Ross Perot

Male

White

Coarse public-record coding; race is a noisy, interpretive category.

European American; family tradition traces paternal ancestry to a French immigrant to Louisiana in the 1740s.

Descendant; family present in the American South for multiple generations before his birth.

Methodist; converted to Presbyterianism in the late 1960s and was a regular attender at Highland Park Presbyterian Church.

English; no indication of another home language.

0

No documented gap in his working life from the Navy through IBM to founding EDS.

not established

Not documented either way; his moves (Texarkana to Annapolis to Dallas) tracked his own naval and business career.

A financially stable, two-parent household in Texarkana. His family is described as doing relatively well even through the Depression on his father's cotton-brokerage income, giving him a home to return to throughout childhood.

Left a well-paying sales job at IBM to found EDS in 1962; the $1,000 of initial capital came from his own IBM savings, and no other family income floor is documented once he left.

not established

His wife Margot Birmingham Perot's role, if any, in the early EDS years is not established.

not established

Married in 1956 and eventually had five children, but the number of dependents at the 1962 founding is not established.

No money was owed or sent outward during the build.

not established

No personal debt at the time of founding is documented.

not established

No housing loss or comparable instability documented; he moved directly from a salaried IBM role into founding EDS.

not established

No period of visible poverty is documented at any point in his life.

Father Gabriel Ross Perot worked as a cotton broker and horse trader in Texarkana. Mother's name is given as Lulu May Ray Perot; her occupation beyond running the household is not established.

A parent worked for themselves, the strongest known predictor of founding.

His father worked as an independent cotton broker and horse trader rather than a salaried employee.

1

An older brother, Gabriel Ross Perot, died as a toddler; Perot was given the middle name Ross in his memory and grew up effectively as an only child.

not established

Whether his brother died before or after his own birth is not established.

Family tradition traces paternal ancestry to a French immigrant who arrived in Louisiana in the 1740s; no sustained family wealth or standing accompanied this lineage into his father's generation.

not established

No account of family sponsorship into an unconventional path; his route through junior college and a competed Naval Academy appointment was a conventional, merit-based one for the era.

Texarkana, Texas — a middle-class family in a small city on the Texas-Arkansas border.

Public schools; graduated Texas High School in Texarkana in 1947.

not established

His father's cotton brokerage had no documented link to the data-processing industry he later entered.

None before adulthood; his first major moves were career-driven, leaving Texarkana at 19 for the Naval Academy and later settling in Dallas after the Navy.

U.S. Senator W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel secured his appointment to the Naval Academy after two years at Texarkana Junior College.

Institutional. Early clients were insurers and health-benefit administrators, then state Medicare and Medicaid data-processing contracts after the 1965 legislation, rather than a pre-existing personal relationship.

Three years as an IBM salesman in Dallas gave him sales technique and credibility with corporate and government buyers, plus the specific insight that data-processing services could be sold apart from IBM's hardware, an idea IBM's own management rejected when he raised it internally.

Skill, Credibility

not established

EDS is consistently described as founded solely by Perot in 1962. Perot Systems in 1988 was founded with eight EDS colleagues who followed him, including his son Ross Perot Jr.

27

Age when he joined IBM as a salesman in 1957, entering the computer industry.

5

From his 1957 IBM hire to founding EDS in 1962.

IBM's leadership rejected his repeated pitch to move the company into software and data-processing services. EDS, the company he founded instead once he left, built a considerably larger and more durable fortune than a sales career at IBM would have.

After the 1984 GM sale, held a seat on General Motors' board, briefly placing him inside the governance of the country's largest corporation, before GM bought back his stock in 1986 following disputes with management.

1

IBM was his only outside employer before founding EDS.

Bachelor's degree, U.S. Naval Academy, 1953.

not established

Service academies carry no tuition; no student debt is documented.

Two years at Texarkana Junior College, then a competed U.S. Senate appointment to the Naval Academy — a service-academy pathway rather than direct four-year civilian enrollment.

Elected class president and chaired the honor committee at the Naval Academy, giving him a network of Navy and later business contacts, though his actual business launch ran through IBM rather than Academy classmates.

About $1,000 of his own savings, accumulated from his IBM salary and commissions, to found Electronic Data Systems on June 27, 1962, his 32nd birthday.

not established

No family capital transfer into the EDS founding is documented.

not established

It paid its own way from the start. Revenue came before any outside money.

EDS operated as a facilities-management and data-processing contractor from the outset, funded by contract revenue rather than outside equity, though it was reportedly turned down 77 times before its first contract.

The founding $1,000 came from savings out of his IBM sales income; there is no record of an outside loan or family transfer funding the 1962 start.

Grew almost entirely on reinvested contract revenue and, from 1968, on public equity rather than private venture funding. Went public on the NYSE in 1968, with shares reportedly rising from about $16 to somewhere between $160 and $162 within days.

Sources give the post-IPO price as either $160 (Wikipedia) or $162 (TSHA); the underlying jump is consistent.

