Category IT Business Tycoons

Mark Zuckerberg’s college years were as exciting and innovative as his early life. He was known as a ‘programming prodigy’ at Harvard University, where he studied psychology and computer science. The idea of Facemash and Facebook developed during these years.

Facemash was a fun program that let students select the best looking person from a number of photos. The response for this program was overwhelming, but the college soon shut it down, as it was declared improper. Zuckerberg admitted this, and later apologized.

Prior to that, Zuckerberg had also created a few programs, including the ‘Course Match’ that enabled users to make decision on class selection, based on the choices of other students. It helped in forming study groups too.

At the start of 2004, Zuckerberg created Facebook, a platform for social networking. It is said that the famous site was created in a dorm room at Harvard, and was a platform only for students at the university to communicate with each other, through their accounts.

Zuckerberg did not complete his graduation, and dropped out of the university to focus on his project, which was turning to be successful. By 2004, Facebook was known to have around one million users. 

Mark Zuckerberg was born on May 14th, 1984 in New York to dentist Edward Zuckerberg and psychiatrist Karen Kempner. He studied at the Ardsley High School, and the Philips Exeter Academy before college, where he was distinguished as a promising student.

It is said that Mark won prizes in maths, astronomy, physics and classical studies as a student, and was also fluent in languages including French, Hebrew, Latin and Ancient Greek.

He is known to have quoted lines from the Roman epic poem ‘Aeneid’ at Facebook product conference years later. He was the captain of the school fencing team too.

Mark’s acquaintance with computers was made when he was in middle school. He was taught the Atari BASIC programming at a very early stage, and was also given a tutor for computer studies. The tutor, David Newman, later said that Mark was a child prodigy.

Continue reading “Why is it said that Mark Zuckerberg’s early years were remarkable?”

        Mark Zuckerberg is an American programmer, and the Chairman, CEO, and co-founder of Facebook. Born on May 14, 1984 in New York, Zuckerberg founded the facebook.com on February 4, 2004. He was a student at the Harvard University then. It is said that the idea of Facebook came from the Philips Exeter Academy, where he previously studied. The institution had its own student directory, which they referred to as the Facebook.

        Zuckerberg thus created a directory for Harvard, which enabled students to enter their own information and photos into a template. The response was huge, and soon, the founder’s roommate Dustin Moskovitz helped him add features, and make the site available to other campuses too.

         Through Facebook, the users could not only keep in touch with others, but also create attractive profiles, upload photos and videos too.

         The site in no time, started growing popular among Internet users in the US, and then expanded to the whole world. As of March 31, 2016, Facebook had more than 1.65 billion active users, making it the most popular social networking site.

          The success of Facebook turned Zuckerberg into a billionaire. Since 2010, he has been on the TIME Magazine’s list of the 100 Wealthiest People in the world. He was also in the Forbes list of the World’s Most Powerful People.

           Zuckerberg is also a philanthropist. He has donated millions for causes including education, and health. He founded the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in 2015, and pledged to donate 99 per cent of their Facebook shares for various causes. 

          The name Orkut Buyukkokten may perhaps bring back memories for a few, early users of the Internet. It reminds one of ‘Orkut’, a social media platform and the forerunner of networks like Facebook and Twitter.

          Orkut Buyukkokten is a Turkish software engineer who developed Orkut. Hailing from Turkey, Buyukkokten earned B.Sc. in Computer Engineering and Information Science from Bilkent University, Ankara. He then moved to the US and received an MS and PhD in Computer Science from Stanford.

          In 2001, Buyukkokten introduced the first college-specific social network Club Nexus for Stanford. It helped the users send emails, invitations, chat, post events, search for people etc. and in just a few months, attracted over 2000 students.

           Buyukkokten then introduced InCircle, an alumni social network for use by alumni groups. On January 24, 2004 he founded Orkut which was owned and operated by Google. On September 30, 2014, the parent company announced the shutdown of Orkut. In 2016, Buyukkokten launched yet another social media service called ‘Hello’.

       Richard William Costolo, better known as Dick Costolo is an American Internet entrepreneur credited to have co-founded the web feed management provider ‘FeedBurner’. He was also the CEO of Twitter.

