A daily coffee routine helped create one of the largest financial institutions in the world.

Thread

2) Michael Bloomberg was born in 1942 in the Boston neighborhood of Brighton.

He attended John Hopkins for undergrad and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School.

After graduating in 1966, he would be hired at Salomon Brothers and rise to the level of general partner.

3) In 1981 Phibro bought Salomon Brothers and he was fired. He was given a $10M severance.

With his new money, he started Innovative Marketing Systems (later to be renamed Bloomberg LP).

The company would provide data services to firms on Wall Street.

4) The thesis was Wall Street would pay a premium for high-quality business information, delivered instantaneously on computer terminals in a variety of usable formats.

It took them over a year to get their first client: Merrill Lynch.

5) When Bloomberg started his company he was looking for feedback. Every day he'd go to a deli across the street from Merrill Lynch HQ. He'd order:

• coffee (with and without milk)
• tea (with and without milk)

plus a few sugars on the side.

6) He'd roam the halls of Merrill Lynch and barge into a room saying:

"Excuse me. I’m Mike Bloomberg. I’m trying to build a relationship with Merrill Lynch because I’m trying to sell you a product that I’m building and I bought you a cup of coffee,"

7) Sometimes people would say. "I don't drink coffee." So he'd hand them a tea. Sometimes they'd want it with milk and sometimes without.

Bloomberg knew no one would say no to a cup of coffee or tea. It was a great way to get in the door.

8) One day he was in a meeting waiting to hear if Merrill Lynch would buy the product.

In walks the Merrill Lynch Chairmen who says, "Hi Mike"

He knew him from delivering coffee and tea to his office every day.

9) Bloomberg explained how he wanted Merrill to buy his product until their internal product was ready. Then they could cancel their contract with Bloomberg.

The Chairmen replied, "That’s a great deal. We’ll do that."

The deal was sealed.

10) Merrill Lynch never canceled their contract. They liked the product so much they bought a 30% stake in the company for $30M.

11) As of October 2016 there are over 325,000 Bloomberg Terminals in the world. Bloomberg LP makes an estimated $10B+ in yearly revenue with 20,000 employees.

Merrill Lynch no longer owns a stake in Bloomberg LP. They cashed out for a profit of $4.67B.

12) Mike Bloomberg is worth $54.9B and ranked 14th on the Forbes 400. He's been the mayor of NY and has donated $8.2B to charity. He even ran for president.

And none of that would've been possible if he didn't go to the deli every day at 6AM.

Sources:

- https://finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-story-billionaire-mike-bloomberg-got-first-customer-002641136.html
- https://www.forbes.com/profile/michael-bloomberg/?sh=79fbb0901417

Did you enjoy this thread? Hit follow and check out my marketing community, @BrandStreetCo.

We offer exclusive content, events and a community. https://www.brandstreet.co/join