Top 5 Entrepreneurs
A look at the world's top 5 entrepreneurs - and what makes them so successful. Discover the personality traits of top entrepreneurs and what drives them.
November 30th, 2010 by Becky Turner
Here's an unofficial list of the world's top 5 entrepreneurs. I say unofficial because there is no real objective scale of entrepreneurship. The way I have measured it here is on the amount of financial wealth they have generated, and the scale of their impact on the world...
What Are Entrepreneurs?
What Are Entrepreneurs? |
There have been millions of entrepreneurs since the dawn of mankind. These are men and women who actively take on the risk of a new venture, and become fully responsible for the outcome. They take these risks because they believe they can create more value in the world - whether that's a social network, a science experiment, or an investment fund.
Entrepreneurs are smart, forward-thinking and highly motivated to succeed. They are not satisfied to follow the herd - they do things their own way and, if necessary, break through established boundaries in order to get there. Many people don't realize that they have an entrepreneurial streak until they have suffered under the command of an employer for some time. One recent study found that 75% of business owners endured the rat race for more than six years before going solo.
Although I don't sidle up to strangers in bars and say "Hey. I'm Becky. I'm an entrepreneur..." and wink profusely, I do feel like it's my calling to run my own business. I can't stand business jargon, though, so when people ask what I do for a living I say that I write my own websites. But there's a heck of a lot more to it than that: in the course of running my own business I have to do market research, strategic planning, marketing, advertising, accounting... and I'm also the janitor. This means I had to learn a lot of new skills in different areas and still find the time to write the actual content of my websites at the end of the day.
The thing that drives me is forwards is sheer passion for what I'm creating. I now run five websites, each with very different demographics, but they are all based on my own personal interests. This is key. If the Editor of Carp Weekly offered me a $100,000 freelance writing job tomorrow, I would turn it down without hesitation - because I'm not interested in fish. Though it may tick all the career boxes (freedom, creativity, etc) it would not ignite any passion for slippery aquatic vertebrates. Without passion, there is no motivation, and without motivation the whole project is doomed.
The Top 5 Entrepreneurs
Here's my list of probably the most famous modern entrepreneurs, perhaps not surprisingly with a technology bias.
1. Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs (1955-2011) was the co-founder and CEO of Apple, and the ex-CEO of Pixar Animation Studios. In the late 1970s, Steve Jobs et al designed, developed and marketed one of the first commercially successful lines of PCs, the Apple II series.
In the 1980s, he was the first to spot the commercial potential of the mouse-driven graphical interface which led to the creation of the Macintosh. After a power struggle with the board of Apple, he founded his own computer development company called NeXT which was bought out by his old friends a decade later, returning him to his original throne at the head of Apple.
Steve Jobs contributed much to the image of the idiosyncratic Silicon Valley entrepreneur, driving forward the development of new products that are both functional and elegant. He invented more than 230 patent or patent-pending products including computer hardware and user interfaces. As a result, his net worth when he passed away was said to be US $6.1 billion. A most talented entrepreneur that the world will dearly miss.
2. Sir Richard Branson
Sir Richard Branson (born 1950) is best known for his Virgin Group which comprises more than 400 different companies.
Branson launched his first successful business venture at the age of 16 with Student magazine. In 1970 he set up an audio record mail-order business. At the age of 22 he opened a chain of record stores and the Virgin brand grew massively in the 1980s, when he diversified into trains and airplanes.
In 2004, the success of Virgin Atlantic Airways gave him the opportunity to lift off Virgin Galactic, a space tourism company. Now you can't say that Richard Branson isn't forward-thinking... This hugely expensive undertaking is also funded by another of the world's billionaire entrepreneurs, Paul Allen (co-founder of Microsoft). His life's work far from over, Richard Branson has an estimated net worth of US $4 billion.
3. Bill Gates
Bill Gates (born 1955) is the infamous co-founder of Microsoft and is consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people.
Microsoft was formed in 1975 when Bill Gates contacted Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), the creators of a new microcomputer, and told them he was working on a BASIC interpreter for the platform. In reality he was doing no such thing, he just wanted to gauge their interest. However, MITS requested a demonstration and so Gates and his colleague Paul Allen spent the following weeks creating an Altair emulator and then a BASIC interpreter. The demo was a success; Allen was hired into MITS and Gates took a leave of absence from his studies at Harvard (to which he never returned). They named their partnership Micro-Soft. In the first five years, Gates personally reviewed every line of code that the company shipped.