       Born on September 10th, 1963 in Michigan, Costolo joined the University of Michigan to complete a BS in computer and communication sciences. Upon course completion, he moved to Chicago to work in improvisational comedy. After that, Costolo left his career in comedy, and started a new one with computer technology. Before co-founding FeedBurner, Costolo had worked with many other companies.

       In 2004, along with Eric Lunt, Steve Olechowski, and Matt Shobe, he founded FeedBurner, a web feed management provider. Three years later, Google Inc. bought FeedBurner and Costolo joined the search giant, only to leave it in two years.

       He then joined Twitter as its Chief Operating Officer. In 2010, he became its CEO. 

          Australian computer expert and journalist Julian Assange had a special interest in hacking even as a teenager.

          Hacking, as some of you might know, is an unauthorized or unpermitted intrusion into a computer, or its network.

         Around 1987, Assange used the hacking nickname ‘Mendax’ and infiltrated a number of secure systems, including those at NASA, Pentagon, and the Australian National University. This was done with the help of two other hackers, and together, they formed a group called the ‘International Subversives’. The intelligent programmer had also hacked into the master terminal of Nortel, a Canadian multinational telecommunications corporation.

         However, in 1994 Assange was charged with 31 cyber-related crimes by the Australian Federal Police. Luckily for him, there was only a small fine as punishment. After this incident, Assange travelled widely, and joined the University of Melbourne to study physics.

         He then worked as a computer security consultant.

         Years later, in 2006, Julian Assange was back to hacking with Wiki Leaks. Since then, the team has posted many politically important and controversial documents and messages on the site. Some of them were details about the US military, US wars, and the Afghanistan war logs.

          An Australian computer programmer and journalist, Julian Assange is best known as the head of the media organization ‘Wiki Leaks’. It is a site that works to collect, and share confidential information about countries, or organizations on a large scale.

           Born on July 3rd, 1971 in Queensland, Australia, Julian Assange had a nomadic childhood, and lived in over 30 different towns in the country. He attended the Central Queensland University, and the University of Melbourne to study programming, mathematics and physics, but didn’t complete his graduation.

           In 2006, Assange launched the Wiki Leaks, sharing secret information and news leaks on an international scale. It included the details of the US military’s detention facility at the Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Following the leaks, the US government launched a criminal investigation against Assange. He was also wanted by Sweden for cases registered in the country. Subsequently, Assange was provided asylum at the Ecuadorean embassy in London.

           With Wiki Leaks, Assange earned both supporters and enemies. But for sure, he has influenced masses. 

     Craig Newmark is an entrepreneur and the founder of ‘Craigslist’. It is a website for classified advertisements on jobs, services, for-sale and wanted items, housing etc., founded in 1995. The entrepreneur is also the creator of Craig connects a site for publicizing charitable ventures.

     Born on December 6th, 1952, Newmark had a very humble beginning. His father died when Newmark was 13 and it was left to his mother to take care of the family. But a brilliant student that he was, Newmark completed his education with scholarships. Soon after, he joined IBM, and stayed there for 17 long years. It was in 1993 that Newmark got acquainted with the Internet.

     Two years later, he developed Craigslist as an email distribution list for friends to feature local events in his locality. The following year, it turned into a web-based service, and expanded into many other classified categories. By 2000, it spread across the US. Today, Craigslist covers 70 countries and has non-English versions. As of June 2016, the site had more than 20 billion page views every month. This success turned Newmark into a billionaire.

       As we know, YouTube was introduced as an online portal to share video files by three technology enthusiasts Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim in 2005. From this small video community, it grew to become the second largest online search engine right behind Google.

       Headquartered in San Bruno, California, YouTube enables users to upload, download, view, rate, share and comment on its videos. Users without accounts can indeed watch most of the video content for free. But there are exceptions, as in the case of subscription based premium channels. For watching their content, one needs to pay a fixed amount.

       The success of YouTube was such that by 2014, the site had 800 million users in a month. Besides, 300 hours of new videos were uploaded to the site every minute in 2014. Hence, it can be said without a doubt, that the invention of YouTube has changed the world of IT as well as entertainment. 

          When YouTube was first released a decade ago, little did people think that the site would revolutionize the way they viewed online content. For this radical change that it brought about, the world of IT stays forever indebted to Chad Hurley, one of its founders.

