Top 10 Local Entrepreneurs in the Philippines:

Tony Tan Caktiong

Born third of seven siblings, Tony Tan Caktiong
was from a poor family in China who immigrated
to the Philippines in hope that they may have a
better life. His family helped each other out,
establishing a restaurant business in Davao which
enabled young Tony to study Civil Engineering in
the University of Santo Tomas. When he was 22,
Caktiong decided to shell out P350,000 in an ice
cream parlor franchise. He opened Cubao Ice
Cream House and Quiapo Ice Cream House. As their business becomes
more and more successful, they started to hire more people to help them
manage it. Two years later, he decided to serve hamburgers, fried chicken,
and spaghetti as people began to tell him that they don’t want to eat ice
cream all the time. It was then that they decided to rebrand and change
their name to “Jollibee” as it represents them as a company, and the
people that they cater to – hardworking and happy.
McDonald’s came into the picture not many years later, but they failed to
take over Jollibee’s popularity as, according to Caktiong, they don’t know
the local food culture. Filipinos have a sweet taste on food, so Jollibee
decided to serve spaghetti with a sweeter flavour. Filipinos like to smell
everything they eat, which is the reason behind the “Langhap Sarap”
tagline they have been using for a while now.
As years go by, the Jollibee group grew bigger. Caktiong partnered up and
established a couple other food chains including Chowking, Red Ribbon,
Greenwich, and Delifrance. Aside from bringing Jollibee, Chowking, and
Red Ribbon to other countries, they’ve also established new food chains in
China and Taiwan which suit the tastes of the people there.
As of 2016, Tony Tan Caktiong ranked 6th in Forbes’ Philippines’ 50
Richest. He was also awarded the Entrepreneur of the Year and the Ernst
and Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2004.
Lucio Tan
From the tobacco business, to airline, to liquor,
real estate and education – Lucio Tan has
proven that you can always find opportunities
through humble experiences. Tan, known as the
fourth richest man in the Philippines according
to Forbes magazine, is a well-known
businessman behind the country’s top brands
such as the Philippine Airlines, Asia Brewery,
and Fortune Tobacco Corporation. With all the
success at his hands, Tan still manages to keep a
low profile among other billionaires in the
country, something that keeps his status at the business industry for long.
Read on to see where Lucio Tan came from and see where he is now.
Born in China, Lucio Tan and his family moved to Naga province in the
Philippines where he was a working student. He studied Chemistry at Far
Eastern University (FEU), but quit before graduating to build his scrap
business and then eventually moved to a tobacco factory for a job.
Through this experience, in 1966, Tan started his own tobacco company
which became successful, and it introduced its own brand called ‘Hope’ in
1975. Since then, Tan’s company became the country’s largest cigarette
manufacturer. From that, Tan began conquering success in other industries
such as acquiring General Bank (now Allied Bank), opening Asia Brewery
Inc., securing control of country’s flag carrier Philippine Airlines (PAL), and
more companies under the industries of “liquor, tobacco, aviation,
banking, and real estate.”
With all of Lucio Tan’s affiliations in the country’s business industry, one
can learn many things in terms of seizing opportunities when it comes by.
You don’t need to be rich to be successful. You just need to work hard
because truly, “great things start from small beginnings.”
Felipe Gozon
Atty. Felipe L. Gozon is a resounding name in
the broadcasting industry as the man who
propelled the success of the radio and TV
giant, GMA Network, also known as the
Kapuso Network. With a Bachelor of Laws
degree from the University of the Philippines
and a Masters of Laws degree from Yale
University, Gozon first set out in the field of
law. He placed 13th in the bar examinations
in 1962.
Gozon entered the broadcasting industry with little knowledge of the field,
but his hard work and dedication led him to the top of his game. When he
first held a position in the network’s Board of Directors, he took it as a
challenge to strive for excellence. He found himself enjoying the challenges
of the broadcasting business more than law practice. According to him,
being in the business is very challenging yet fulfilling.
