studied history and saw that the greatest fortunes (Rockefeller, Walton, Gates) came from building businesses, not from trading or investing. This is why he started Bloomberg rather than becoming a hedge fund manager.

“The surest way to get rich is to build a business customers love. Great financial success comes from starting businesses with concrete products in the real world, building jobs, creating value and helping people.”

Success comes from stringing together many small incremental advances, not waiting for one big lucky break. Consistency in daily decisions compounds into major outcomes.

Bloomberg explains that he didn't have a 10-year master plan. Instead, he made tactical plans for the next step, then adjusted based on what actually happened. Every significant advance his company made was evolutionary, not revolutionary. Small decisions made consistently led to the $10 billion company.

“Every significant advance I or my company has ever made has been evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Small earned steps, not big lucky hits.”

Don't have rigid long-term plans. Instead, make small plans for the next step, execute, learn, and adjust. This maintains flexibility to capitalize on unforeseen opportunities.

Bloomberg explicitly states he never had a budget for his future or decided to be a partner by age 30. Instead, he focused on the next tactical move. History shows that excessive planning is as ineffective in business as it was for Stalin and Mao. Adaptability compounds faster than perfect planning.

“Never let planning get in the way of doing. Take lots of chances and make lots of individual spur-of-the-moment decisions. Don't devise a five-year plan.”

Stay private if possible. Remaining private gives you the freedom to think long-term, take bigger risks, and avoid answering to impatient shareholders.

Bloomberg explicitly rejected taking his company public despite its enormous profitability. He valued the ability to make 10-year decisions without quarterly earnings pressure. Private ownership meant he could be a builder, not a public company manager.

“Why would I swap fun, influence, challenge, and more money than you could ever spend for only a multiple of more money than you can ever spend? Why would we want to answer to more partners, stockholders, and security analysts?”

Build first, don't acquire. Creating from scratch is more fun, less risky, and allows you to build things exactly how you want them.

Bloomberg repeatedly chose to build products and services from scratch rather than acquire them, even though acquisition would have been faster. He believed that building allowed him to embed the company's values and quality standards from the beginning, creating a more coherent culture.

“Fundamentally at Bloomberg we're builders not buyers. It's always more fun to create from scratch and it's a lot less risky.”