#1 Jeff Bezos
In late 1993, Bezos decided to start an online bookstore, He left his job at D. E. Shaw and founded Amazon in his garage on July 5, 1994, after writing its business plan on a trip from New York to Seattle. Bezos named his new company “Amazon” after the Amazon River in South America, in part because the name begins with the letter “A,” which is at the beginning of the alphabet, He accepted an estimated $300,000 from his parents and invested in Amazon. He warned many early investors that there was a 70% chance that Amazon would fail or go bankrupt. Although Amazon was originally an online bookstore, Bezos had always planned to expand to other products. Three years after Bezos founded Amazon, he took it public with an initial public offering (IPO). In response to critical reports from Fortune and Barron’s, Bezos maintained that the growth of the internet would overtake competition from larger book retailers such as Borders and Barnes & Noble.
#2 Sundar Pichai
On March 13, 2013, Pichai added Android to the list of Google products that he oversees. Android was formerly managed by Andy Rubin. He was a director of Jive Software from April 2011 to July 30, 2013. Pichai was selected to become the next CEO of Google on August 10, 2015 after previously being appointed Product Chief by CEO, Larry Page. On October 24, 2015 he stepped into the new position at the completion of the formation of Alphabet Inc., the new holding company for the Google company family
#3 Elon Musk
Both men played active roles in the company’s early development prior to Elon Musk’s involvement. Musk led the Series A round of investment in February 2004, joining Tesla’s board of directors as its chairman. Musk took an active role within the company and oversaw Roadster product design at a detailed level, but was not deeply involved in day-to-day business operations.
Musk has favored building a sub-US$30,000 compact Tesla model and building and selling electric vehicle powertrain components so that other automakers can produce electric vehicles at affordable prices without having to develop the products in-house; this led to the Model 3 that is planned to have a base price of US$35,000. Several mainstream publications have compared him with Henry Ford for his work on advanced vehicle powertrains.
#4 Mark Zuckerberg
On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his Harvard dormitory room. 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.
#5 Tim Cook
After Jobs resigned as CEO and became chairman of the board, Cook was named the new Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc. on August 24, 2011. Six weeks later, on October 5, 2011, Jobs died due to complications from pancreatic cancer. Forbes contributor Robin Ferracone wrote in September 2011: “Jobs and Cook proceeded to forge a strong partnership, and rescued the company from its death spiral, which took it from $11 billion in revenue in 1995 down to less than $6 billion in 1998 … Under their leadership, the company went from its nadir to a remarkable $100 billion today”. In April 2012, Time included Cook on its annual “100 Most Influential People in the World” list.
#6 Satya Nadella
On 4 February 2014, Nadella was announced as the new CEO of Microsoft, the third chief executive in the company’s history, following Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.
In October 2014, Nadella courted controversy when he made a statement that women should not ask for a raise and should trust the system,The statement was made while he was attending an event on Women in Computing in Phoenix, AZ. Nadella was roundly criticised for the statement and he apologised later on Twitter. He later sent an email to Microsoft employees admitting he was “Completely wrong”.
Nadella changed the company’s direction after becoming CEO. His tenure has emphasized openness to working with companies and technologies with which Microsoft also competes, including Apple Inc. Salesforce,IBM, and Dropbox.In contrast to previous Microsoft campaigns against the Linux operating system, Nadella proclaimed that “Microsoft Linux”, and in 2016, Microsoft joined the Linux Foundation as a Platinum member