Among the many awards that he has received are “Best Broadcast CEO”
given by BizNews Asia in 2014, “Tycoon of the Decade Award” given by
BizNews Asia in 2011, and “People of the Year” given by People Asia
Magazine in 2005. He was also the first Filipino recipient of “The Global
Leadership Award for Excellence in Media Sector,” which was awarded to
Gozon during the 2015 Global Leadership Awards in Malaysia.
At the age of 75, he published his own autobiography entitled “Felipe L.
Gozon: How GMA Became No. 1” wherein he shared his journey and the
reasons for the turns that he took along the way—why, despite specializing
in law, he chose to venture into the broadcasting business.
Gozon also has a children’s book about him published by LG&M Group. The
book, entitled “Kapuso Mo, Atty. Felipe L. Gozon,” focused on how Gozon’s
family values helped him face challenges and pursue success.
Henry Sy
Henry Sy’s story was a ‘rags to riches’ kind
of tale. Born in Xiamen, China in November
1924, Henry Sy was not born with a silver
spoon in his mouth. Wanting to escape
poverty, Henry followed his father to the
Philippines only to experience a miserable
youth in a foreign country. Sy struggled
hard living in a foreign country as an
immigrant and had to learn the local
language.
Determined to become successful, he worked hard day and night to
provide for his needs. Sy started out with a small sari-sari store business
that helped them in their day-to-day life. Sy and his father lived in a small
space until the fruits of their labor made them successful in the following
years. However, when the Philippine economy collapsed in World War II,
their store burned down that forced his father to go back to China. Henry
Sy stayed in the Philippines and built his own shoe business in Marikina. Sy
did not have an overnight success. He enrolled himself to school and was
able to graduate college with a degree in commerce from Far Eastern
University. Sy also changed legal names, sold rejected and overrun shoes,
plus many other setbacks that he had to face early in life. He did not give
up and pushed through maybe because he knew that something big, which
is what he has now, is about to come. After a series of failures in his
business, Henry Sy stood back up and persevered to attain his goal. He
established a small shoe store in Quiapo, Manila in 1958 named “Shoe Mart”
that eventually marked the establishment of SM Prime Holdings. Now with
three of the most valuable companies in the Philippines: SM Investments
Corp. and SM Prime Holdings Inc., valued at over Php 1 trillion each, and
BDO Unibank, valued at around Php 635 million, he has become the
richest man in the country for 11 consecutive years since 2005 and ranked
52nd in Forbes World Billionaires List of 2018.
Alfred Yao
Alfredo M. Yao was born on November 23,
1943 to the simplest of families. The eldest
among his siblings, he had to sacrifice a lot at
an early age. He lost his father and became
the family breadwinner at the age of 12. He
started a printing business at age 17 with a
Php 3,000 loan from what is today known as
the Development Bank of the Philippines.

He never got to finish school even though he wanted to, because he was
already a full-fledged businessman by age 18. He’s gone through the
ringer, so to speak: he’s been a street vendor and at times, slept on
cardboard box on the sidewalks of the street. Yao went from printing and
packaging to the beverage industry in the unlikeliest of ways. He learned
printing wrappers through a cousin who was then working for a printing
press. This paved way for him to venture into the printing press business
thus, the birth of Solemar Commercial Press named after his mother.
In 1979, while on a business tour of Europe, he stumbled across a new way
of packaging: Doypack, a sealed bag made of plastic and aluminum that’s
designed to stand upright. Seeing its potential, he marketed it to local juice
manufacturers, but no one showed interest.
Not wanting to let something with this much potential go to waste, he
started making his own juices in his kitchen and packaged it using the
doypacks he got from Europe. He would soon corner the market on juice
drinks, thanks to the convenience of his doypacks. Yao has never been one
to shy away from innovation. While his beverage company, Zest-O
Corporation, was slowly making waves in the juice market, he was already
looking at other potential investments. At 2008, he launched Zest Airways
and sought to compete with other low-cost carriers of the country. He was
met with stiff competition (Air Philippines and Cebu Pacific Air to name a
few), so he looked at a different way of flying people into the country.
