About the Book

Sam Wyly created best-of-breed companies on the leading edge of advancements in technology, energy, retail, and investments over a career spanning 45 years. Now this fast-paced, fascinating, and candid memoir reveals the creative process, relationships, and financial strategies behind his amazing entrepreneurial success.

Here’s the story of how, after his first job in which he broke sales records at IBM, he risked $1,000 of his savings to found the first “computer utility” and became a millionaire before he was thirty, and how he succeeded in:

Part autobiography and part inspirational business guide, 1,000 Dollars and an Idea is full of refreshing insights and homespun life lessons about what it takes to create, grow, and build successful companies.

Table of Contents

• Prologue
• Chapter 1 "Beat Tallulah"
• Chapter 2 Flora's Boys
• Chapter 3 Big Blue
• Chapter 4 Peter Drucker Wrote the Bible
• Chapter 5 Reach for a Star, Not a Handful of Mud
• Chapter 6 Me and Ross Perot
• Chapter 7 The Birth of a Company
• Chapter 8 A Thousand Dollars and an Idea
• Chapter 9 Multinational Entrepreneur
• Chapter 10 If You Can't Join 'em, Beat 'em
• Chapter 11 Monopoly Buster: Datran, or Die Trying
• Chapter 12 Before There Was Software, There Was Don Thomson
• Chapter 13 Earth Resources
• Chapter 14 Bonanza
• Chapter 15 Taking My Losses
• Chapter 16 Sterling Software
• Chapter 17 Money's Not Scarce
• Chapter 18 Never Let Your Pocketbook Tell You What You Can Do
• Chapter 19 The Crafty Woman
• Chapter 20 Maverick Investor
• Chapter 21 The Good Earth
• Epilogue