Steve Ballmer made his first million through his early role at Microsoft. In 1980, Steve Ballmer became Microsoft’s 30th employee after dropping out of Stanford’s MBA program. Bill Gates hired him to run his growing company.
Ballmer owned a significant share of the company’s equity—around 8%. This helped him have a huge fortune as the company grew into a giant tech company.
As Microsoft expanded and became the leading software company, Ballmer’s equity increased in value. By 1986, when Microsoft went public, the value of his shares soared.
When Microsoft went public in 1986, Ballmer’s shares were worth millions, making him a millionaire.
Steve Ballmer made his first million through his equity in Microsoft, which grew rapidly in valuation as the company succeeded.
Image Attribution: Aanjhan Ranganathan, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