          Born on January 24, 1977, Chad Meredith Hurley worked with the PayPal division of eBay, before joining hands with his friends Steve Chen and Jawed Karim to create the video sharing website YouTube on February 14, 2005. Unlike innovators of his kind, Chad is a graduate in Fine Arts, from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

          History goes that the idea of YouTube was conceived after Chad and Chen found it difficult to share videos that were shot at a party, due to the massive file size. The friends wanted to find out something like Flickr, but ended up creating YouTube, which in a year, became the tenth most popular website in the world. It was also one of the fastest growing sites, with millions of viewers across the world. Chad served as the site’s CEO for a brief period.

          A year after its creation, the founders sold YouTube to Google Inc. for 1.65 billion dollars. In 2013, he and Chen launched a new company ‘Mix-Bit’ which works on video editing using smart phones.

     Online social media entrepreneur Mathew Charles Mullenweg is best known as the founding developer of Word-Press. As some of you might know, it is open source software meant for blogging and web content management, used by millions across the world.

      Born on January 11th, 1984, Matt, as he is famously called, studied at the University of Houston, majoring in political science. Before completing his degree, he left college, and started working for CNET Networks, a media website.

      In January, 2003 Mullenweg along with Mike Little, released on Word-Press which grew to become the easiest, and the most popular website management system on the web. The software is managed by the Word-Press Foundation.

      Other than technological innovation, Mullenweg is also involved in charitable programmes.

        Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman has surprised the world, not just through his innovation, but through his ‘talks’ too.

        A renowned orator and writer, Hoffman is a frequent lecturer at universities including Stanford, Oxford, and Harvard.

        He has also appeared on many shows like The Charlie Rose Show, Fareed Zakaria’s Global Public Square on CNN, and on other current affairs television programmes.

        His essay titled “Disrupting the Diploma” that proposes a new form of credentialing for university students and professors was widely read. It was among the many posts he had published on LinkedIn as a ‘LinkedIn Influencer’. Hoffman has also written articles in the Washington Post on a variety of topics.

Continue reading “Why is it said that besides being a tech-expert, Reid Hoffman is also a prolific orator and writer?”

         We know for a fact that there have been many social networking groups that have helped people connect and reconnect personally. But what LinkedIn did, was something rather different, and more helpful. It helped people professionally, mainly by connecting job-seekers and employers. Since its launch on December 28, 2002, the site has played a vital role in professional circles across the world, thanks to Reid Garrett Hoffman, and his team.

          Hoffman is an entrepreneur, author, and the current executive chairman of LinkedIn, the first business-oriented social network. The site is so successful, that by September 2016, it had more than 467 million users.

          Prior to setting up LinkedIn, Reid was the Executive Vice President of PayPal. PayPal is an international company facilitating online payments system.

            The success of LinkedIn garnered big money, as well as recognition for Hoffman. He is ranked as the 341st richest person in the world.

        As we saw, BitTorrent is a communication platform that enables downloading of data and electronic files using a peer-to-peer file transferring system. Many individuals and organizations use it to distribute their licensed works.

       However, what made BitTorrent most famous is its ability to share large music and movie files. People across the globe have been using the system since its beginning to upload and download such files.

       To its credit, BitTorrent Inc. has received many licenses from Hollywood studios for distributing their content. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter also use BitTorrent to distribute updates to servers. Besides the film and media industry, others too have used the protocol for distribution works.

       The UK government used the system to issue details about the expenditure of tax money. The success of the protocol was however unanticipated, its founder Bram Cohen holds.

       BitTorrent Inc. was founded in 2004 by Bram Cohen, along with his business partner of Indian origin Ashwin Navin. 

       Bram Cohen is a computer programmer who is the chief scientist, and co-founder of BitTorrent. It is a peer-to-peer program developed for uploading and downloading files. The program functions via a file distribution protocol, namely the BitTorrent protocol, which was again, was developed by the expert himself.

       Born on October 12th, 1975, Bram Cohen grew up in Manhattan. He claims to have learned the BASIC programming language at the age of five! After schooling, he joined the University of Buffalo, only to drop out of it later, and work for several dot.com companies. It was the experience he got from these firms that helped Cohen conceives the idea of BitTorrent. He designed the protocol in April 2001, and released its first version on July 2, 2001. As of 2013, BitTorrent had around 27 million users.

         Apart from BitTorrent, Cohen has also founded CodeCon, an annual conference of technology enthusiasts and software hackers that was held between 2002 and 2009.

