Quotes from Ted Waitt

People confuse me with Gateway.

We want a Gateway to be the last computer our clients will ever buy.

I came from an entrepreneurial family. My father and five generations of people in my family do not make good employees.

When you fall short of your internal forecast, two things happen: Costs go up as a percentage of sales, and margins go down.

If all we wanted to do was to make money on PC hardware, that wouldn't be a good business model.

There are hundreds of competitors in the direct marketing of computers. We have been very successful because of quality, price, service and the way we treat the customer.

The PC is an important part of our business and will continue to be for a long, long time.

The complexity increases exponentially when you try and combine two companies that both need to be restructured in their own right.

For any business that has an indirect model to move into the direct business is very difficult and very challenging.

To me, the consumer-electronics business feels a lot like the PC business in the late 1980s. It's an inefficient market.

The biggest challenge is adding the bureaucracy it takes to run the company without becoming fat, lazy, inflexible - bureaucratic.

If Dell's going to be a fast follower, then we'll continue to innovate.

Don't get me wrong; we have a great relationship with Intel going back over many, many years. But we're not a wholly-owned subsidiary. We can do our own thing.

Both Gateway and I are products of Sioux City.

Sometimes people have a hard time believing that a company is intentionally trying to make itself smaller.

Being a smaller, nimbler company is better for our customers, employees and shareholders.

We spend as much time looking at companies that are smaller than we are as we do at those that are bigger.

So many people got caught up in the excitement and the promise of the Internet that they kind of lost sight of their senses.

I've used soap dishes as ashtrays in the best hotels in the world.

The entertainment industry always chooses to fight things out through the courts and legislation. Technology people always think there's a business solution.

For a while there, companies were pushing technology on people and people were buying it. Now the consumer is really in the driver's seat. Now it's more of an overall solution: How can technology make your life better? How can it save you time?

I don't want a mercenary management team.

Who is my biggest competitor? AOL, Microsoft, and AT&TAtHome.

Intel's a great company, and Microsoft is a great company. Everybody seems to do a lot better when there is competition.