- INTEL
Gordon Moore
Gordon Earle
Moore (born January 3, 1929) is an American businessman
and co-founder and Chairman Emeritus of Intel Corporation and the author of Moore's Law (published in an article April 19, 1965 in Electronics
Magazine).
Life and Career
Moore was born in San Francisco, California, but his family lived in nearby Pescadero where he grew up. He received a B.S. degree in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1950 and a PhD in Chemistry and minor in Physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1954. Prior to studying at Berkeley, he spent his freshman and sophomore years at San José State University, where he met his future wife Betty. Moore completed his post-doctoral work at theJohns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory until 1956.
He joined Caltech alumnus William Shockley at the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory division of Beckman Instruments, but left with the "traitorous eight", when Sherman Fairchild agreed to back them and created the influential Fairchild Semiconductor corporation.
In July 1968, Moore co-founded NM Electronics which later became Intel Corporation with Robert Noyce and served as Executive Vice President until 1975 when he became President. In April 1979, Dr. Moore became Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, holding that position until April 1987, when he became Chairman of the Board. He was named Chairman Emeritus of Intel Corporation in 1997.
Moore has been a member of the Board of Directors of Gilead Sciences since 1996, after serving as a member of the company's Business Advisory Board from 1991 until 1996. It has also been reported that Moore is a former Chairman and present Life Trustee of the California Institute of Technology, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Engineering (UK). He is the recipient of the National Medal of Technology and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honor. In 1998 he was inducted as a Fellow of the Computer History Museum.
In 2001, Moore and his wife donated $600 million to Caltech, the largest gift ever to an institution of higher education. He said that he wants the gift to be used to keep Caltech at the forefront of research and technology. Moore was chairman of Caltech's board of trustees from 1994 to 2000, and continues as a trustee today. In 2002, he received the Bower Award for Business Leadership. In 2003, he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The library at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge is named after him and his wife Betty, as is the Moore Laboratories building (dedicated 1996) at Caltech.
With his wife he endowed the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
On December 6, 2007, Gordon Moore and his wife donated $200 million to Caltech and the University of California for the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope, the world's largest optical telescope. The telescope will have a mirror 30 meters across. This is nearly three times the size of the current record holder, Large Binocular Telescope.
Moore was awarded the 2008 IEEE Medal of Honor for "pioneering technical roles in integrated-circuit processing, and leadership in the development of MOS memory, the microprocessor computer and the semiconductor industry." Moore was featured in the documentary film Something Ventured which premiered in 2011.
Moore enjoys many different recreational activities, including car painting and making model airplanes. He has said his conservation efforts are partly inspired by his interest in fishing.
In 2011, Moore's genome was the first human genome sequenced on Ion Torrent's Personal Genome Machine platform, a massively parallel sequencing device. Ion Torrent's device obtains sequence information by directly sensing ions produced by DNA polymerase synthesis using ion-sensitive field effect transistor sensors.
2. AMAZON.COM
Jeff Bezos
Jeffrey Preston "Jeff" Bezos born January 12, 1964 is an American entrepreneur who played a key role in the growth of e-commerce as the founder and CEO of Amazon.com, Inc., an online merchant of books and later of a wide variety of products. Under his guidance, Amazon.com became the largest retailer on the World Wide Web[and the model for Internet sales
Early Life and career
Bezos was born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen and Ted Jorgensen.His maternal ancestors were settlers who lived in Texas, and over the generations acquired a 25,000 acre (101 km2 or 39 miles2) ranch near Cotulla. Bezos' maternal grandfather was a regional director of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in Albuquerque. He retired early to the ranch, where Bezos spent many summers as a youth, working with him.At an early age, Bezos displayed a striking mechanical aptitude – as a toddler, he tried dismantling his crib
Bezos was born to a teenage mother in Albuquerque. Her marriage to his father lasted little more than a year. When Jeff was four, she remarried, this time to Miguel Bezos. Miguel was born in Cuba, migrated to the United States alone when he was fifteen years old, worked his way through the University of Albuquerque, married, and legally adopted Jeff. After the marriage, the family moved to Houston, Texas, and Miguel became an engineer for Exxon. The young Bezos attended River Oaks Elementary School in Houston from fourth to sixth grade. As a child, he spent summers at his grandfather's ranch in southern Texas, "laying pipe, vaccinating cattle and fixing windmills."
Bezos often showed intense scientific interests. He rigged an electric alarm to keep his younger siblings out of his room.The family moved to Miami, Florida, where Bezos attended Miami Palmetto Senior High School. While in high school, he attended the Student Science Training Program at the University of Florida, receiving a Silver Knight Award in 1982. He was high school valedictorian. He attended Princeton University, planning to study physics, but soon returned to his love of computers and graduated summa cum laude, with a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering and computer science. He was elected to the honor societies Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi.