        For his work on the BitTorrent protocol, Cohen has won many awards. He was also among the TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in 2005. 

       Skype is one of the most popular communication tools today, with more than 700 million users across the world.

       Headquartered in Luxembourg, the service was first released on 29th August 2003, by Swedish entrepreneur Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis (Danish).

      The users of the program only need to download it onto a computer or phone, and have a functional web camera and microphone. It allows them to see and hear the person whom they are contacting. Hence, it has been of great help, particularly to people who have their kith and kin in a distant land, to communicate easily and affordably. Skype, as most of us know, takes no money for its basic version. The service is thus also widely used for video conferencing with business partners, as well as for interview

      Instant messaging is another interesting feature of Skype, enabling users to send text messages, voice notes, or videos.

      One needn’t even use a computer for skyping these days. It can be very well done through smart phones and tablets.

             Swedish entrepreneur Niklas Zennstrom has to his credit many successful ventures that have gone worldwide. Other than the high profile Skype and Kazaa, he has established Atomico, a leading investment group in the technology industry.

             Founded in 2006, Atomico helps entrepreneurs expand their businesses globally. Zennstrom was also the CEO at Joltid, a software company that specialized in developing solutions to optimize Internet traffic.

            Altnet and Joost are the other ventures the brilliant innovator founded after that. The former was the world’s first peer-to-peer network that promoted commercial content. Launched in 2007, Joost was a successful online video distribution service.

            Zennstrom and his wife Catherine have also set up a charitable organization called Zennstrom Philanthropies. It works towards financing human rights projects, social entrepreneurship, and environmental issues. 

     With his introduction of Skype, an application for video chat, Niklas Zennstrom redesigned the scope of communication, and took it to a whole new level.

     This is however, just one of the many reasons why Zennstrom remains a legend in the world of information technology.

     Born on February 16th, 1966 in Sweden Niklas Zennstrom stood out as an innovative kid since childhood.

     Zennstrom started his professional career in 1991 at Tele2, a Swedish telecommunications firm. In 2000, he founded Kazaa along with Janus Friis. It was a high profile second-generation, peer-to-peer file-sharing application, similar to Napster. Following a series of legal cases, Kazaa was shut down in 2001.

     The closure of Kazaa, however, did not stop Zennstrom and Friis, and soon, in 2003 they introduced Skype. It is an application that provides video chat and voice call services. It made communication, especially long-distance ones easier, enabling free international calls through the Internet. By 2005, the service had more than 50 million users, particularly in Asia and Europe. On 10th May 2011, Microsoft Corporation acquired Skype. 

       For the remarkable contributions made to the development of information technology, Caterina Fake remains an unmatched figure in a field that is dominated by men.

       Her career began as a chief designer for Organic Line, developing websites for companies including McDonalds, Levi’s, and Nike etc. She also served as the art director for Salon.com, before joining Netscape in 1997.

       It was after Netscape that Fake, along with Daniel Butterfield, and Jason Classon founded the Ludicorp. Butterfield and Fake later co-founded Flickr. Before its success, she had also faced failure after the first work by the company, ‘Game Never-ending’, ended up in a disaster. Yet Fake and Butterfield moved ahead confidently with Flickr.

       Fake’s innovative skills were seen again when she launched the website ‘Hunch’ in 2009. The site provided advice and recommendations to its users, based on their interests.

       The same year, Fake joined the board of directors of Creative Commons, an American non-profit organization, and was also made the chairman of the Board of Etsy, an e-commerce website. San Francisco headquartered Findery is Fake’s latest venture. 

       Caterina Fake is an entrepreneur known for co-founding the Flickr and Hunch websites. The success of these two sites helped her create a niche in the world of technological innovation and investment.

       Fake was born on June 13th, 1969 in Pittsburgh to an American father and a Filipino mother. She is a graduate in English literature from Vassar College.

       Fake’s career in the web world began when she started working as a lead designer at the web development agency ‘Organic Online’.

Continue reading “Why is Caterina Fake a renowned name?”

     Flickr is a successful image and video hosting website created by Daniel Butterfield through his Ludicorp Company in 2004. Launched on February 10th that year, the service enables users to share and embed photographs through their accounts.