Thus, making Zest Airways the first local carrier to fly tourists from China
and Korea straight to Philippine destinations, without dropping by NAIA.
Last 2016, Zest Airways was fully integrated with AirAsia as AirAsia Zest.
Mariano Que
“All great things come to those who works
and waits patiently for it”. This is the quote
which best fits the story of how Mariano Que
became a successful person. Starting from the
bottom, he made his way up by working
passionately, and waiting for the perfect
timing patiently. Let us all be inspire by the
story of the person who made the success of
Mercury Drugstore.
Mariano Que once started as a regular employee at a drugstore located in
Manila during the prewar period. As a dedicated employee, he learned to
love his job, the role it plays in the everyday living of the Filipinos. Then
came the war who took all, and destroyed everything that there is in the
busy streets of the city. The drugstore where he used to work was also
severely destructed, leaving Mariano completely jobless. When the war was
over, everything went scarce, including the medicine. Being knowledgeable
about medical prescriptions, Mariano realized that this period could be a
good opportunity for him to help others and also, improve his finances. He
then started retailing sulfa drugs, like the sulfathiazole tablets for a
capital of P100. he peddled this in the poor streets of the city where
medicine was really not available. And since his business was retail, he sold
out his items in no time. He used to peddle these items down the streets,
but when he has accumulated enough capital, he then bought a push cart
or “kariton” and sell even more medical products.
Cecilio K. Pedro
Cecilio Kwok Pedro, of Chinese descent, was
born on 1953 in the Philippines. Even when
he was young, Pedro already has a knack for
business, selling pens to his schoolmates. Dr.
Pedro’s story is not the rags-to-riches type,
but his success is nevertheless admirable.
He graduated from Ateneo de Manila with a
degree in Business Management. It was
around 1975 when Cecilio to put up his own
business. He borrowed P20,000 from his father and founded Aluminum
Containers, Inc., supplying collapsible aluminum toothpaste tubes to
Colgate-Palmolive, Procter & Gamble, and Philippine Refining Company.
But due to environmental concerns, the companies decided to use plastic-
laminated toothpaste tubes instead in 1985. Cecilio’s company took a huge
blow, prompting him to close his business in the same year.
Dr. Cecilio did not allow this problem to put him down. In 1985, he decided
to start again and established Lamoiyan Corporation. Lamoiyan was the
Cantonese name of her grandmother, whom he loved and look up to. It
was her that introduced their family to Christianity.
The initial plan was to use the machines from his defunct company for
epoxy but he thought that the market was too small. Since he used to be a
supplier for a toothpaste company, this is where he focused the business
instead, much to the disapproval of many. He developed his own brand of
toothpaste, Hapee. Contending against well-known, international brands
is a tough one, so Dr. Pedro realized that the only way that his toothpaste
can get noticed is to sell them at a lower price, 50% less that of Colgate and
Close up. The company also developed different fruity flavors of Hapee
which enticed the children. They also manufactured the toothpaste in
smaller packs and sachets; hence, catering to different markets.
Not only is Lamoiyan Corporation known for creating a Filipino brand of
toothpaste, but also for its commitment to supporting the deaf community.
The company employed hearing-impaired people, and required employees
to learn how to communicate with the deaf.
Soccoro C. Ramos
Nanay Coring has always been in the retail
industry. As a young girl, she helped her
grandmother sell fruits at the local market in
their home province. Life was hard and her
mother decided to move to Manila to find
better opportunities. She attended a public
school and took on many jobs during
summer vacation – from wrapping bubble
gum to sewing buttons on shirts.
After finishing high school, her family did not have enough money to send
her to college. She then worked as a salesgirl at a bookstore. It was there
where she met her would be husband, Jose.
They opened a stall shop in Escolta. They named it National Bookstore,
after their cash register. But things did not go uphill from there. In the
1940s, a strict censorship on books was implemented. Nanay Coring had to
put the books away and resort to selling soap, candies, and slippers. After
the war, the whole of Escolta was burned down. This did not dampen
Nanay Coring and Jose’s souls. They opened another small store. This time,
they sold the books they had previously put away and whisky.