According to Nick Hanauer (an early investor in Amazon) and "others who know [him]", Bezos is described as a libertarian.In July 2012, Bezos and his wife personally donated $2.5 million to pass a same-sex marriage referendum in Washington State. According to the web site Newsmeat.com, a web site that documents political donations made by "the powerful, rich, and famous" since 1977 (and donations higher than $200), Bezos has donated $16,000 to United StatesDemocrats, $2,000 to United States Republicans, and $55,000 to special interests as of September 6, 2012.
Business career
After graduating from Princeton University in 1986, Bezos worked on Wall Street in the computer science field. Then he worked on building a network for international trade for a company known as Fitel. He next worked at Bankers Trust, where he became vice-president. Later on he also worked in computer science for D. E. Shaw & Co.
Amazon.com
Bezos founded Amazon.com in 1994 after making a cross-country drive from New York to Seattle, writing up the Amazon business plan on the way. He initially set up the company in his garage. He had left his "well-paying job" at a New York City hedge fund when he "learned about the rapid growth in Internet use", which coincided with a "then-new U.S. Supreme Court ruling [that] online retailers don't have to collect sales taxes in states where they lack a physical presence"; he had headed to Washington because its relatively small population meant fewer of his future customers would have to pay sales tax.
According to Forbes, Amazon's shares have "defied gravity" in 2011, jumping 55% and adding $6.5 billion to Bezos' net worth
Bezos is known for his attention to business details. As described by Portfolio.com, he "is at once a happy-go-lucky mogul and a notorious micromanager. ... an executive who wants to know about everything from contract minutiae to how he is quoted in all Amazon press releases.
Blue Origin
In 2000, Bezos founded Blue Origin, a human spaceflight startup company, partially as a result of his fascination with space travel,[15] including an early interest in developing "space hotels, amusement parks and colonies for 2 million or 3 million people orbiting the Earth." The company was kept secret for a few years until it became publicly known only in 2006 when purchasing a sizable aggregation of land in west Texas for a launch and test facility.
In a 2011 interview, Bezos indicated that he founded the space company to help enable "anybody to go into space" and stated that the company is committed to decreasing the cost and increasing the safety of spaceflight. Blue Origin is "one of several start-ups aiming to open up space travel to paying customers. Like Amazon, the company is secretive, but [in September 2011] revealed that it had lost an unmanned prototype vehicle during a short-hop test flight. Although this was a setback, the announcement of the loss revealed for the first time just how far Blue Origin’s team had advanced." Bezos said that the crash was 'not the outcome that any of us wanted, but we're signed up for this to be hard.'"
Recognition
He was named Time magazine's Person of the Year in 1999. In 2008, he was selected by U.S. News & World Report as one of America's best leaders. Bezos was awarded an honorary doctorate in Science and Technology from Carnegie Mellon University in 2008. In 2011, The Economist gave Bezos and Gregg Zehr an Innovation Award for the Amazon Kindle. In 2012, Bezos was named Businessperson of The Year by Fortune Magazine.
He is also a member of the Bilderberg Group and attended the Swiss 2011 Bilderberg conference in St. Moritz, Switzerland.He is a member of the Executive Committee of The Business Council for 2011 and 2012.
As of October 2012, According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index Bezos is listed as one of the wealthiest people in the world with an estimated net worth of US 22.1 billion. He was recently ranked the second best CEO in world by Harvard Business Review, after the late Steve Jobs of Apple, therefore making him the best living CEO. Two powerful Saturn V first-stage rocket engines that are believed to be part of the five of the Apollo 11 mission that has taken astronauts to the Moon have been recovered from the Atlantic in a Jeff Bezos-funded expedition.
As of May 2013, he received the Technologeek Price as the second best tech CEO.
3. TESCO
Jack Cohen
Sir Jack Edward Cohen (6 October 1898 – 24 March 1979), born Jacob Edward Kohen and commonly known as Jack Cohen, was a British businessman who founded the Tesco supermarket chain.
Career
He was born in Chatham in the Medway area of Kent, to a Jewish family, the son of an Avram Kohen, a Polish immigrant who worked as a tailor, and his first wife, Sime Zamremb. He began his working life as an apprentice tailor to his father but in 1917 he joined the Royal Flying Corps where he served as a canvas maker.Upon his demobilisation in 1919 he established himself as a market stall holder in Hackney, in London's East End by purchasing surplus NAAFI stock with his £30 demob money.
He soon became the owner of a number of market stalls, and started a wholesale business. Initially the other stalls were run by members of the family but gradually non-family members were added. Cohen and his wife worked 7 days a week, starting at dawn and counting money until late. At each market the traders would gather and, at a signal they would race to their favoured pitch. Cohen could not run fast so he simply threw his cap at the spot and this could beat anyone.