     For sharing or uploading photos and videos on Flickr, users need to have an account. The user also gets to control privacy settings and decide whether the image should go ‘public’ or be restricted to just within the contact circle.

     The service allows users to release their images either under common usage licenses, or with copyrights reserved.

     As of August 2011, Flickr is known to have hosted more than 6 million images. By March 2013, it had a total of 87 million registered members, and more than 3.5 million new images uploaded daily.

     The creation of Flickr brought global recognition to Daniel Butterfield. 

      Daniel Stewart Butterfield is an entrepreneur credited to have founded the popular photo sharing website Flickr. He is also the founder of Slack, an instant message communication tool.

      Unlike other tech-wizards, Butterfield had no formal education in computer science or technology. After schooling, he graduated from the University of Victoria in philosophy, and went on to take a master’s degree in the same subject at the University of Cambridge.

      In 2002, Butterfield, and his future wife Caterina Fake, along with Jason Classon, co-founded Ludicorp, a company that developed a multiplayer online role-playing game called ‘Game Never-ending’. This however, did not turn out well, and the firm, in February 2004, started the famous ‘Flickr’ photo sharing service. The following year, it was acquired by Yahoo! Flickr became a massive hit among Internet users across the world.

      As of March 2013, Flickr had about 87 million registered users, and more than 3.5 million images uploaded daily.

      Butterfield worked with Yahoo! till 2008, before moving to found his new venture called Tiny Speck, a company that launched the game ‘Glitch’.

      In 2014, Butterfield released ‘Slack’, a message-based communication tool.

      Jimmy Wales is one name that will ever remain in the history of information technology. He is an American entrepreneur, and the co-founder of Wikipedia as well as Wikia, a web hosting company.

     Wikipedia, as we know, is a free content online encyclopedia that has helped people worldwide to access information on a wide range of topics.

     It started off in March 2000 as Nupedia, an open-content reference site. Wales was working on his startup named Bornis, when he conceived the idea of an online encyclopedia.

     Once Nupedia was set up, Wales hired academic Larry Sanger as its editor-in-chief. On January 15th, 2001 the duo launched the non-profit Wikipedia, an advanced version of Nupedia, that later came to become one of the most popular websites in the world.

    Wikipedia was just one of the ventures started by Wales to democratize IT. In 2003, Wales founded the Wikimedia Foundation; a San Francisco based charitable organization, to develop wiki-based projects for the public, free of charge. The following year, he founded the company, Wikia Inc. 

     Pierre Omidyar was born on June 21st, 1967 in Paris to an Iranian immigrant parents. The family shifted to the US when Omidyar was a child.

     The bright kid that he was, Omidyar started showing interest in computers while in 9th grade. After high school, he joined Tufts University, and graduated with a BS in computer science. Soon after that, he started working for Claris, a subsidiary of Apple Computer.

     Omidyar’s life as an innovator began in 1991, when he co-founded a start up called Ink Development. It was later rebranded as an e-commerce company, and renamed ‘eShop’.

     Four years later, he founded the ‘Auction Web’, a service that facilitated buying and selling through the Internet. The growth of the company was very rapid, and within a year, Omidyar acquired a license to sell airplane tickets on the site.

     In 1997, Auction Web turned into ‘eBay’. The success of eBay had also transformed Omidyar into a billionaire. Much before that, Omidyar had started donating money through the Omidyar Foundation which he founded in 2004, along with his wife Pamela. It mainly finances and helps smaller businesses to establish themselves, and make a difference in society. 

     Pierre Morad Omidyar is an entrepreneur renowned for launching the eBay auction site. With this online bidding venture, he revolutionized e-commerce.

     The history of eBay dates back to September 4th, 1995 when Omidyar created an online service called ‘Auction Web’ on his personal website. It was intended to help people list items for auction. The attempt was so successful, that soon he opened a separate site, and named it ‘eBay’.

     The growth of eBay was such that Omidyar had to quit his job, and devote himself fully to it. In 1998, he was named the Chairman of eBay, and its services spread across other countries. By the end of that year, the site had around two million users across the globe. It also fetched the founder a huge fortune. Thus, at the age of 31, Omidyar was a billionaire.

     However, Omidyar’s life was not restricted to technology alone. He had an interest in journalism too owing to which he launched the ‘Honolulu Civil Beat’, an investigating news service. In 2013, it collaborated with ‘The Huffington Post’, and launched ‘Huff Post Hawaii’ in Hawaii, and in 2014, another journalism venture named ‘First Look Media’.

