At the end of 2019, 77-year-old Michael Bloomberg announced his candidacy for the United States, and the self-made billionaire with a net worth of more than $50 billion said in a statement on Twitter: "I am running to defeat Donald Trump and rebuild America." ”
Immediately after Mr. Bloomberg announced his candidacy, his company, Bloomberg News, announced that the group would stop publishing unsigned editorial articles and would not investigate neither Mr. Bloomberg nor its Democratic rivals. Mr. Bloomberg has previously said that if he wins, he will either sell the Bloomberg Limited partnership or put it in a confidential trust. Some analysts believe that Microsoft may buy Bloomberg Group for $70 billion.
Bloomberg believes in the saying, "80% of life is just about being there." Today, Bloomberg's candidacy for the United States** is only a "timely attendance," similar to his election to mayor of New York City after the 911 attacks of 2001. The philosopher Wittgenstein once said, "The world is everything that happens, the sum total of facts." "If we understand the world as a combination of events, we find the key to understanding Bloomberg.
Bloomberg, founded by Bloomberg, is a large provider of financial data, trading platforms, news** and social networks within the industry. The company's "Bloomberg Terminal" has 3250,000 financial services practitioners are in use, and they have to pay a one-time payment of 2$40,000, "Most of our information is behind the world's most expensive 'paywall,' with a Bloomberg terminal that costs about $2 a year for a subscription."$20,000, which equates to $88 per working day," Bloomberg said.
Mr. Bloomberg described Bloomberg as a cash cow, "Some people say we're like Google in the financial markets, and in a way, the analogy is right." Like Google, Bloomberg collects, sorts, and stores vast amounts of information that can be retrieved instantaneously, something people rely on every day. We use thousands of people and advanced technology to ensure that the information and data we provide is 100% accurate. When our clients search on Bloomberg terminals, they know they won't receive any fake news or fake data, and they won't tolerate that either. ”
The originator of data-based platforms
Today, digital transformation is becoming a movement that is sweeping the global corporate world, and in fact it is exactly what Bloomberg did 40 years ago. The primary version of digital transformation is called "automation", and the advanced version is what today is called data platform and "customer intelligence". Everything in the physical world today is having a "digital identity", and a few decades ago, the national debt, data, etc., were the first to be liberated from paper and manual transmission, and Michael Bloomberg was a pioneer in this matter.
From the early 1970s until 1981, when he was fired from his former employer, Salomon Brothers, Mr. Bloomberg led the company's computer department and established the information processing system, which we generally understand as "automation", and the data access and analysis tools broke down the information asymmetry within the company and between the company and customers, despite the back-and-forth attacks of various departments. The in-house proprietary system built by the Bloomberg team has allowed Salomon Brothers to maintain a competitive edge for 10 years.
First on the left is Bloomberg, the most hard-working employee in the Solomons.
In 1981, Mr. Bloomberg, as a general partner, was swept away by Salomon Brothers and received $10 million in cash compensation. This became the launch of what became the Bloomberg Group**, and after spending $4 million, Bloomberg successfully developed the first terminal and won a contract from Merrill Lynch.
It started when Mr. Bloomberg realized a business opportunity after losing his job, saying, "I envision a business that comprehensively searches the data, allows people to choose what information they think is useful, and provides computer software that can be analyzed by people who are not mathematicians." ”
Some of the big underwriters have built in-house systems, but these systems are only used by PhDs, "Every big ** company spends a lot of money to gather information independently, and what's worse, they rely on abacus and slide rule, or more modern tools like handheld calculators, to process this information in practice......."If most companies used my data and analytics, I would be able to create an industry standard, and I also had the advantage that I was neither a broker nor a trader, and I wouldn't lean one over the other, which would give my product a level of independence that was not possible with the company's internal systems, and more importantly, no one was doing it at the time," Bloomberg said. Looking back with today's perspective, Bloomberg built a platform.
"In the '80s, we were in our little sweatshop and everyone forgot to leave work, and then we walked to the theater to watch a movie and relax," Bloomberg recalls. ”
Merrill Lynch was Bloomberg's first client, and for a time it was exclusive to this service, and Merrill Lynch later became the world's largest largest economic company and trader. Because of his stake in Bloomberg 30, Merrill Lynch's CEO at the time was eventually persuaded by Bloomberg to allow Bloomberg to open up the system to more than a dozen of its "sworn enemies" who were not close to the competition, and then the fledgling Bloomberg** redeemed Merrill Lynch's 30 stake to avoid ethical flaws.
Bloomberg and his financial services product, the Bloomberg Terminal
The obsession of "being there".
The accuracy and timely availability of information related to funds can be the difference between success and failure for financial practitioners. Getting data "in the spot" in a timely manner has also made Bloomberg's business empire. The so-called "presence" is to show up in time.
