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brock_h t1_iwbtsre wrote

Reply to comment by SummerhouseLater in D.C.’s bitcoin king: yachts, penthouses, a python — and tax dodging? by washingtonpost

Michael Saylor's initial wealth comes from Microstrategy. A very successful (though if you ask me now becoming more and more irrelevant) technology company based in the Tysons area. To be clear, Microstrategy still exists and has products used by the federal government and other industries. So, he is not rich because he's a crypto bro, he is a rich guy who became a crypto bro after he was already very rich. It's an important distinction. He is more of a corporate executive and business owner who went a little loopy over it, and he uses his Microstrategy company as a vessel for his Bitcoin holdings.

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TrueBirch t1_iwc8ta2 wrote

Good explanation.

I have a related question. I've been a data science manager for years and Microstrategy has never been mentioned in a single meeting. We've hired lots of vendors for different reporting and analytics applications. What is their current niche?

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TheDeHymenizer t1_iwcc9fw wrote

> Microstrategy has never been mentioned in a single meeting. We've hired lots of vendors for different reporting and analytics applications. What is their current niche?

They're an ERP solution that stopped growing by 2010 lol they compete with things like Cognos and SAP

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brock_h t1_iwcjhe6 wrote

Microstrategy is in use at some large three letter agencies. Just a year or so ago I was almost on a project using it (thankfully I dodged that). I don't claim to really know much about it but from what I saw it was more of a reporting/BI use case for that specific project. It is absolutely not a data science tool and you're not going to see it mentioned alongside things like Databricks, Snowflake, etc. It is very old hat. Frankly, however, I think if Saylor had put half the energy he put into BTC into his company it may still have been relevant (or at least sold to someone relevant) at some point.

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