Gathering their earnings, the couple bought more school supplies and
books. They slowly rebuilt National Bookstore. They ventured into
postcards and greeting cards. They also partnered with international
publishing houses and reprinted books at lower prices. Aside from selling
products of well-known brands, National Bookstore also now
manufactures its own school supplies – Best Buy. Keeping up with the
times, they have teamed up with Kobo, a Canadian based e-book seller.
National Bookstore is also visible on social media and customers can even
shop online via their website. Students, office workers, and everyone else
will find what they are looking for at National Bookstore.

In the words of Nanay Coring, “Work hard, very hard. There is no express
elevator to success – you have to climb the stairs.”
Corazon D. Ong
Corazon D. Ong is a dietitian by
profession who used her knowledge to
create affordable processed meat
products that could compete with the
already well known and established
processed meat brands. Initially, it was
only a hobby where she could put to
good use her creativity and skill in
culinary arts.

She came up with corned beef, hotdogs, meatloaf, hamburger patties and
ham, an entity that she later sold as a home business.
She founded CDO Foodsphere in 1975; as the product’s reputation for
affordable quality became widespread, the demand for CDO products
likewise increased. The creative homemaker understood every mother’s
need for quick lunch fixes for their children but convenience should also
come in affordable packages. Corazon likewise understood the taste
preferences of Filipino children but her knowledge of ingredients and their
nutritional values gave her product the advantage.
Today, CDO Foodsphere is a highly-recognized supplier of meat toppings
for Yum! Restaurant International, a known operator of global Quick
Service Restaurants (QSR) , which includes Pizza Hut, KFC, Taco Bell and
Long John Silver . Locally, CDO supplies the meat toppings to nine out of
ten QSRs operating in the Philippines. The clamor for CDO products stems
from numerous awards and recognitions that the processed meat products
have received, owing to their quality and excellence.
Diosdado Banatao
Diosdado Banatao was born to a rice farmer
in an upland faming barrio in Cagayan
Valley and to a plain housewife; hence, one
would have hardly envisioned him as a
Filipino version of Bill Gates. As a child, he
used to walk barefoot just so he could acquire
an elementary and high school education.
Determined to pursue a college education, he
went to Manila, took up electrical engineering
and eventually graduated cum laude.
Due to his excellent academic performance, he was able to land a job as a
pilot trainee of Philippine Airlines. This paved the way for a job offer as a
design engineer coming from Boeing Co., which brought him to the U.S.
Thereafter, he pursued and completed a Master’s Degree in Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford University.
It was while working with some of the leading-edge technology companies
that Diosdado Banatao had the opportunity to design the first single-chip
16-bit microprocessor-based calculator. In 1981, the inventor Ethernet was
looking for a more efficient method of linking computers and Diosdado
was assigned by Seeq Technology to do the task. This was how Diosdado
Banatao came to develop the single-chip controller that provided the
data-link control and the transreceiver in the first 10-Mbit Ethernet CMOS.
Diosdado saw the opportunity of setting-up his own company by designing
chip sets; in no time, he was able to raise $500,000 as seed capital to put
up Monstroni 1985. His company’s determination paid off after they
successfully developed the first system logic chip set that lowered the cost of
building personal computers that were more powerful. He then went on to
build another company called Chips and Technologies, which created
another chips set for enhancing the so-called graphic adapter.
In less than a year, Diosdado’s company realized sales of $12 million in the
first quarter alone, thus creating a tremendous response from investors
when the company went public. In 1996, Diosdado sold the Chips and
Technologies Co. to Intel for $430 million.
Top 10 International Entrepreneurs:
Susan Wojcicki
Susan Wojcicki, in full Susan Diane Wojcicki,
American tech industry executive who was
CEO of the video-sharing Web site
YouTube. She previously was the senior vice
president in charge of marketing at
YouTube’s parent company, Google Inc.
Wojcicki’s father was a physics professor at
Stanford University, and her mother was a
teacher. She grew up in the Stanford,
California, area and later studied history
and literature at Harvard University (A.B.,
1990), economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz (M.S., 1993),
and business at the University of California, Los Angeles (M.B.A., 1998).
