Michael Bloomberg - Founder of Bloomberg L.P. & Former NYC Mayor | Podcast | In Good Company

Choose people over paychecks early on

When starting his career, Bloomberg accepted a $9,000 salary at Salomon Brothers instead of a $14,000 offer at Goldman Sachs because he liked the people better, arguing that young professionals should prioritize experience and relationships over initial compensation.

Built hardware before PCs existed

After being laid off from Salomon Brothers, he started Bloomberg by literally soldering circuit boards and capacitors in an engineer's barn to create proprietary hardware, pivoting to retail PCs only after they were invented two years later.

Solve problems customers don't know they have

Rather than asking traders what they wanted, he built an integrated system combining data, analytics, and messaging that competitors couldn't easily replicate, giving Bloomberg a three-year head start that proved insurmountable.

Publicly protect failure to encourage risk-taking

Bloomberg actively demonstrates that failed experiments carry no career penalty by publicly walking and joking with employees whose risky ideas didn't work, signaling that the attempt itself is valuable for advancement.

Invest in premium spaces for premium talent

Rejecting the cost-cutting mentality of cheap offices, he locates Bloomberg in expensive, high-quality facilities because the most important asset is employees, and pride in workplace drives retention and performance.

Personal accountability at massive scale

Despite having 26,000 employees, he personally calls any staff member or their family who suffers injury or death, sometimes using translators, to demonstrate that management views individuals as valuable human beings, not resources.

Cut the education achievement gap in half

As NYC Mayor for 12 years, he disproved the narrative that test scores couldn't improve by cutting the racial achievement gap in half—not by lowering standards but by raising performance at the bottom while increasing average life expectancy by three years.

Apply business pragmatism to social issues

He addressed homelessness by sending social workers and police together to offer showers, clothes, and mediation with families, treating it as a solvable operational problem rather than an intractable condition.

Give away virtually all profits with rigorous follow-up

Having donated over $20 billion, he operates philanthropy with business discipline—funding specific measurable outcomes like closing 75% of US coal plants and tracking methane emissions via satellite, while personally verifying follow-through on gifts.