In the past, some people read history books and often lamented that "there are no heroes at the time, so the vertical son becomes famous", hooligans and even illiterate people have become "Internet celebrities" in history in the period of drastic changes in society, especially in the period of changing dynasties. This sentiment is not quite correct. As the saying goes, "people's destiny depends on self-struggle, but we must also consider the process of history", and the most important thing is "presence" in the relationship between personal destiny and the "hot spots" in the historical process. Evie Genstein's phrase "the world is everything that happens" states that the individual and the event cannot be separated.
Compared to the big figures who seem to be involved in the course of history, Bloomberg has a clearer sense of presence. While doing his MBA at Harvard Business School, he spent two semesters working in Cambridge for a small real estate company, near Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In his recollections, "Every day those new tenants get up early, grab the newspaper in the hotel, read the real estate section, make an appointment with the 'next available agent' to see the property, and then go back to bed." Later in the day, they go out to see the property."
Mr. Bloomberg, who goes to work at 6:30 a.m. every morning, said: "By 7:30 or 8 o'clock, all the potential renters who came to Cambridge had already called our company and made appointments to see the property, and I was the only one willing to come and pick up ** so early, and the full-time staff who came to work at 9:30 sat there all day wondering what to do — one after another people walked into the office to find Mr. Bloomberg."
After joining Salomon Brothers, Mr. Bloomberg came to the office at 7 a.m. every morning, "and I came earlier than anyone but the founder, Billy Solomon." If he wants to borrow a fire or chat about a sports game, I'm the only person in the trading room who can talk. At the age of 26, I became his 'buddy'. With the exception of John Gutfreund, I leave work later than everyone else every day. When he needs someone to call the most important customers during non-working hours, or to hear him complain about the people who have already gone home from work, I am the only one present, he is the number two person in the company, and I can rub his car home ......Keeping myself available isn't a chore – I love what I do. ”
Bloomberg observed, "Life follows the law that every day you come across small, unexpected opportunities." Sometimes seizing an opportunity can get you one step to the top, but most opportunities, if worthwhile, can only take you a small step forward. To succeed, you have to take it one step at a time."
Screenshot of the Bloomberg campaign.
He was quite resistant to the plan, "Don't talk about the five-year plan or the Great Leap Forward, it won't necessarily work for entrepreneurs." Planners will tell you to follow those specific, step-by-step strategies like slaves ......But that's not the case in my world, the future is impossible. You work hard because you can accumulate more opportunities, but the result is not guaranteed, it depends a lot on what kind of cards you happen to have in your hand, and I have always believed that you should play as many hands as you can, be as smart as you can and make the most of all the resources you have."
Mr. Bloomberg, who claims to work 12 hours a day, six days a week, at Salomon Brothers, has not upset the work-life balance, and he has never missed evenings or weekends because of too much stress or too much work, he says: "I date a lot of girls, and I go skiing, running, and partying more than most." I just make sure that 12 hours of work is put in and 12 hours of fun. The harder you work, the richer your life will be. ”
Kazuo Inamori has also emphasized that his company never has a five-year plan, and that he prefers that everyone in the organization makes the most of each day, and at the same time, when the work is not satisfactory, it is better to change the attitude towards work than to change jobs. Kazuo Inamori sees work as a practice, while Bloomberg's 996 is just about playing a few more hands and making sure he's there when the opportunity arises.
The attitude of both ensures a certain "presence". Mr. Bloomberg even thought that if he hadn't been fired at the age of 39, he would have stayed with Salomon Brothers, and there would have been no Bloomberg.
In his recollection, Mr. Bloomberg spoke sarcastically of a habitual mindset: "When I filled out the college application form, there was a column 'What are you going to do in the next 10 years?' and I was racking my brain to make up so many meaningless words. ”
His attitude towards any project is also to "live" the less perfect product first, and then continue to optimize it, rather than relying on perfectionism to design it like competitors, which is easy to get caught in the plan.
The field should be as "transparent" as possible
In 1966, when Bloomberg was about to graduate from the MBA, he didn't know what he should do in the future, he applied for a job at Goldman Sachs and Salomon Brothers at the suggestion of his classmates. Mr. Bloomberg also found that Billy Solomon, the managing partner of Salomon Brothers, was more open-minded, and he talked to Mr. Bloomberg during interviews, as if he were a distant cousin.
Both companies extended an olive branch to Mr. Bloomberg, with the former offering an annual salary of $14,000, while the latter, who was still a small company at the time, offered an annual salary of $9,000 and offered a $2,500 loan, and Mr. Bloomberg chose the latter and became a salesman. Mr. Bloomberg once recalled that the social status of salespeople at the time was so low that none of his Harvard classmates could understand that he would do such a job.
