Category IT Business Tycoons

           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. 

         Jeff Bezos was born on January 12, 1964 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The family moved to Texas when Jeff was a kid.

Noted as a brilliant student, Jeff attended the Student Training Programme at the University of Florida, and received a Silver Knight Award at the age of 18. He was also a National Merit Scholar.

              Jeff’s interest in business drove him to start his first business venture while at high school. It was the Dream Institute, an educational summer camp for kids. Later, he graduated from the Princeton University. There, he served as the president of the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space. He was also elected to honour societies like Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi at Princeton.

              After graduation, Jeff worked for several firms including a few on the Wall Street, like the Fitel Bank Trust and the investment firm D.E. Shaw & Co, New York, where he became the youngest vice president. Although it was a lucrative job, Jeff quit the company after a few years, and started working on Amazon.com. The company was initially set up in his garage, and served as an online bookstore. It soon found subscribers across many countries, and grew into a major e-commerce firm.

               In 2000, Jeff Bezos founded the Blue Origin, a human spaceflight start-up, out of his fascination for space travel. Bezos is also the owner of the Washington Post newspaper.

               When he launched the site in March 2010, Ben Silbermann defined Pinterest as a ‘catalogue of ideas’ rather than as a social network. The co-founder was so passionate about the project that he gave up his lucrative job at Google to dedicate fully to the project.

               As we know, Pinterest is a personalized image sharing platform that brings together people of similar interests. Users can view, upload, and sort images or ‘pins’ and can browse others’ too. Pinterest does not generate its own content; rather, it draws from many resources around the web.

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