WHAT MICHAEL DELL SAID DURING HIS SXSW PANEL
Michael Dell and a handful of other technology CEOs talked entrepreneurship in a panel during South by Southwest Interactive’s opening day Friday.
It’s a topic that Dell has touched on repeatedly — branding his Round Rockbased company as a champion of startups and innovation — as Dell Inc. transitions from building computers to providing technology services to business.
“Entrepreneurship is really the engine of innovation and economic growth and job creation,” Dell told a crowd at the Austin Convention Center. “Technology is the fuel that goes inside that engine. Dell’s role in democratizing technology, making it more accessible (allows for) the dreams and aspirations of our customers to come to life.”
Joining Dell on the panel were Stephen Kaufer, CEO of vacation rental site TripAdvisor; Jeff Housenbold, CEO of image publishing service Shutterfly; and Carley Roney, co-founder the wedding planning site The Knot.
In the wide-ranging discussion, Dell and the other company heads talked about the importance of staying ahead of technological trends, as
well as special challenges that women face as entrepreneurs.
The best way to create more female entrepreneurs, Roney said, was for more women to get involved in engineering.
About 85 percent of buying decisions are made by women, she said, and “women should be the ones making these things.”
“I think they have the ideas, but they don’t have the best friend who they can sit and jam on some (computer) code with,” Roney said. “There just aren’t enough women engineers.”
She encouraged the audience to volunteer to “get girls excited about technology.”
Housenbold said he’s on the board of Carnegie Mellon University, where only 13 percent of engineering and computer science students are women.
Adding more women to engineering fields “is good for everybody, so I couldn’t agree more,” he said.
The panel also discussed the challenges of expanding into China, the effects of social media and mobile technology on businesses, and keeping up with cyber security.
During a question-and-answer period, they were asked about their toughest moments as entrepreneurs.
Kaufer recalled the early days of TripAdvisor, when the company hadn’t yet made money, but was offered a licensing agreement with a large company that would have provided badly-needed capital.
The catch, he said, was the agreement required TripAdvisor to essentially relinquish its proprietary technology.
“I was tortured on it,” he said. “And I woke up one morning and said, ‘You know ... I could not just wake up in the morning and go to work (if he accepted to the terms).’”
And the company eventually flourished on its own, he said.
In another question, Dell was asked via Twitter how he’s changing his company’s culture, following last year’s $25 billion buyout deal to take Dell Inc. private.
Dell responded that his company grew quickly to become a $60 billion business, which he called “a lot of fun.”
“And as the business changed, we set out to really say, ‘OK, what are the new challenges and opportunities that our customers are presenting us with?’ ” Dell said.
Company officials discovered that they needed more than products to solve customer’s problems, he said, hence Dell Inc.’s pivot to providing more services and security to customers.
As a private company, Dell Inc. can “do all those things faster” and embrace risks, while also changing the company’s focus to a more long-term one, Dell said.
“In terms of our principles, values, and beliefs — those don’t change,” he said.
Dell also noted that, of all the companies represented on stage Friday, his was the only private one.
“You don’t want to hang out with Carl Icahn anymore?” Housenbold joked, referring to the activist investor who led a shareholder revolt against Dell’s buyout offer.
“All done with that,” Dell replied.