After returning to Silicon Valley in 1998, she rented out garage space in her
Menlo Park home to the newly incorporated Google Inc., which briefly used
it as the company’s first headquarters office.
Google had moved to more conventional office space by the time Wojcicki
went to work for the company in 1999. She had previously been employed
by Intel Corporation, Bain & Co., and R.B. Webber & Co. Her task as
Google’s first marketing manager was to find ways of generating revenue
from the company’s signature search engine. Her first big success came in
2000, with the debut of AdWords, the clickable text-only advertisements
that appear on Google search pages. Wojcicki first became involved with
video sharing in connection with the launch of Google Video in 2005. The
following year she oversaw the purchase of rival YouTube, an equally new
venture that was enjoying greater success. The YouTube brand name was
retained even after the company became a Google subsidiary. Wojcicki,
who was elevated to senior vice president at Google in 2010, moved over to
YouTube in 2014 and became the company’s CEO later that year. She thus
became head of an operation that claimed to have more than one billion
monthly users.
Warren Buffett
Born in Nebraska in 1930, Warren Buffett
demonstrated keen business abilities at a
young age. He formed Buffett Partnership
Ltd. in 1956, and by 1965 he had assumed
control of Berkshire Hathaway. Overseeing
the growth of a conglomerate with holdings
in the media, insurance, energy and food
and beverage industries, Buffett became
one of the world's richest men and a
celebrated philanthropist.
In 1956 Buffet formed the firm Buffett Partnership Ltd. in his hometown of
Omaha. Utilizing the techniques learned from Graham, he was successful in
identifying undervalued companies and became a millionaire. One such
enterprise Buffett valued was a textile company named Berkshire
Hathaway. He began accumulating stock in the early 1960s, and by 1965
he had assumed control of the company.
Despite the success of Buffett Partnership, its founder dissolved the firm in
1969 to focus on the development of Berkshire Hathaway. He phased out
its textile manufacturing division, instead expanding the company by
buying assets in media (The Washington Post), insurance (GEICO) and oil
(Exxon). Immensely successful, the "Oracle of Omaha" even managed to
spin seemingly poor investments into gold, most notably with his purchase
of scandal-plagued Salomon Brothers in 1987.
Following Berkshire Hathaway's significant investment in Coca-Cola,
Buffett became director of the company from 1989 until 2006. He has also
served as director of Citigroup Global Markets Holdings, Graham Holdings
Company and The Gillette Company.

As for 2018, Buffett has an estimated net worth of $84 billion.

Larry Ellison
Larry Ellison, in full Lawrence Joseph Ellison,
(born August 17, 1944, New York City, New
York, U.S.), American businessman and
entrepreneur who was cofounder and chief
executive officer (1977–2014) of the software
company Oracle Corporation.
He went to California and spent the next
several years as a computer programmer for
various companies. Beginning in 1973, he
worked at the electronics company Ampex,
where he met fellow programmer Ed Oates and was supervised by Bob
Miner. Ellison left Ampex in 1976 and later joined Precision Instruments
(later Omex), where he was vice president of research and development.
In 1977 Ellison joined with Miner and Oates to form Software Development
Laboratories (SDL), which was created to do contract programming for
other companies. Ellison wanted SDL to do more. In 1979 the company (now
called Relational Software, Inc.) released Oracle, the earliest commercial
relational database program to use Structured Query Language (SQL),
and the versatile database program quickly became popular. Ellison had
more success with his early embrace of the Internet. Oracle developed
products that were compatible with World Wide Web technologies, which
helped the company to grow. In the early 2000s Ellison started Oracle on
an aggressive strategy of buying rival software companies. Dozens of
acquisitions were made, including multibillion-dollar purchases of
PeopleSoft (2005), Siebel (2006), BEA (2008), and Sun Microsystems
(2010). Ellison was one of Silicon Valley’s most divisive figures, being both
admired for his great success and deplored for his sometimes ruthless
business methods and his conspicuous consumption. He was an avid
yachtsman who founded a team that won the prestigious America’s Cup in
2010. In 2012 Ellison bought 98 percent of the Hawaiian island of Lanai.
That year it was estimated that his personal fortune was worth about $40
billion, making him the sixth richest person in the world and the third
richest American (after Microsoft founder Bill Gates and investor Warren
Buffett).