In 1924, he created the Tesco brand name from the initials of a tea supplier, T. E. Stockwell (formally Messrs Torring and Stockwell of Mincing Lane), and the first two letters of his surname.The market trading business became difficult to expand because partners tended to be unreliable so eventually he changed to high street shops without doors, looking and sounding as far as possible like market stalls.The first two Tesco stores opened at Becontree and Burnt Oak in 1931.By 1939, Cohen owned a hundred Tesco stores.His expansion was helped by the growth of new shopping centres.
Retailers are often reluctant to be the first to sign a contract in a new centre lest they become the only ones. With his market experience and courage Cohen was often the one to take that risk and he had ways of drawing a crowd. Developers became keen to help him with his start-up costs because of his ability to get people into a new centre, with benefit to the other shops.
Sometime around 1930 he changed his name by deed poll to John Edward at the suggestion of his bank manager whose staff had trouble distinguishing between the many Jacob Cohens banking at the Mare Street branch of the Midland Bank in Hackney.
In 1932, having opened his first Tesco-named shops, Cohen travelled to the United States to review their self-service supermarkets. At the time he was not impressed and felt they would never be accepted in the UK. After the war he took another look and listened to his son-in-law Hyman Kreitman, who was very keen. He opened one of the first British supermarkets. The new strategy was led by Kreitman who understood how to manage this new style of shop and the crucial tasks of mass buying, selling and logistics. Tesco grew strongly. It gradually drew ahead of its rivals and took over many of them.
He was married to Sarah Fox, daughter of an immigrant Russian-Jewish tailor: they had two daughters, Shirley and Irene."Cissie" was a great supporter of her husband's business interests, so much so that the money they received as wedding gifts was invested in a wholesale venture.
Cohen was knighted in 1969. Sir John and Lady Cohen supported a range of charities, giving their name to the Jewish Care facility, Lady Sarah Cohen House at Friern Barnet, north London. In 2009 an English Heritage blue plaque was placed at 91 Ashfield Street, Whitechapel, London, where Cohen lived as a child.
4. NIKE
Bill Bowerman
William Jay "Bill" Bowerman (February 19, 1911 – December 24, 1999) was an American track and field coach and co-founder of Nike, Inc. Over his career, he trained 31 Olympic athletes, 51 All-Americans, 12 American record-holders, 24 NCAA champions and 16 sub-4 minute milers. During his 24 years as coach at the University of Oregon, the Ducks track and field team had a winning season every season but one, attained 4 NCAA titles, and finished in the top 10 in the nation 16 times. He is the recipient of the Oxford Cup, Beta Theta Pi's greatest honor.
Early life
Bill Bowerman was born in Portland, Oregon. His father was former Governor of Oregon Jay Bowerman;his mother had grown up in Fossil. The family returned to Fossil after the parents divorced in 1913. Bowerman had an older brother and sister, Dan and Mary Elizabeth "Beth"; and a twin brother, Thomas, who died in an elevator accident when he was 2 years old.
Bowerman attended Medford and Seattle schools before returning to Medford for high school. He played in the high school band and for the state champion football team his junior and senior years. Bowerman first met Barbara Young, the woman he would marry, while a high school student, in Medford.
In 1929, Bowerman attended the University of Oregon to play football and study journalism. He was a member of Beta Theta Pi Fraternity. After graduating he taught biology and coached football at Franklin High School in Portland in 1934. In 1935, Bowerman moved back to Medford to teach and coach football.
Bowerman married Barbara Young on June 22, 1936. Their first son, Jon, was born June 22, 1938. William J. Bowerman, Jr. (“Jay”) was born November 17, 1942.
Business
In 1964, Bowerman entered into a handshake agreement with Phil Knight, who had been a miler under him in the 1950s, to start an athletic footwear distribution company called Blue Ribbon Sports, later known as Nike, Inc.. Knight managed the business end of the partnership, while Bowerman experimented with improvements in athletic footwear design. Bowerman and Knight initially began importing the Onitsuka Tiger running shoes from Japan to sell in the States.
Bowerman's design ideas led to the creation of a running shoe in 1966 that would ultimately be named "Nike Cortez" in 1968, which quickly became a top-seller and remains one of Nike's most iconic footwear designs. Bowerman designed several Nike shoes, but is best known for ruining his wife's waffle iron in 1970 or 1971, experimenting with the idea of using waffle-ironed rubber to create a new sole for footwear that would grip but be lightweight. Bowerman's design inspiration led to the introduction of the so-called "Moon Shoe" in 1972, so named because the waffle tread was said to resemble the footprints left by astronauts on the moon. Further refinement resulted in the "Waffle Trainer" in 1974, which helped fuel the explosive growth of Blue Ribbon Sports/Nike. While Bowerman was experimenting with shoe design, he worked in a small, unventilated space, using glue and solvents with toxic components that caused him severe nerve damage. The nerve damage to his lower legs left him with significant mobility problems; as Kenny Moore notes in his book Bowerman and the Men of Oregon, Bowerman had rendered himself unable to run in the shoes that he had given the world.
