BILLIONAIRE SUCCESS STORY: Charles Wang - Computer Associates

We all know that Bill Gates and Larry Ellison (co-founder of Oracle Corporation, the world’s second largest software company) are on the top of the world as far as the information technology revolution is concerned. But the person who gives stiff competition to these two giants is Charles Wang, the computer wizard known as the “guru of the digital planet.” He is the CEO of one of America’s leading software companies called Computer Associates (CA). Although little known by the general public, CA has been producing essential software for banks, airlines, manufacturing firms and governments for over 25 years.

The 60 year-old Charles Wang started CA in 1976. In fact, he did not dream of starting such company, nor that he wants to be business tycoon. But the circumstances catapult him to that enviable position, since he grabbed every opportunity that came this way. His hard work, perseverance and killer instinct contributed to his enormous success.

Charles Wang was born in August 1944 in Shanghai, China. His father was respectable judge on China’s highest court. His father and mother, Mary, emigrated to Queens in New York city with their three sons to evade the atrocities of the Communist Party that had seized power in China.

Though the family was well-to-do back in China, the new American neighborhood was not their liking. It was a time when racial differences in the United States at its peak. Charles Wang was then one year old boy. Wang was an underachiever in grade school because he was frustrated by the teaching methods of the professors, who simply taught formulae. In his opinion of methodology did not make the student think. He graduated from Queens College in mathematics, in the year 1967 when he was 23. A moderate student, he hated numbers and mathematical formulae. He found that mechanical activity was not intellectually stimulating enough. Until he joined the Columbia University as a computer programmer, he hardly knew anything about computing.

But the killer instinct in him and his intellectual superiority were enough to understand the intricate world of computers within a short span time. After having worked on a couple programs, Wang was determined to do computing for the next for years. He silently surveyed the computer world and found out that the people in the field were making fast money, compared to other businesses. He realized that information revolution was synonymous with future and his own future was link to that. He became hugely interested in computing at a time when the market dominated by great names like IBM. But he was not daunted. He learnt how to write programs and started selling them himself.

Marketing strategy is very important in business, and particularly in the information technology sector. Towards the end of the Seventies, he received a proposal from a Swiss company exploit a new program, called Sort, which reclassified the data contained in mainframes. Known as CA-Sort, this piece of software sorted the mainframe data in a way that made the big, lumbering IBM boxes run faster. Wang bought the company which produced Sort and set up his own company Computer Associates. In the past 28 years, Computer Associates has grown from scratch to today’s total worth of $25 billion. The company which is a global player today employs a total of more 20,000 workers scattered around the world. Though he welcomes newer approaches to business and aggressive marketing strategies, he strongly believes in the traditional style of integrating all of a company’s parts in order to succeed. If a company strays from the reason it exist in the first place, it will fail, he explains. The biggest compliment comes from his competitor himself, Larry Ellison, who says of him, “I think Charles is brilliant, by the way, he has done a brilliant job at Computer Associates.”

Wang hates unproductive expenses. He expect his employees to account for every penny spent and wants them to give their full to their company. Surprisingly as it may sound, this taskmaster does not allow his employees to use e-mail during office-hour, as he thinks that it is a technology that has been abused, misused, and overused and has replaced the vital personal touch in communication.

If we learn to make use of the opportunities that come in our way, we too can become successful in business like Charles Wang.


References
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MERGER MANIAC
CA History, Haefner bio., Forbes