Bernard Arnault
Bernard Arnault, (born March 5, 1949,
Roubaix, France), French businessman
best known as the chairman and CEO of
the French conglomerate LVMH Moët
Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, the largest
luxury-products company in the world.
Arnault graduated from the École
Polytechnique in Paris with a degree in
engineering. In 1971 he took control of his
father’s construction firm Ferret-Savinel. Eight years later he changed the
company’s name to Férinel Inc. and shifted its focus to real estate.
With $15 million of his own money, Arnault, together with Antoine
Bernheim, a managing partner of the French bank Lazard Frères and Co.,
raised the $80 million necessary to purchase Boussac Saint-Frères, a
bankrupt textile company that owned the fashion house of Christian Dior.
Then, in 1987, Arnault was invited to invest in LVMH by the company’s
chairman, Henri Racamier. Investing through a joint venture with Guinness
PLC, Arnault ousted Racamier in 1990 and started to sweep a slew of
fashion companies into the LVMH fold: Christian Lacroix, Givenchy, and
Kenzo; the leather goods companies Loewe, Céline, and Berluti; the jeweler
Fred Joailler; the DFS group (the world’s biggest duty-free chain); and the
beauty retailer Sephora.
Arnault was known in Europe as the man who revitalized French couture in
1995 by appointing British fashion designer John Galliano to replace the
venerable Hubert de Givenchy at the latter’s Paris fashion house. The
“Pope of Fashion,” as Arnault was dubbed by Women’s Wear Daily, a year
later moved Galliano to Christian Dior and appointed the brash British
fashion designer Alexander McQueen to replace him. Arnault then hired
Marc Jacobs, a young American designer, to the post of creative director at
Louis Vuitton, a maker of luxury leather goods. By the early 21st century,
Arnault’s fashion foresight had revived interest in these traditional fashion
houses.
Carlos Slim
Carlos Slim Helú, (born January 28, 1940,
Mexico City, Mexico), Mexican entrepreneur
who became one of the wealthiest people in
the world. His extensive holdings in a
considerable number of Mexican companies
through his conglomerate, Grupo Carso, SA
de CV, amassed interests in the fields of
communications, insurance, construction,
energy, mining, retailing, publishing, and
finance.
His first investments consisted of real estate, a construction equipment
company and then mining. His number of companies owned by him
included a printing company, tobacco firm and several retail stores.
1982 was not a good year for Mexico as it saw a severe economic crisis but
that did not falter Slim’s confidence. He acquired more firms during this
time and as the economy stabled his fortune grew enormously. He bought
even more companies including some U.S brands such as Hershey’s
Chocolate, Firestone Tires and Denny’s coffee shops. He also purchased
some insurance companies and merged them to form ‘Seguros Inbursa’.
Slim did not let a single opportunity to expand pass by. He grabbed onto
whatever he thought was profitable for him. In 2008 he shocked the
business world by buying a 6.4 percent stake in the New York Times which
was going in a loss at the time. However, with a pleasant turn of events
due to his action, the company’s stock prices rose dramatically. His
company ‘América Móvil’ became one of the biggest providers of wireless
service in Latin America. His companies were worth $150 billion by 2007.
According to Fortune magazine his personal wealth at the time was close
to 60 billion dollars making him the wealthiest person on earth. Carlos Slim
Helu also initiated several philanthropic foundations including the ‘Carso
Foundation’, ‘Museo Soumaya’ and the ‘Telmex Foundation’. He has been
the richest man of the world since 2007. His staggering success has earned
him many awards and recognition. He got the Entrepreneurial Merit Medal
of Honor from Mexico’s Chamber of Commerce in 1985.