Bowerman was obsessed with shaving weight off his athletes' running shoes. He believed that custom-made shoes would weigh less on the feet of his runners and cut down on blisters, as well as reduce the overall drag on their energy for every ounce he could remove from the shoe. By his estimation, removing one ounce from a shoe, based on a six-foot gait for a runner, would translate in a reduction of 55 pounds of lift over a one-mile (1.6 km) span.
5. BMW
Franz Josef Popp
Franz Josef Popp (January 14, 1886 in Vienna; July 29, 1954 in Stuttgart) was one of three men responsible for the founding of BMW AG and the First General Director of BMW AG from 1922 to 1942. A number of different candidates have been put forward as the “founders” of BMW AG. In the absence of Karl Rapp, Gustav Otto, Max Friz or Camillo Castiglioni the company would probably never have been born. However, Franz Josef Popp can lay claim to being the prime force in the development of the mobility company we know today. He was “General Director” of the company from its foundation until he was forced to relinquish his position in 1942.
Early life
Popp was born in Vienna in 1886 and in 1901 his family moved to Brno where he completed his university entrance qualification at the local grammar school. He went on to study mechanical and electrical engineering at the local Technical College and qualified with a degree in engineering in 1909. When he returned to Vienna, Franz Josef Popp joined the Viennese company AEG-Union as an electrical engineer. He soon became head of the department for “Electric Trains and Locomotives”, and one of his responsibilities was to develop electric locomotives for the Mittenwaldrailway. At the start of the First World War, Popp joined the Kaiserliche und Konigliche Luftfahrtruppen or "K.u.K. Luftfahrtruppen" (Austro-Hungarian Imperial and Royal Aviation Troops) as a marine engineer at the Pula base on the Adriatic Sea (in present-day Croatia). This is where he had spent his military service as a one-year volunteer during his course of studies. However, three weeks later he was ordered back to Vienna to oversee construction for aircraft engine production, initially at AEG and then at the Austro-Daimler works in Wiener Neustadt. In this capacity, Popp traveled to Germany a number of times to visit the biggest aircraft engine manufacturers in the Reich- Daimler, NAG and Benz. The purpose was to explore opportunities for the production under license of German prototypes at the Austro-Daimler works. Unfortunately, these exploratory talks came to nothing. The Austro-Daimler works went on to develop their own new 12-cylinder aircraft engine for the Austrian navy, although there was not sufficient capacity available for production of this engine. It was necessary to find a production facility that was in a position to manufacture the engine in the quantities required by the military authorities. While he was serving in Pola, Popp had got to know the Rapp Motorenwerke (Rapp Engine Works) in Munich. This company had the necessary skilled workforce and production facilities for manufacturing aircraft engines, but it lacked a competitive product since its engines were not successful as aircraft engines. Given this scenario, Popp regarded the Rapp Engine works as an ideal production facility for manufacturing the 12-cylinder Austro-Daimler engine. He lobbied hard for this solution and was successful in convincing the responsible authorities to take up his suggestion. In 1916, he was dispatched to Munich as the representative of the Austrian Navy to supervise production under license at the Rapp Motorenwerke (Rapp Motor Works). However, Popp was worried about unsatisfactory decisions and targets set by the technical and commercial managers. He became concerned that volumes determined contractually would not be complied with. To ensure compliance with production targets, Popp effectively began to take on the role of factory manager. Popp ensured that Max Friz, a very talented young engineer at Daimler who had recently applied for a position, was hired by Rapp (Friz and Rapp were colleagues together at Austro-Daimler) . Popp understood that Rapp Motorenwerke very much needed a chief engineer with new ideas on making aircraft engines.
