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AT A TIME WHEN tiny Internet startups are being heralded as the model media companies of the future, Michael Bloomberg has already "been there, done that " He has built his namesake firm into one of the largest business information providers in the world, rivaling the likes of Dow Jones, Reuters and Nikkei. And he did it by being one of the most innovative and aggressive users of computer, communications and recording technology. He has also brought together the frenetic energy of a Silicon Valley start-up with the panache of a New York media company.
The bulk of Bloomberg L.P.'s estimated $700 million in annual revenue continues to come from the tens of thousands of Bloomberg terminals leased to financial traders throughout the world. But the company is quickly moving beyond that, supplying its growing collection of business news to a range of other outlets and markets, including a 24-hour news channel on DirecTV, a business magazine, a radio station, a news service and, of course, a World Wide Web site. Bloomberg the man is very much like his company. At age 54, he is supremely self-confident, articulate and intense. One of the nation's most eligible bachelors, he thrives on the New York scene. He is the East Coast's answer to Larry Ellison-at times charming, on other occasions a terror, but always someone whose opinions are worth paying attention to.
UPSIDE: When you started the company back in 1981, the PC revolution was beginning. Did that have any impact on your plans?
Michael Bloomberg: None, absolutely zero. I started the company because Salomon
Brothers
threw me out on September 30, 1981, and so the next day, October 1, I started the company. The whole idea was that there was a demand for a packaged, off-the-shelf product that would deliver the kinds of information and analytical capabilities that a class of users in a given industry needed. I had built a similar thing at Salomon: I knew the people in the business, I had the money to fund the software thing. I couldn't have done a steel mill, but I could do a software project. We also built our own hardware, but it was fundamentally a software thing. And it had nothing to do with...