Amancio Ortega
Ortega started Zara in 1975 and saw it
grow to 1,500 stores in 70 countries by
2012. Born in 1936, he started delivering
shirts at age 12 after dropping out of school
because his family needed the money. He
learned how to make dressing gowns and
lingerie with his first wife, Rosalia Mera,
with whom he had two children.

Amancio Ortega founded the Inditex Group in 1963, which owns Zara and
other men’s and women’s retail apparel, footwear and home textiles
businesses. He opened the first Zara store in A Coruña in 1975, shaking up
the retail fashion industry by dramatically speeding up turnaround
schedules so that clothes go from idea to the sales floor in two weeks.
Thanks to his eye for investment, he is considered a pioneer in fast fashion.
Zara’s fashions are based on runway attire but sold at prices the average
person can afford.
Inditex Group designs, manufactures, distributes and sells its own products
in more than 6,000 stores around the world. The company went public in
2001. In 2011, he stepped down as Inditex’s chairman, but he retains
ownership of 60 percent of its shares as of 2014. He also has significant real
estate holdings, including the tallest building in Madrid, the Torre Picasso,
and properties in high-end areas of London, New York, Los Angeles and
Barcelona.
A self-made multi-billionaire with an estimated net worth of $73 billion as
of 2018 according to Forbes, Ortega is one of the wealthiest people in the
world alongside Carlos Slim Helú, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Despite
his fortune, Ortega is known as a man of habit and modest attire and is
famously private, avoiding interviews with journalists. He lives in A
Coruña, the same small town in Galicia, Spain, where he first opened Zara.
He is considered to be the wealthiest retailer in the entire world.
Bill Gates
Bill Gates was born on October 28, 1955 in
Seattle in a family having rich business,
political and community service background.
His great-grandfather was a state legislator
and a mayor, his grandfather was vice
president of national bank and his father was a
lawyer. Bill Gates and his close friend Allen
formed a new company of their own, Traf-O-
Data. They developed a small computer to
measure traffic flow. From this project they
earned around $20,000. The era of Traf-O-
Data came to an end when Gates left the college. Upon graduating from
Lakeside Bill enrolled in Harvard University in 1973, one of the best
universities in the country, He didn’t know what to do, so he enrolled his
name for pre-law. He took the standard freshman courses with the
exception of signing up for one of Harvard’s toughest mathematics courses.
He did well over there, but he couldn’t find it interesting too. He spent
many long nights in front of the school’s computer and the next day asleep
in class. After leaving school, he almost lost himself from the world of
computers. Gates and his friend Paul Allen remained in close contact even
though they were away from school. They would often discuss new ideas for
future projects and the possibility of starting a business one fine day. At
the end of Bill’s first year, Allen came close to him so that they could follow
some of their ideas. That summer they got job in Honeywell. Allen kept on
pushing Bill for opening a new software company. Within a year, Bill Gates
dropped out from Harvard. Then he formed Microsoft. Microsoft’s vision is
“A computer on every desk and Microsoft software on every computer”. Bill
is a visionary person and works very hard to achieve his vision. His belief in
high intelligence and hard work has put him where he is today. He does
not believe in mere luck or God’s grace, but just hard work and
competitiveness. Bill’s Microsoft is good competition for other software
companies and he will continue to stomp out (challenge) the competition
until he dies. He likes to play the game of Risk and the game of world
domination. His beliefs are so powerful, which have helped him increase his
wealth and his monopoly in the industry.
Jeff Bezos
As a child, Bezos had broad interests,
particularly in science. One time, he converted
his parent’s garage into a science laboratory
where he made things like cooking
contraptions from an umbrella or an alarm
system using parts from Radio shack. He was
always very bookish which was why his mother
enrolled him into the gifted kids program and
that led him to become a valedictorian in high
school. So off he set to Princeton to study
physics only to realize his brain wasn’t wired to
calculate momentum and inertia. Thus, he switched majors and graduated
in computer science and electrical engineering.
