TitleFounder & Owner
CompanyBloomberg, LP

Michael Bloomberg is not your typical entrepreneur. His resume is an astounding mixture of business, political and philanthropic achievement in a career that has crisscrossed so many boundaries that it defies categorization. Having built his company, Bloomberg LP, into a hugely successful financial news and information company, Bloomberg emerged as a billionaire business titan intent on changing the world. Having made his mark in business, he turned his attention to the political arena. In 2002, just four months after the attacks of September 11, 2001, he took office as mayor of New York City, a metropolis reeling from the shock of the horrible events of 9/11 and facing enormous economic and cultural challenges.

Bloomberg led the city back to its feet and through the financial crisis that began in 2008. His focus on strengthening the economy, creating jobs and addressing divisive cultural issues put his abundant management skills on display. He would win re-election twice and serve until 2013, equaling the longest-serving mayoralties of Fiorello LaGuardia, Robert Wagner and Ed Koch. During his administration, his highly effective leadership style would result in a thriving economy, a record-low crime rate and a healthier New York. His smoking ban in public places was a landmark decision. Some believe his legacy will last for generations to come.

“There are many things we have achieved that I am proud of,” Bloomberg said in an interview with American Way magazine, “but one of the most important to me is that life expectancy in New York City has grown three years since I took office in 2002 and is now 2.2 years greater than the national average.”

As an entrepreneur, Bloomberg took particular interest in New York’s startup community, providing the support that turned the city into a thriving entrepreneurial environment.

“Mayor Bloomberg has been a great champion of the startup community,” said Neil Blumenthal, co-founder of Warby Parker. “He used his bully pulpit to promote the New York-startup scene nationally and internationally—helping us attract new talent and customers, the lifeblood of startups.”

This is heady stuff for a middle-class kid from Medford, Mass. who believed deeply in the hard work required to get anywhere in the world. He graduated from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and then Harvard Business School (MBA, ’66) without a specific career plan. “I was supposed to go to Vietnam,” Bloomberg recalled during a recent Bloomberg TV interview. “But at the last minute they wouldn’t take me because I had flat feet. A friend of mine said to `Go to Wall Street.’”

Bloomberg received job offers from both Salomon Brothers and Goldman Sachs and chose Salomon. He was smart, ambitious and energized by the hyper-intense Wall Street environment. Becoming an entrepreneur was not yet on his radar screen. At Salomon, he quickly rose through the ranks and eventually ran information technology systems for the firm. But when Salomon Brothers was acquired by Phibro Corp. in 1981, Bloomberg was let go, a victim of the merger. Undaunted, he made a life-changing decision.

“Life is too short to spend your time avoiding failure,” Bloomberg wrote on Linked In about becoming a successful entrepreneur. “In 1981, at the age of 39, I was fired from the only full-time job I’d ever had—a job I loved. But I never let myself look back, and the very next day I took a big risk and began my own company based on an unproven idea that nearly everyone thought would fail; making financial information available to people, right on their desktops. Remember, this was before people had desktops.”

From a small startup in a one-room office, Bloomberg LP defied the odds and grew exponentially, attracting 10,000 customers in the first ten years. Offering a groundbreaking private network with data, analytics and financial information, the company was an entrepreneur’s dream: a timely idea, effective execution, enthusiastic customers. Today, Bloomberg L.P. is a multi-billion-dollar business, employing some 20,000 people in 120 countries, offering data, analytics, and financial information to more than 320,000 business and financial subscribers across the globe.

In 1990, not content to stick with the status quo, Bloomberg created Bloomberg News. The global 24-hour business and financial media company offers television, radio, print outlets such as Bloomberg Businessweek, and a newswire operation that provides content for newspapers and websites.

Today, Bloomberg Philanthropies works to improve lives by focusing on the arts, education, the environment, government innovation, public health, and accelerating the pace of Black wealth accumulation. In 2017, together with Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School, Bloomberg Philanthropies launched the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative to provide intensive leadership training for mayors and senior city officials. In 2021, that partnership grew into the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University, which created a permanent home at the university dedicated to strengthening city leadership and governance.

Part of Bloomberg’s success is an unerring sense of the people with whom he surrounds himself. As he wrote in his autobiography, “As I would learn later on in my life at Salomon Brothers and in my own company, it’s the `doers’, the lean and hungry ones, those with ambition in their eyes and fire in their bellies and no notions of social caste, who go the furthest and achieve the most.”

As Bloomberg made the transition from public life back to the private sector, he returned to his company as CEO and refocused on his many philanthropic efforts. And he has never lost touch with his entrepreneurial roots.
In an article offering tips for entrepreneurs, Bloomberg laid out five suggestions.

  1. TAKE RISKS. “In 2001, when I was debating whether to run for mayor, most people advised me against it. They all were afraid I’d fail. But one person said, `If you can picture yourself giving a concession speech, then why not go for it?’ That was the best advice I received—and I followed it. In order to succeed, you must first be willing to fail—and you must have the courage to go for it anyway.”
  2. MAKE YOUR OWN LUCK. “Luck plays a part in success, but the harder you work, the luckier you get.”
  3. BE PERSISTENT. “Persistence really does pay off. When starting my company, I would go downtown and buy cups of coffee. Then I’d take the coffee up to Merrill Lynch—our target audience—and walk the hallways. “Hi,” I would say. “I’m Mike Bloomberg and I brought you a cup of coffee. Can I talk to you?” Even if people were wondering who I was or where I came from, they still took the coffee. And I kept coming back, day after day, working to build relationships with potential customers. I learned about the audience for our product and what they could really use. Three years after starting Bloomberg LP, Merrill Lynch purchased 20 terminals and became our first customer.”
  4. NEVER STOP LEARNING. “The most powerful word in the English language is “Why.” There is nothing so powerful as an open, inquiring mind. Whatever field you choose for starting a business—be a lifelong student. The world is full of people who have stopped learning and who think they’ve got it all figured out. Their favorite word is `No.’ They will give you a million reasons why something can’t be done or shouldn’t be done. Don’t listen to them, don’t be deterred by them, and don’t become one of them. Not if you want to fulfill your potential—and not if you want to change the world for the better.”
  5. GIVE BACK. You are ultimately responsible for your success and failure, but you only succeed if you share the reward with others.