Business
After the success of the BMW IIIa aeromotor, it was decided that Karl Rapp's contract be terminated by the managing board of Rapp Motorenwerke. Franz Josef Popp was appointed as managing director of the company, while at the same time, the name of the company was changed from Rapp Motorenwerke into Bayerische Motoren Werke GmbH. This was intended to signal a new beginning to the outside world. Following conversion into a joint-stock company, he was head of the Bayerische Motoren Werke as Chairman of the Board of Management with the title General Director. At the end of the First World War, Popp was responsible for switching the young company from aircraft engine production to peacetime production. With this aim in mind, he worked towards creating a link with Knorr Bremse AG, and from 1919 onwards, the factory started manufacturing Knorr brakes for the Bavarian Railway. In 1922, Popp was responsible for transferring the most important patents, machinery and personnel for engine manufacture “to the umbrella of the Bayerische Flugzeugwerke AG”, together with the company name “Bayerische Motoren Werke AG”. He was assisted in this endeavor by the Austrian financier Camillo Castiglioni. In this way he was able to break free from Knorr Bremse AGand start up engine construction once more
The rise of BMW to one of Bavaria’s and Germany’s big industrial companies began in 1922 under Popp’s management. The product range of BMW AG was expanded and soon it extended beyond engines for the aircraft industry to include motorcycles as broader sections of the population gained access to motorized transport. This was an area to which Popp devoted considerable attention. Under his chairmanship, BMW AG further expanded its product range and know-how in 1928 by purchasing the vehicle manufacturing factory Fahrzeugfabrik Eisenach (FFE). This was the first time that cars bore the BMW brand on the roads.In 1928, Popp also concluded a license agreement with the US American company Pratt & Whitney, allowing BMW to manufacture two air-cooled radial engines. This ensured that BMW had access to key know-how in an area of aircraft engine construction with a great future. The expertise acquired through production under license allowed BMW to develop air-cooled radial engines under its own steam during the 1930s. Construction of the BMW aircraft engine factory in Allach (1935), expansion of the manufacturing facilities in Eisenach (1937) and acquisition of the Brandenburg Motor Works (Bramo) in Berlin-Spandau enabled BMW to expand capacities for aircraft engine manufacture under Popp’s leadership. Following the acquisition of Bramo in 1939, BMW enjoyed a monopoly for the production of air-cooled aircraft engines in Germany. This made BMW a key strategic company for the German aviation industry as the Third Reichrearmed. However, Popp was skeptical of the rapid expansion and redirection of the company for purposes of arming Germany in preparation for war.
6. CISCO
Leonard Bosack
Leonard Bosack (Born in 1952) along with his wife Sandy Lerner, is a co-founder of Cisco Systems, an American-based multinational corporation that designs and sells consumer electronics, networking and communications technology and services. He was awarded the Computer Entrepreneur Award in 2009 for co-founding Cisco Systems and pioneering and advancing the commercialization of routing technology and the profound changes this technology enabled in the computer industry. He is largely responsible for pioneering the widespread commercialization of local area network (LAN) technology to connect geographically disparate computers over a multiprotocol router system, which was unheard of technology at the time. In 1990, Cisco's management fired his wife Sandy Lerner, and Bosack resigned. Bosack is currently the CEO of XKL LLC, a privately funded engineering company which explores and develops optical networks for data communications.
Early life
Born in Pennsylvania in 1952, Leonard Bosack graduated from La Salle College High School in 1969. In 1973, Bosack graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and joined DEC as a hardware engineer. In 1979 he was accepted into Stanford University, and began to study computer science. During his time at Stanford, he was credited for becoming a support engineer for a 1981 project to connect all of Stanford's mainframes, minis, LISP machines and Altos. His contribution was to work on the network router that allowed the computer network under his management to share data from the Computer Science Lab with the Business School's network. He met his wife Sandy at Stanford, where she was the manager of the Business School lab, and the couple married in 1980.Together in 1984 they started Cisco in Menlo Park.
Business
In 1984, Leonard Bosack co-founded Cisco with the aim of commercializing the Advanced Gateway Server. The Advanced Gateway Server was a revised version of the Stanford router built by William Yeager and Andy Bechtolsheim. Bosack and Lerner designed and built routers in their house and experimented using Stanford's network. Initially, Bosack and Lerner went to Stanford with a proposition to start building and selling the routers, but the school refused. It was then that they founded their own company and named it "Cisco," taken from the name of the city to the north.
Cisco's product was developed in their garage and was sold beginning in 1986 by word of mouth. In their first month alone, Cisco was able to land contracts worth more than $200,000. The company produced revolutionary technology such as the first multiport router-specific line cards and sophisticated routing protocols, giving them domination over the market-place. Cisco went public in 1990, the same year that Bosack resigned. Bosack and Lerner walked away from Cisco with $170 million after being forced out by the professional managers the firm's venture capitalists brought in. In 1996, Cisco's revenues amounted to $5.4 billion, making it one of Silicon Valley's biggest success stories. In 1998, the company was valued at over 6 billion and controlled over three quarters of the router business.
Along with Co-founding Cisco Systems in 1986, Bosack is largely responsible for first pioneering the widespread commercialization of local area network (LAN). He and his fellow staff members at Stanford were able to successfully link the university's 5,000 computers across a 16-square-mile (41 km2) campus area. This contribution is significant in its context, because at that time, technology like that which LAN used was unheard of. Their challenge had been to overcome incompatibility issues, in order to create the first true LAN system.
Leonard Bosack has also held significant technical leadership roles at AT&T Bell Labs, and Digital Equipment Corporation. After earning his Masters Degree in computer science from Stanford University, he became Director of Computer Facilities for the university's Department of Computer Science. He became a key contributor to the emerging network technology driven by the U.S. Department of Defense (ARPAnet), that was the beginning of today's Internet.