He finally stepped into the real world as he started a job in New York for a
high tech startup in the financial industry. When he failed to raise money
for a fax newsletter startup he looked for another business, and as luck
would have it ended up with a job at Wall Street. He knew it wouldn’t be
long when internet commerce would be introduced and he came up with
the idea for an “everything store” where online transactions would be at
your fingertips. After talking to his bosses and telling them his idea, they
encouraged him but told him “it was better off left to someone who doesn’t
already have a good job”.
Determined, Bezos quit his job and shifted to Seattle where he went on to
start the company anyway. Initially he was going to call the company
“Cadabra” because it had magical connotations but eventually settled on
Amazon, based on the largest river in the world. And let’s just say his road
to success wasn’t all butterflies and rainbows. His first item to be sold were
books which he wouldn’t physically buy but bought it when the customers
did. He started working in his garage with his wife and two programmers,
initially, investing all his money. Starting a remarkable journey ahead,
Bezos launched Amazon officially.
Larry Page
Larry Page, an American computer scientist
and co-founder of Google Inc, was born in
March 26, 1973 in East Lansing, Michigan to a
Jewish family. He is the son of Dr. Carl Victor
Page who is a computer science professor of
Michigan State University.
He did his schooling from Okemos Montessori
School in Okemos, Michigan in 1979. In 1991 he
graduated from East Lansing High School; and
later attended the University of Michigan and completed Bachelor of
Science degree in computer engineering with honors; and a Masters degree
in Computer Science from Stanford University. In 1999, he enrolled at
Stanford University for PhD in computer science and collaborated with
Sergei Brin for the research on search engine algorithm. Together, in 1998,
they founded Google.
On August 19 2004, Google became a public company, trading on the
NASDAQ stock exchange as GOOG. The X PRIZE selected Page as a trustee
for their board and the World Economic Forum honored Page by calling
him the Global Leader of Tomorrow.
IE Business School awarded Page with an honorary MBA in 2003 “for
embodying the entrepreneurial spirit and lending momentum to the
creation of new businesses….”
In 2004, Page, along with Brin, received the Marconi Foundation Prize,
which is called to be the “Highest Award in Engineering,” and was chosen
among Fellows of the Marconi Foundation at Columbia University.
In the same year in 2004, ABC World News Tonight honored him with the
“Persons of the Week” by
After 1 year, in 2005, Page, along with Brin, was selected the Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
In 2009, Page, along with Brin, was in fifth position of Forbes’ “The World’s
Most Powerful People’s list”
Zuckerberg
While many intelligent people attend
Harvard University, Mark Zuckerberg became
known quickly as the go-to computer
programmer on campus. By his sophomore
year, he had already built two programs:
CourseMatch and FaceMash. Both programs
became wildly popular, but the university
shut down the latter program after it was
deemed to be inappropriate.
Based on his acclaim on campus, Zuckerberg
partnered with friends to create a social networking site that allowed
Harvard students to connect with each other. The site officially went live in
June 2004 under the name "The Facebook," and Zuckerberg ran it out of
his dorm room.
After his sophomore year, Zuckerberg dropped out of college to pursue
what was then called Facebook full-time. The website reached 1 million
users by the end of 2004.
This explosion of user growth attracted the attention of many venture
capital (VC) firms, and Zuckerberg eventually moved out to Silicon Valley
in 2005. Facebook received its first round of venture capital investments
from VC firm Accel Partners, which invested $12.7 million in the site that
was still only open to Ivy League students.
By the end of 2005, however, Facebook had opened up to students
attending other schools, causing the website to reach 5.5 million users. Since
2005, Facebook has received numerous acquisition offers from the likes of
Yahoo and Microsoft, has been through legal battles, and has greatly
increased the its users.
On July 25, 2018, Facebook released Q2 earnings. The company reported
that daily active users averaged 1.47 billion for June 2018, an increase of
11% year-over-year. Monthly active users totaled 2.23 billion as of June 30,
2018, an increase of 11% year-over-year. As of July 30, 2018, the company
has a market cap of $483 billion. Zuckerberg owns 14.18 million Class A
Facebook shares in a series of funds, as of July 25, 2018.