       Napster creator Shawn Fanning has proved himself not only as an innovator, but as an entertainer too! He has been a popular figure since the launch of the file sharing service, and has remained so ever since. One could say the Napster controversy hasn’t really dented his public appeal.

       Fanning first entered the big screen in a cameo role for the hit film ‘The Italian Job’, playing himself.

       In 2000, Fanning appeared as a presenter at the MTV Video Music Awards wearing a Metallica t-shirt. Coincidentally, it was this band that first came out against Napster, and filed a lawsuit for circulating one of their works before it was officially released!

       In the same year, Fanning appeared on the cover of the TIME magazine.

       Again, Fanning was seen in commercials. In 2013, both Fanning and Napster became subjects of a documentary made by Alex Winter. It was titled ‘Downloaded’.

       Shawn Fanning is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur, most famous for the creation of Napster. It was an online file-sharing service that enabled users to share music and audio files encoded in MP3 format.

       Launched on June 1st, 1999, Napster was so successful that at its peak, the service had about 80 million registered users. It made downloading of songs much easier; bypassing other distribution devices like records, tapes, and CDs. However, the music industry in the US was much affected by Napster after their songs started circulating online illegally.

       Napster thus came to a halt when it faced legal battles, and the development of software to prevent computer copyright piracy. In July 2001, it was shut down.

       The following year, an American software company Roxio Inc. acquired the assets of Napster, and re-launched it in 2003 as an e-commerce enterprise that sold digital music files. Although Napster had a short and controversial term, Fanning’s idea of downloading, storing, and sharing songs through networks caught on. 

       Bradley Joseph Fitzpatrick, or Brad Fitzpatrick, is an American programmer most famous for the creation of Live-Journal. It is a social network service that enables users to keep blogs, journals or diaries.

       Started in April 1999, Live-Journal soon became a massive hit, and established itself as a company named the Danga Interactive. Six years later, Fitzpatrick sold Danga for an undisclosed sum to a software company called Six Apart Ltd. He also worked with them for two years, before returning to the Live-Journal advisory board.

       Other than Live-Journal, Fitzpatrick has authored of a variety of free software programs as well, namely, memcached, OpenID and Camlistore.

       Free softwares are those computer softwares that provide the users with a ‘source code’. Using this, a user can run the software for any purpose like studying, modifying, distributing etc. 

       Jerry Yang is a computer expert who co-founded Yahoo! with David Filo in 1994. Yang was a doctoral scholar at Stanford University while he came up with the idea of a platform to provide web directory on the Internet.

       From ‘Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web’ the company moved to Yahoo! Inc., transforming the founders into billionaires within two years.

       From 1995 to 2012, Yang served as the ‘Chief Yahoo’, of the firm, and as its CEO from 2007 to 2009.

       In 2012, Yang resigned from the board of directors, and founded a new investment company ‘AME Cloud Ventures’. It provided funding to more than 50 start ups.

       Since then, Yang has worked with many reputed multinational companies, serving in top posts. In 2013, he became an independent director of Alibaba Group Holding Limited, a Chinese e-commerce company. He is also an independent non-executive director of Lenovo Group Limited, and serves on the board of trustees of Stanford University. 

    Tech-wizard and the co-founder of Yahoo! David Filo was born on April 20th, 1966, in Wisconsin, USA.

    A promising student, Filo had since childhood, been interested in computers and proved his technical skills. He earned a BS in computer engineering at the Tulane University through the Dean’s Honour Scholarship, and went on to complete an MS at Stanford University. He also enrolled for the doctoral programme in the university during which he created Yahoo! with the help of fellow researcher Jerry Yang.

    The company which began as ‘Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web’ consisted of a directory to other websites. It then became one of the strongest and popular ventures in the field of information technology, following which the founders started receiving offers from other multinational companies like Netscape.

     Filo, known to be a hard worker, has played an instrumental role in taking Yahoo! to the international arena. The Filo Server Program that was written in the C programming language was used in the earliest versions of Yahoo!

     David Filo is an American entrepreneur and the co-founder of the tech giant Yahoo!