Bosack's most recent technological advancements include his creation of new in-line fiber optic amplification systems that are capable of achieving unprecedented data transmission latency speeds of 6.071 milliseconds (fiber plus equipment latency) over 1231 kilometers of fiber, which is roughly the distance between Chicago and New York City. Bosack was inspired by his belief that by leveraging the inherent, but often untapped, physics of fiber optic components, data transmission speeds can be increased with devices that use less power, less space and require less cooling.
7. Dell
Micheal Dell
Michael Saul Dell (born February 23, 1965) is an American business magnate, philanthropist, and author. He is known as the founder and CEO of Dell Inc., one of the world’s leading sellers of personal computers (PCs). He was ranked the 41st richest person in the world on 2012 Forbes Billionaires list, with a net worth of US$15.9 billion as of March 2012.
In 2011, his 243.35 million shares of Dell stock were worth $3.5 billion, giving him 12% ownership of the company.His remaining wealth of roughly $10 billion is invested in other companies and is managed by a firm whose name, MSD Capital, incorporates Dell's initials. On January 5, 2013 it was announced that Michael Dell had bid to take Dell Inc. private for $24.4 billion in the biggest leveraged buyout since the Great Recession.
Early life
Michael Dell was born in 1965 in Houston, Texas, to a Jewish family whose surname reflects the translation into English of the original German/Yiddish Thal ("valley" or "dale [q.v.]"; modern common-noun spelling Tal) upon the family's immigration to the United States.The son of Lorraine Charlotte (née Langfan), a stockbroker, and Alexander Dell, an orthodontist, Michael Dell attended Herod Elementary School in Houston, Texas. In a bid to enter business early, he applied to take ahigh school equivalency exam at age eight. In his early teens, he invested his earnings from part-time jobs in stocks and precious metals.
Dell purchased his first calculator at age seven and encountered his first teletype machine in junior high, programming the latter after school. At age 15, after playing with computers at Radio Shack, he got his first computer, an Apple II, which he promptly disassembled to see how it worked. Dell attended Memorial High School in Houston, selling subscriptions to the Houston Post in the summer. While making cold calls, he noted that the persons most likely to purchase subscriptions were those in the process of establishing permanent geographic and social presence; he then targeted this demographic group by collecting names from marriage and mortgage applications. Dell earned $18,000 that year, exceeding the annual income of his history and economics teacher.
Business
While a freshman pre-med student at the University of Texas at Austin, Dell started an informal business putting together and selling upgrade kits for personal computer in Room 2713 of the Dobie Center residential building. He then applied for a vendor license to bid on contracts for the State of Texas, winning bids by not having the overhead of a computer store.
In January 1984, Dell banked on his conviction that the potential cost savings of a manufacturer selling PCs directly had enormous advantages over the conventional indirect retail channel. In January 1984, Dell registered his company as "PC's Limited". Operating out of a condominium, the business sold between $50,000 and $80,000 in upgraded PCs, kits, and add-on components. In May, Dell incorporated the company as "Dell Computer Corporation" and relocated it to a business center in North Austin. The company employed a few order takers, a few more people to fulfill them, and, as Dell recalled, a manufacturing staff "consisting of three guys with screwdrivers sitting at six-foot tables". The venture's capitalization costwas $1,000.
In 1992 aged 27, he became the youngest CEO to have his company ranked in Fortune magazine's list of the top 500 corporations.In 1996, Dell started selling computers over the Web, the same year his company launched its first servers. Dell Inc. soon reported about $1 million in sales per day from dell.com. In the first quarter of 2001, Dell Inc. reached a world market share of 12.8 percent, passing Compaq to become the world's largest PC maker. The metric marked the first time the rankings had shifted over the previous seven years. The company's combined shipments of desktops, notebooks and servers grew 34.3 percent worldwide and 30.7 percent in the United States at a time when competitors' sales were shrinking.
In 1998, Dell founded MSD Capital L.P. to manage his family's investments. Investment activities include publicly traded securities, private equity activities, and real estate. The firm employs 80 people and has offices in New York, Santa Monica and London. Dell himself is not involved in day-to-day operations. On March 4, 2004, Dell stepped down as CEO, but stayed as chairman of Dell Inc.'s board, while Kevin Rollins, then president and COO, became president and CEO. On January 31, 2007, Dell returned as CEO at the request of the board, succeeding Rollins.
8. YAHOO
Jerry Yang
Jerry Yang born November 6, 1968 is a Taiwanese-born American internet entrepreneur, the co-founder and former CEO of Yahoo! Inc.
Early life
Yang was born in Taipei, Taiwan on November 6, 1968, and moved to San Jose, California at the age of ten with his mother and younger brother. He claimed that despite his mother being an English teacher, he only knew one English word (shoe) on his arrival. Becoming fluent in the language in three years, he was then placed into an Advanced Placement English class.
Yang graduated from Sierramont Middle School and Piedmont Hills High School in San Jose and went on to earn a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering from Stanford University, where he was a member of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.