Although Bill Gates is admired by many, insiders criticize his business tactics which are considered to be anti-competitive. However, in his later career, he began to distribute his mega-wealth by donating large amounts to charity via the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Today, his net worth is around US $54 billion, making him the second richest man in the world.
(Incidentally, the richest man in the world is Carlos Slim, a Mexican entrepreneur with considerable holdings in technology, communications, retail and finance companies. He is worth a whopping US $60.6 billion.)
4. Warren Buffett
Warren Buffet (born 1930) is arguably the most successful investor in the world. He is the primary shareholder, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, a holding company which has delivered an annual growth in book value of 20% over the last 44 years. He did this using large amounts of capital and minimal debt. Today, Warren Buffett is ranked the world's third richest man.
Even as a child, Buffett showed an interest in making and saving money. He went door-to-door selling chewing gum, Coke and weekly magazines. He also showed an interest in the stock markets, and after receiving an MS in Economics from Columbia Business School, he went on to identify the fundamental principles of successful stock market investing. In his words:
"The basic ideas of investing are to look at stocks as business, use the market's fluctuations to your advantage, and seek a margin of safety. That's what Ben Graham taught us. A hundred years from now they will still be the cornerstones of investing."
By the age of 26, Warren Buffet's personal savings amounted to more than US $174,000 (about US $1.2 million in today's money) when he started his own investment company. He became a millionaire on paper in 1990 when Berkshire Hathaway began selling at $7,175 per share on the stock market.
Having survived the volatile markets of the ongoing subprime crisis, Warren Buffett now has a net worth of around US $45 billion.
5. Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg (born 1984) is the brains behind Facebook, the runaway social network which now boasts 500 millions users around the world.
Zuckerberg is an avid computer programmer. While still at high school, he built a music player that used artificial intelligence to learn the user's listening habits. Microsoft and AOL tried to purchase the software and recruit Zuckerberg but instead he went to Harvard College to study computer science and psychology.
It was during his studies that he wrote the original code for The Facebook, designed for college students to keep up-to-date with friend's photos and contact info. The concept was so popular it expanded to colleges all over the country and quickly became the worldwide phenomenon that it is today. Zuckerberg is also the subject of the captivating movie, The Social Network, which details the creation of Facebook and the legal battles that ensued.
So what did Facebook do for his bank account? Mark Zuckerberg's net worth is currently US $6.9 billion and he remains a 24% shareholder of the biggest social networking platform in the world.
Final Thoughts
After reading this you could be forgiven for thinking that being an entrepreneur means becoming filthy rich. Bear in mind we have looked at the top 5 entrepreneurs in the world, and having obscene amounts of cash is a by-product of their mega-success. Of course, not all entrepreneurs are billionaires - or even millionaires.
The average entrepreneur goes through different financial phases. Starting your own business can mean having a limited income for a while and many newly self-employed people have no cash flow. If the business fails you may even go bankrupt. If it succeeds, and you begin to create value and put it out there, the money naturally starts rolling in. How much money you make over the coming months and years depends on how well you develop your product and pitch it to the mass market.
Some entrepreneurs will stay in that comfortable zone of delivering a service (say one-on-one counselling, for instance) and generating an average income. The real ambitious ones might try to transform that business into a counselling franchise (Quacks R Us? Anyone?) but I don't think all entrepreneurs have to be this way. At some point, presumably, you would stop being a counsellor and start being a CEO. Not everyone wants that - because it's all about being passionate about what you do.
So while I would certainly encourage you to think big, don't give yourself the added pressure of having to become a millionaire or bust. My aim is to become comfortably wealthy - so that I can buy stuff I want without worrying about my bank balance or whether I'll make my next mortgage payment. This is a good place to be, while still allowing yourself the creative freedom to pursue your entrepreneurial interests.
And if your entrepreneurial drive is so strong that you do accidentally create a multi-national organization, remember that you can always sell up, buy a ridiculously expensive house, and start all over again... :)
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