Sometimes it’s better not to ask-or to listen-when tell you something can’t be done. I didn’t ask for permission or approval. I just went ahead and did it.

If you want to sustain excellence over a long time, you’d better come up with a system that works well. Anyone can sprint for a little while, but you can’t sprint for forty years.

I started the business with a simple question: How can we make the process of buying a computer better? The answer was: Sell computers directly to the end customer. Eliminate the reseller’s markup and pass...