What attracted Mr. Bloomberg to Salomon Brothers was the working atmosphere, where the flow of information was likely to be smoother. Later, with Bloomberg's promotion, he also encountered a series of office political problems.
Years later, the Bloomberg team built an information processing system at Salomon Brothers, which was nothing more than a solution to the problem of internal information being "blocked" as much as possible, and Bloomberg was later forced to "start a business" to make information more transparent to various stakeholders on a larger level, and thus gain great wealth.
Mr. Bloomberg said he was Bloomberg's emperor and had always hoped that someone would remind him when he was undressed. When Salomon Brothers' performance was declining, he suggested that then-managing partner John Gutfround create a chief of staff position and make him the truth-telling child, but this suggestion was not adopted.
In Bloomberg's view, the work environment influences employees' work habits more than management orders, so partitions are not allowed in Bloomberg's workplace, saying: "Employees must develop the ability to concentrate and be unaffected by a myriad of distractions, but the biggest benefit is that they can absorb the information around them while they focus on other things." Openness also allows them to always face their colleagues, preventing the childish idea of having colleagues make things difficult for them. Like the truth of the market, transparency leads to fairness. ”
Bloomberg's workplace.
Bloomberg often struggled with office space, and every time he rented an office it proved too small and inadequate, he said: "The overcrowding of the office was a sign that I lacked the ability to plan for the company's growth, but it was also a safety valve, and the limited space limited the number of people we could hire, keeping our budget under control." In a sense, this also proves that Bloomberg is less planned for the future.
Fair or unfair
Bloomberg once said that if a person works as hard as his competitors, then his win rate will always be 50%, and if he works harder than his competitors, he will have a better win rate, "because giving more almost always leads to greater success, and in turn you will have more fun, and then you will be willing to give more because you are rewarded, and so on". In his view, unfair competition is the only way to win, and "unfair" comes from putting in more effort.
Interestingly, during his more than a decade as mayor of New York, Mr. Bloomberg promoted many good policies, one of which was controversial. To address the underrepresentation of Hispanic and African-American students in high-quality public schools, he proposed a plan to dramatically increase the weight of standardized test scores in the admissions process to so-called good schools. The plan backfired, and the schools were flooded with children from middle-class white, Asian-American families.
Mr. Bloomberg, who came from a middle-class Jewish family, was an instinctive proponent of a "meritocratic system" in which "only highly test-oriented, entirely merit-centered evaluation criteria are fairest to the average person." When he received his acceptance letter to Harvard Business School, he imagined how excited his father would be if he were alive.
Jack Ma visited Bloomberg's headquarters in New York to exchange environmental protection and education with Bloomberg.
In fact, this is a continuation of a system that Bloomberg has at the helm of, arguing that "the company's main assets are not technology, databases, proprietary communication systems, or even customers, but employees", so that Bloomberg is always "optimising" people compared to "most companies never optimize their teams unless they are forced to", which may also be understood as an internal purge.
Learn to authorize and dislike to buy
For an entrepreneur who takes 996 as fun, it is not easy to let go of management, and it will be full of doubts to buy other companies' products and services or even acquire other companies. In addition to buying a radio station in New York and entering the radio and television industry, Bloomberg's "related diversification" is all DIY, just to make the financial platform more self-sufficient.
Bloomberg admits: "Engaging in hands-on to hands-off is a gradual process for me, but it's not always pleasant. I like to do things myself and get my hands dirty. If we want to continue to grow and not rely on me alone, I have to hand over power. That doesn't mean I'm happy about it, but as I've grown, I've become more and more recognizant of the importance of delegating and anyone who tries to micromanage a large agency will eventually fail. Often, when we give someone someone a project to do, I remember that their standards are not quite the same as Bloomberg's pioneer culture, and I'd rather do it ourselves. ”
Mr. Bloomberg had a high-risk hobby of flying airplanes and had two engine failures that narrowly escaped death. While at Salomon Brothers, Dick Rosenthal, a partner who had a feud with Bloomberg and forced him to lose his job, died in this activity.
Faced with the unplanned situation caused by this activity, he concluded from it: "Don't panic, do what you are usually asked to do in training, and do it just right, no more, no less." He thinks he loves flying because he likes to be in a state of being consistent with his words, "You have to do it, not just say it." It's also a matter of "presence", where the person has to deal with the problem at hand and not think too much about what will happen next.
Bloomberg flew a helicopter and was interviewed by 60 Minutes.
Bloomberg also hinted that good results are just an adjunct to "doing it", with the former gold medal trader on Wall Street saying: "Wall Street heralds great wealth, although in reality I rarely hear of anyone who has actually made a fortune there." From John Rockefeller to Sam Walton and Bill Gates, great financial success has come from starting businesses in the real world to produce concrete products, provide jobs, create value, and help people. ”