Category IT Business Tycoons

     David Filo is an American entrepreneur and the co-founder of the tech giant Yahoo!

     The venture initially started off as a web portal with a web directory that provided a wide range of products for online activities. In February 1994, Filo and his friend Jerry Yang created a website called ‘Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web’. It served as a directory of other websites.

     Later, it was renamed as Yahoo!, and became a very popular portal among users across the world. Filo was still a PhD student at Stanford when the venture turned into a massive success.

     As years passed, the success of Yahoo! brought a fortune to its founders. With a net worth estimate of 3.8 billion dollars, Filo became the 580th richest person in the world in December 2014. 

         It was with the aim of developing and selling personal computers that Steve Jobs, Ronald Wayne, and Steve Wozniak founded Apple in April 1976. Till then, home computers were too expensive for the common man. With their innovation, Jobs and his partners stirred a revolution, and democratized computer technology.

         Today, Apple Inc is perhaps the largest information technology company for its revenue and assets. It is also known to be the second largest mobile manufacturer company. From the US, its customer circle has expanded to all over the world.

         Macintosh, Apple Lisa, Apple Dot Matrix Printer, Apple Mouse IIc etc, was among the first products of the company. Since then, Apple has developed a wide range of attractive devices including the iPad, iPhone, iPod, MacBook etc.

       Steve Jobs was born on February 24th, 1955, in California, to two graduate students at the University of Wisconsin. The couple gave him up for adoption, and Steve was since then taken care of by Paul Jobs, a coast guard veteran and his wife Clara, an accountant.

        In his new family, Steve was brought up well, although he was different from the children of his age. As a young boy, he worked in the family garage, and proved his mechanical skills.

         After schooling, Steve joined the Reed College in Portland, only to drop out within months. He then attended creative classes, including a course in calligraphy.

         By 1974, Jobs landed a job as a video game designer, but again gave it up, and travelled to India to gain spiritual enlightenment. He was deeply interested in Zen Buddhism.

         At the age of 21, Steve and Wozniak started working on the Apple computer. Their beginning was very humble, and the duo used Steve’s family garage as their workplace.

         In 1985, he resigned from Apple, and began a new company known as the NeXT Inc. But by December 1997, Apple Inc. purchased NeXT Inc. for millions and Steve was back in the home-firm.

         On October 5th, 2011 he died of cancer, creating a void in the world of technology that cannot be filled.

       Very few computer wizards in the world have been as popular as Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple. Beyond the world of technology, Jobs had donned the roles of a humanitarian, philanthropist, and environmentalist thereby influencing people worldwide.

       At a time when computers were just too expensive for the common man to use, Steve Jobs, along with Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded the Apple Computers Inc. in 1976. Their first work space was in the garage of Jobs’ Los Altos home. The following year, Jobs and Wozniak released Apple II, stirring the microcomputer revolution.

       The growth of the company had been very fast, and under Jobs’ leadership, it introduced the Macintosh 128k computer in 1984, the first PC featuring an integral graphic user interface and a mouse.

       In 1998, the all-in-one iMac computer was released-the first machines to get rid of the floppy disc drive and introduce a CD ROM slot. These computers also drew attention for their style and design.

       In 1999, the iBook that came with Wi-Fi technology entered the market. The years that followed witnessed Apple introducing many gadgets like the iPod, iPhone, iPad etc.

       For his outstanding contributions, Steve Jobs won many awards.

     Other than the technology hub Microsoft, Bill Gates has also founded an equally important organization that works on an entirely different platform. It is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) that focuses on charitable work.

     Founded in 2000 by Gates and his wife Melinda, BMGF is said to be the largest private foundation in the world that operates in a transparent manner.

     The foundation is based in Seattle, Washington. Other than Bill and Melinda, there is one more member in the trustee board- business magnate Warren Buffet. Some of the programmes initiated by the Foundation include ‘The Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Programme’, and the ‘Reinvent the Toilet Challenge Programme’ that promoted safe and effective sanitation. 

Steve Chen is an Internet entrepreneur credited to have co-founded the popular video sharing website YouTube.

Born on August 18, 1978, Chen and his family moved from Taipei to the US when he was 15 years old. He graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an exceptional student, and soon joined PayPal. There he met Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim. Chen also worked with Facebook before launching YouTube.

