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n general, nine out of 10 startups fail. But the ones
who make it all have one thing in common: a brilliant idea. Like these
self-made billionaires did with their companies.
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GOOGLE
Larry Page and Sergey Brin were PhD students at Stanford when they first
came up with the idea of a search engine. But their idea was a little
different than the other search engines in the market: it would examine
the number and relevance of links between pages, not just the keywords
on them.
Google's search engine now dominates the market, and the company has
more than US$66 billion ($95 billion) in sales. It's now involved in
other businesses too -- it makes the most popular mobile phone platform
in the world (Android) and runs the most popular video web site in the
world (YouTube). It's also experimenting with all kinds of futuristic
projects like Google Glass. Page and Brin are now each worth almost
US$30b. |
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FACEBOOK
Mark Zuckerberg was a Harvard undergrad when he came up with the idea of
a 'hot or not' type of website called Facemash. From that site,
Zuckerberg learned how technology could be used to connect people and
launched a site called thefacebook.com.
Later, he changed the name to Facebook, and in less than a decade,
turned it into a US$250b company. Zuckerberg is now worth over $35b. |
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BLOOMBERG
Working as a Wall St trader in the 1970s, Michael Bloomberg quickly
realised financial companies were willing to pay big bucks for reliable
business information. Bloomberg launched a business that provided
important financial information quickly through dedicated computer
terminals.
Bloomberg, with over US$8b in annual revenue, is now one of the most
powerful media and financial information companies in the world.
Bloomberg's net worth is estimated to be roughly US$37b. |
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AMAZON
Jeff Bezos was working at a Wall St firm in the early 1990s when he
decided to start his own company. He eventually settled on an idea to
launch an online book store.
Now Amazon sells everything from books and furniture to gadgets and
wine. It's worth about US$200b with over US$88b in annual sales. Bezos
is estimated to have a net worth over US$38b. |
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IBM
Growing up in Chicago's south side, Larry Ellison had a rough childhood,
dropping out of college twice. But once he moved to California at age
22, in the mid 1960s, he came across an IBM report about a database
programming language called SQL.
Inspired by the IBM paper, Ellison took SQL and created the Oracle
database, which could run on non-IBM computers. After a few years,
Oracle took off, becoming the most popular database ever sold. Now
Oracle is worth US$195b, and Ellison is one of the richest people in the
world with a net worth estimated around US$65b.
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MICROSOFT
In 1975, cofounders Bill Gates and Paul Allen came across an ad for the
Altair 8800, one of the earliest forms microcomputers. They built a
programming language called BASIC, which became the foundational code
for Altair 8800.
Soon, Microsoft built an operating system called DOS and licensed it to
IBM. A few years later, Microsoft built Windows that had a more
graphical interface than DOS. Since then, Microsoft has become one of
the biggest tech companies ever, dominating the PC and software market.
It's a US$370b business spanning servers and data centres, as well as
video games and mobile phones. Gates is the richest man in the world
with a net worth approaching US$80b.
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BROADCAST.COM
Mark Cuban was an early internet entrepreneur in the 90s, and built a
company called Broadcast.com based on the idea of providing customised
satellite broadcasts over the web.
He later sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for US$5.7b. Broadcast.com no
longer exists, but there's no question Cuban - now worth about US$3b -
is one of the most successful self-made tech entrepreneurs of all time.
He's also the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and an active startup
investor. His role on 'Shark Tank' has turned him into a popular TV
personality as well.
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ALIBABA
Jack Ma was captivated by the internet after visiting the US in 1995. He
soon launched two internet startups which both failed. As his third
venture, Ma started an online marketplace where exporters could post
product listings so customers could buy directly from them.
Alibaba took off, and by 1999, raised US$5 million from Goldman Sachs
and US$20m from Softbank. Just about 15 years later, Alibaba had the
largest US IPO of all time, and now it's worth over US$200b. Jack Ma has
a net worth in excess of US$24b. |
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WHATSAPP
Jan Koum (here with his partner Brian Acton) wanted to build a sort of
phone book app with status updates showing up next to individual names.
It would show things like location or whether the person was on the call
or not.
WhatsApp later evolved to include push features, sending automatic
notifications, before turning into the messaging platform it is now. In
2014, WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook for US$19b. It now has over 800
million monthly active users. Koum is estimated to be worth over
US$6.8b.
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YAHOO
As students at Stanford, Jerry Yang and David Filo came up with the idea
of building a directory for websites. They launched 'Jerry and David's
Guide to the World Wide Web.'
Within a year of launching, it became one of the most popular websites
in the world. They changed the name to Yahoo, which to this day is still
one of the biggest web portals in the world. It has a market cap over
US$38b. Yang isn't involved with the company anymore, instead running
his own VC firm. His estimated net worth is US$2b. Filo is still on
Yahoo's board and has a net worth of about US$3b.
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DELL COMPUTERS
While a student at University of Texas, Michael Dell realised there was
a way to bypass salesmen to sell PCs directly to consumers. He launched
a startup called Dell that custom assembled each component of the PC and
sold it at a much lower price.
Dell had US$6m in sales in its first year. Soon, its sales blew up, and
by 2001, it became the world's largest PC maker. Dell took his company
back private in 2013 by paying roughly US$24.9b. He's worth about US$18b
now
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GOPRO
As an avid surfer, GoPro founder Nick Woodman simply wanted to help
surfers take better photos of themselves surfing, so they could look
like a pro. He spent years perfecting the straps that went around the
first versions of GoPro.
But it wasn't until he took it out of the water and put it in front of
race cars that GoPro really started to take off. GoPro went public last
year and is now worth about US$7.8b. Woodman has a net worth of about
US$2.5b. |
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