Business
While Yang studied in Electrical Engineering at Stanford, he co-created in April 1994 with David Filo an Internet website called "Jerry and Dave's Guide to the World Wide Web" consisting of a directory of other websites. It was renamed "Yahoo!" (an exclamation). Yahoo! became very popular, and Yang and Filo realized the business potential and co-founded Yahoo! Inc. in April 1995.[9] They took leaves of absence and postponed their doctoral programs indefinitely.
Yahoo! started off as a web portal with a web directory providing an extensive range of products and services for online activities. It is now one of the leading internet brands and, due to partnerships with telecommunications firms, has the most trafficked network on the internet.[citation needed] In 1999, he was named to the MIT Technology Review TR100 as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.
As CEO from June 2007 to January 2009, Yang had been criticized by many investors, including Carl Icahn, for not increasing revenues and stock price, while there has been an exodus of executives. Yahoo!'s stock price plummeted after it rejected a takeover from Microsoft, a bid that Yang strongly opposed.On November 17, 2008, The Wall Street Journal reported Jerry Yang would step down as CEO as soon as the company found a replacement.
On January 13, 2009, Yahoo! named Silicon Valley veteran Carol Bartz as its new chief executive, effectively replacing Yang. Yang regained his former position as "Chief Yahoo" and remained on Yahoo's board of directors.
On January 17, 2012, Yahoo! announced that Jerry Yang will be leaving the company, and will be resigning from the board and all other positions at the company. The company also announced his resignation from the boards of Yahoo! Japan and Alibaba Corp.
9. APPLE
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs (/ˈdʒɒbz/; February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur and inventor, best known as the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc. Through Apple, he was widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution and for his influential career in the computer and consumer electronics fields, transforming "one industry after another, from computers and smartphones to music and movies..."
Jobs also co-founded and served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company in 2006, when Disney acquired Pixar. Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of Xerox PARC's mouse-driven graphical user interface, which led to the creation of the Apple Lisa and, one year later, the Macintosh. He also played a role in introducing the LaserWriter, one of the first widely available laser printers, to the market.
After a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985, Jobs left Apple and founded NeXT, a computer platform development company specializing in the higher-education and business markets. In 1986, he acquired the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm, which was spun off as Pixar. He was credited in Toy Story (1995) as an executive producer. He served as CEO and majority shareholder until Disney's purchase of Pixar in 2006. In 1996, after Apple had failed to deliver its operating system, Copland, Gil Amelio turned to NeXT Computer, and the NeXTSTEP platform became the foundation for the Mac OS X. Jobs returned to Apple as an advisor, and took control of the company as an interim CEO. Jobs brought Apple from near bankruptcy to profitability by 1998.
As the new CEO of the company, Jobs oversaw the development of the iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, and on the services side, the company's Apple Retail Stores, iTunes Store and the App Store. The success of these products and services provided several years of stable financial returns, and propelled Apple to become the world's most valuable publicly traded company in 2011.The reinvigoration of the company is regarded by many commentators as one of the greatest turnarounds in business history.
In 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with a pancreas neuroendocrine tumor. Though it was initially treated, he reported a hormone imbalance, underwent a liver transplant in 2009, and appeared progressively thinner as his health declined. On medical leave for most of 2011, Jobs resigned in August that year, and was elected Chairman of the Board. He died of respiratory arrest related to his metastatic tumor on October 5, 2011.
Jobs received a number of honors and public recognition for his influence in the technology and music industries. He has been referred to as "legendary", a "futurist" or simply "visionary",and has been described as the "Father of the Digital Revolution", a "master of innovation",, "the master evangelist of the digital age" and a "design perfectionist".
Business
Jobs's design aesthetic was influenced by the modernist architectural style of Joseph Eichler, and the industrial designs of Braun's Dieter Rams. His design sense was also greatly influenced by the Buddhism which he experienced in India while on a seven-month spiritual journey. His sense of intuition was also influenced by the spiritual people with whom he studied.
According to Apple cofounder, Steve Wozniak, "Steve didn't ever code. He wasn't an engineer and he didn't do any original design...Daniel Kottke, one of Apple's earliest employees and a college friend of Jobs', stated that "Between Woz and Jobs, Woz was the innovator, the inventor. Steve Jobs was the marketing person."
He is listed as either primary inventor or co-inventor in 346 United States patents or patent applications related to a range of technologies from actual computer and portable devices to user interfaces (including touch-based), speakers, keyboards, power adapters, staircases, clasps, sleeves,lanyards and packages. Jobs's contributions to most of his patents were to "the look and feel of the product". His industrial design chief Jonathan Ive had his name along with him for 200 of the patents.
Most of these are design patents (specific product designs; for example, Jobs listed as primary inventor in patents for both original and lamp-style iMacs, as well as PowerBook G4 Titanium) as opposed to utility patents (inventions).He has 43 issued US patents on inventions.The patent on the Mac OS X Dock user interface with "magnification" feature was issued the day before he died. Although Jobs had little involvement in the engineering and technical side of the original Apple computers, Jobs later used his CEO position to directly involve himself with product design.