Reinvested EDS's contract revenue into the company's growth through the 1960s-70s rather than personal spending. After selling EDS to GM in 1984 for a reported $2.5 billion and being bought out of his remaining GM stake for $700 million in 1986, he used a large share of the proceeds to found Perot Systems in 1988 with eight former EDS colleagues, including his son.

Personal experience and a rejected pitch: while at IBM he concluded that companies would pay for data processing as a purchased service rather than owning and running their own mainframes. IBM's leadership turned the idea down internally, so he built it as his own company.

0

No prior venture before EDS is documented; he went directly from IBM into founding it.

Self. He personally financed and pitched the new company; TSHA notes EDS's earliest sales effort was rejected 77 times before it won its first contract, a cost of time and effort he alone carried since he had already left his IBM salary.

32

Founded EDS on June 27, 1962, his 32nd birthday.

The 1965 Social Security Amendments creating Medicare and Medicaid produced a sudden, large-scale need for claims data processing that state governments weren't equipped to run themselves, just three years after EDS's founding; EDS built much of its 1960s growth on winning those state contracts.

Dallas, Texas, where he had worked for IBM and where he founded EDS.

The 1979 rescue of two EDS employees held in a Tehran prison, organized and personally funded by Perot, became a bestselling Ken Follett book ("On Wings of Eagles," 1983) and a 1986 NBC miniseries, building his national public profile well beyond the business world ahead of his 1992 campaign.

Built. Created the outsourced-data-processing services model and the company itself from a $1,000 start rather than acquiring an existing business.

32

57

From the 1962 EDS founding to his 2019 death. The EDS engine itself ran under his ownership for 24 years, until the 1986 GM buyout, after which Perot Systems (1988-2009) and personal investing continued building his fortune.

Built EDS and later Perot Systems in Dallas and Plano, Texas, rather than relocating to a coastal technology or finance hub.

Information technology and data-processing services

4100000000

Forbes valuation as of March 4, 2019, about four months before his July 2019 death; commonly rounded to about $4 billion across obituaries. Band only.

Journalistic estimate

2019

not established

No single-year income figure with a disclosed basis is documented; his wealth is better captured by the EDS and Perot Systems sale prices than by an annual income figure.

Realized cash and stock from two large sales: a reported $2.5 billion for EDS in 1984, paid substantially in GM stock and notes, and $700 million in cash for his remaining GM stake in 1986. Later, Perot Systems sold to Dell in 2009 for about $3.9 billion, a sum split among its shareholders rather than paid to Perot alone.

The 1984 EDS sale price is reported variously as $2.4B (Wikipedia), $2.5B (TSHA), and $2.6B (Wikipedia's EDS article); the underlying deal is the same.

Wealth from building and selling businesses, not a salary. Both EDS and Perot Systems were reportedly grown mostly on their own contract revenue, started with only a few thousand dollars, before being sold outright.

Ran for U.S. president as an independent in 1992, winning about 18.9% of the popular vote, the strongest showing by a non-major-party candidate since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, on a platform centered on the federal deficit and opposition to NAFTA. Founded the Reform Party and ran again in 1996, winning about 8%. Neither campaign won any electoral votes.

6

From the 1962 founding to the 1968 IPO that made him one of the wealthiest people in the country almost overnight.

Uncapped

not established

No SEC or other regulatory enforcement action against Perot personally is documented in the sources consulted.

not established

None documented.

not established

None documented; the 1986 exit from General Motors was a negotiated stock buyback, not litigation.

not established

Not documented.

not established

Not documented in the sources consulted.

not established

No detailed, sourced account of EDS's internal labor practices under Perot is established here.

Self made, Plain spoken, Populist, combative with corporate management

Public

3

TSHA, Wikipedia, and Forbes each independently characterize the self-made, plain-spoken reputation.

After

The national folksy-populist public image formed after the EDS fortune was made, mainly through the 1979 Iran rescue's dramatization and the 1992/1996 campaigns.

Mixed

An asset in winning government and insurance contracts and later a political brand, but a liability inside GM, where his criticism of management led directly to the 1986 buyout.

The reputation was deliberately built, through books, press, and PR.

Actively shaped through the 1979 rescue's dramatization in Ken Follett's 1983 book and a 1986 TV miniseries, and again during the 1992/1996 campaigns' plain-spoken media persona (Larry King appearances, half-hour infomercials).

The 1979 Iran rescue was dramatized in Ken Follett's bestselling book "On Wings of Eagles" (1983) and a 1986 NBC miniseries starring Richard Crenna as Perot, both outside his direct control, shaping much of his pre-1992 public image as a can-do patriot.

To much of the business press he was an outspoken corporate-governance critic and unwelcome board member; to a large slice of the 1992 electorate he was a plain-spoken, deficit-hawk outsider; critics in both spheres also described him as controlling and prone to conspiracy theories, particularly around Vietnam POW/MIA claims.