In 2005, Chad, Chen and Karim together released the popular video sharing and viewing online portal, thereby creating history. The site soon had millions of subscribers all over the world, and was named one of the 10 most important sites within a year. Chen served in the position of the chief technology officer.

In 2006, YouTube was sold to the Google Inc. Subsequently, Chen and his friends moved to work on other projects. The video sharing app Mix-Bit and internet company AVOS Systems were two of them. In 2014, Chen joined Google Ventures. 

           Internet entrepreneur Jawed Karim is a co-founder of YouTube and also, the first person to upload a video on the site.

            Born on October 28, 1979 in East Germany to a Bangladeshi father and German mother, Karim and his family moved to the US in 1992. After schooling, he attended the University of Illinois, to study computer science.

             During graduation, Karim was an employee of PayPal, where he met Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. It is said that Karim was responsible for developing many components for the company, including its real-time anti-fraud system.

             In 2005, the trio created YouTube. It was Karim who first uploaded a video on the video sharing site titled ‘Me at the Zoo’, on April 23, 2005. As of 2016, the video has received more than 34 million views. Karim was not an official employee of YouTube when it was founded, as he wanted to be an informal adviser alone.

             Thus, his name remained unknown till the company was acquired by Google Inc. in 2006. However, Karim has been an active figure in the field of IT since then. In 2008, Karim launched the Youniversity Ventures to help university students develop and launch their business ideas. 

Jack Dorsey is an American programmer who co-founded the popular social networking site Twitter. He is also the founder and CEO of the mobile payments company ‘Square’.

Born on November 19th, 1976 in Missouri, US, Dorsey grew up a tech-wizard. It is said that he suffered from stammering at an early age, and overcame it by participating in oratory competitions.

Dorsey studied at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, and later got transferred to the New York University. It was from there that he got the idea of sharing short messages and updates with friends. Like many computer experts, Dorsey too quit college before completing his studies.

On March 21, 2006 he founded Twitter along with his friends Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams. It was a social networking service that enabled users to post and read short 140-character messages called ‘tweets’. The attempt was a huge success, and was accepted by people all over the world. As of March 2016, the site had more than 310 million monthly active users.

In May 2010, Dorsey founded ‘Square’, a mobile device that facilitated making payments. 

       There have been many social media websites developed and popularized in the past two decades, but none like Twitter.

       As we know, it is a social networking service which enables users to post, share, and view updates called ‘tweets’. Unlike other sites, it has not only helped connect people, but has played significant role in culture, politics and society, since its beginning.

       The service is equally used by common people, celebrities, government, organizations and the news media to give updates about trending issues.

       In 140-characters, the tweets have played major roles in a variety of issues including governmental elections. It has also caused what is sometimes referred to as ‘Twitter Revolutions’ that included the 2011 Egyptian revolution, 2010-2011 Tunisian protests, 2009 Iranian presidential election protests etc.

      Protesters and supporters used Twitter as their platform for expression. For the unrests it caused, Twitter was subsequently banned in many countries, including China, North Korea, and Iran.

      At the same time, some other countries have made official announcements through their tweets. Based in San Francisco, Twitter had more than 310 million monthly active users by March 2016. 

Jeff Bezos is an American technology entrepreneur best known for founding the world’s largest online shopping retailer ‘Amazon.com’.

Born on January 12th, 1964 in New Mexico, Jeff had an interest in technology and business at a very early age. He earned a BS in electrical engineering and computer science from the Princeton University, after which he worked with many firms.

In 1994, he founded Amazon.com, an online bookstore. It is said that without any promotion, the site sold books across the US and 45 foreign countries within months. Its sales reached $20,000 a week, creating tough competition for other e-commerce ventures. In the years later, Amazon.com went beyond books and started the online sale of CDs, clothes, electronic equipment, toys etc.

In 2007 was released Kindle, the popular handheld digital book that enabled users to read, downloading and store books on the device.

Today, Amazon.com has separate retail websites for each country and also, different language versions. It also made Jeff Bezos an inspiring and rich figure in the world. With a net worth of US $45.2 billion as of December 2016, he is the 5th richest person alive.