Even while terminally ill in the hospital, Jobs sketched new devices that would hold the iPad in a hospital bed. He also despised the oxygen monitor on his finger and suggested ways to revise the design for simplicity.
10. Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (born May 14, 1984) is an American computer programmer and internet entrepreneur. He is best known as one of five co-founders of the social networking website Facebook. As of April 2013, Zuckerberg is the chairman and chief executive of Facebook, Inc. and in 2013 his personal wealth was estimated to be US$13.3 billion.
Together with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, Zuckerberg launched Facebook from Harvard's dormitory rooms.The group then introduced Facebook onto other campuses nationwide and moved to Palo Alto, California, United States (U.S.) shortly afterwards. In 2007, at the age of twenty-three years, Zuckerberg became a billionaire as a result of Facebook and the number of Facebook users worldwide reached a total of one billion in 2012. Zuckerberg was involved in various legal disputes that were initiated by others in the group, who claimed a share of the company based upon their involvement during the development phase of Facebook.
Since 2010, Zuckerberg has been named among the 100 wealthiest and most influential people in the world by Time magazine as a part of its Person of the Year accolade. Zuckerberg was played by actor Jesse Eisenberg in the 2010 Hollywood film The Social Network in which the rise of Facebook is portrayed.
Early life
Zuckerberg was born in 1984 in White Plains, New York. He is the son of Karen (née Kempner), a psychiatrist, and Edward Zuckerberg, a dentist.He and his three sisters, Randi, Donna, and Arielle, were brought up in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Zuckerberg was raised Jewish, had his bar mitzvah when he turned thirteen, and has since described himself as an atheist.
At Ardsley High School, Zuckerberg excelled in classics. He transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy in his junior year, where he won prizes in science (math, astronomy and physics) and classical studies (on his college application, Zuckerberg claimed that he could read and write French, Hebrew, Latin, and ancient Greek). He was a fencing star and captain of the fencing team. In college, he was known for reciting lines from epic poems such as The Iliad.
Business
Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his Harvard dormitory room on February 4, 2004.An earlier inspiration for Facebook may have come from Phillips Exeter Academy, the prep school from which Zuckerberg graduated in 2002. It published its own student directory, “The Photo Address Book,” which students referred to as “The Facebook.” Such photo directories were an important part of the student social experience at many private schools. With them, students were able to list attributes such as their class years, their friends, and their telephone numbers.
Once at college, Zuckerberg's Facebook started off as just a "Harvard thing" until Zuckerberg decided to spread it to other schools, enlisting the help of roommate Dustin Moskovitz. They began with Stanford, Dartmouth, Columbia, New York University, Cornell, Penn, Brown and Yale. Samyr Laine, a triple jumper representing Haiti at the 2012 Summer Olympics, shared a room with Zuckerberg during Facebook's founding. "Mark was clearly on to great things," said Laine, who was Facebook's fourteenth user.
Zuckerberg moved to Palo Alto, California, with Moskovitz and some friends. They leased a small house that served as an office.
Over the summer, Zuckerberg met Peter Thiel who invested in the company. They got their first office in mid-2004. According to Zuckerberg, the group planned to return to Harvard but eventually decided to remain in California. They had already turned down offers by major corporations to buy the company. In an interview in 2007, Zuckerberg explained his reasoning: "It's not because of the amount of money. For me and my colleagues, the most important thing is that we create an open information flow for people. Having media corporations owned by conglomerates is just not an attractive idea to me."
He restated these goals to Wired magazine in 2010: "The thing I really care about is the mission, making the world open." Earlier, in April 2009, Zuckerberg sought the advice of former Netscape CFO Peter Currie about financing strategies for Facebook. On July 21, 2010, Zuckerberg reported that the company reached the 500 million-user mark. When asked whether Facebook could earn more income from advertising as a result of its phenomenal growth, he explained:
I guess we could ... If you look at how much of our page is taken up with ads compared to the average search query. The average for us is a little less than 10 percent of the pages and the average for search is about 20 percent taken up with ads ... That’s the simplest thing we could do. But we aren’t like that. We make enough money. Right, I mean, we are keeping things running; we are growing at the rate we want to.
Vanity Fair magazine named Zuckerberg number 1 on its 2010 list of the Top 100 "most influential people of the Information Age".Zuckerberg ranked number 23 on the Vanity Fair 100 list in 2009. In 2010, Zuckerberg was chosen as number 16 in New Statesman's annual survey of the world's 50 most influential figures.
In a 2011 interview with PBS after the death of Steve Jobs, Zuckerberg said that Jobs had advised him on how to create a management team at Facebook that was "focused on building as high quality and good things as you are".