     The venture initially started off as a web portal with a web directory that provided a wide range of products for online activities. In February 1994, Filo and his friend Jerry Yang created a website called ‘Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web’. It served as a directory of other websites.

     Later, it was renamed as Yahoo!, and became a very popular portal among users across the world. Filo was still a PhD student at Stanford when the venture turned into a massive success.

     As years passed, the success of Yahoo! brought a fortune to its founders. With a net worth estimate of 3.8 billion dollars, Filo became the 580th richest person in the world in December 2014. 

         It was with the aim of developing and selling personal computers that Steve Jobs, Ronald Wayne, and Steve Wozniak founded Apple in April 1976. Till then, home computers were too expensive for the common man. With their innovation, Jobs and his partners stirred a revolution, and democratized computer technology.

         Today, Apple Inc is perhaps the largest information technology company for its revenue and assets. It is also known to be the second largest mobile manufacturer company. From the US, its customer circle has expanded to all over the world.

         Macintosh, Apple Lisa, Apple Dot Matrix Printer, Apple Mouse IIc etc, was among the first products of the company. Since then, Apple has developed a wide range of attractive devices including the iPad, iPhone, iPod, MacBook etc.

       Steve Jobs was born on February 24th, 1955, in California, to two graduate students at the University of Wisconsin. The couple gave him up for adoption, and Steve was since then taken care of by Paul Jobs, a coast guard veteran and his wife Clara, an accountant.

        In his new family, Steve was brought up well, although he was different from the children of his age. As a young boy, he worked in the family garage, and proved his mechanical skills.

         After schooling, Steve joined the Reed College in Portland, only to drop out within months. He then attended creative classes, including a course in calligraphy.

         By 1974, Jobs landed a job as a video game designer, but again gave it up, and travelled to India to gain spiritual enlightenment. He was deeply interested in Zen Buddhism.

         At the age of 21, Steve and Wozniak started working on the Apple computer. Their beginning was very humble, and the duo used Steve’s family garage as their workplace.

         In 1985, he resigned from Apple, and began a new company known as the NeXT Inc. But by December 1997, Apple Inc. purchased NeXT Inc. for millions and Steve was back in the home-firm.

         On October 5th, 2011 he died of cancer, creating a void in the world of technology that cannot be filled.

       Very few computer wizards in the world have been as popular as Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple. Beyond the world of technology, Jobs had donned the roles of a humanitarian, philanthropist, and environmentalist thereby influencing people worldwide.

       At a time when computers were just too expensive for the common man to use, Steve Jobs, along with Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded the Apple Computers Inc. in 1976. Their first work space was in the garage of Jobs’ Los Altos home. The following year, Jobs and Wozniak released Apple II, stirring the microcomputer revolution.

       The growth of the company had been very fast, and under Jobs’ leadership, it introduced the Macintosh 128k computer in 1984, the first PC featuring an integral graphic user interface and a mouse.

       In 1998, the all-in-one iMac computer was released-the first machines to get rid of the floppy disc drive and introduce a CD ROM slot. These computers also drew attention for their style and design.

       In 1999, the iBook that came with Wi-Fi technology entered the market. The years that followed witnessed Apple introducing many gadgets like the iPod, iPhone, iPad etc.

       For his outstanding contributions, Steve Jobs won many awards.

     Other than the technology hub Microsoft, Bill Gates has also founded an equally important organization that works on an entirely different platform. It is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) that focuses on charitable work.

     Founded in 2000 by Gates and his wife Melinda, BMGF is said to be the largest private foundation in the world that operates in a transparent manner.

     The foundation is based in Seattle, Washington. Other than Bill and Melinda, there is one more member in the trustee board- business magnate Warren Buffet. Some of the programmes initiated by the Foundation include ‘The Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Programme’, and the ‘Reinvent the Toilet Challenge Programme’ that promoted safe and effective sanitation. 

Steve Chen is an Internet entrepreneur credited to have co-founded the popular video sharing website YouTube.

Born on August 18, 1978, Chen and his family moved from Taipei to the US when he was 15 years old. He graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an exceptional student, and soon joined PayPal. There he met Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim. Chen also worked with Facebook before launching YouTube.

In 2005, Chad, Chen and Karim together released the popular video sharing and viewing online portal, thereby creating history. The site soon had millions of subscribers all over the world, and was named one of the 10 most important sites within a year. Chen served in the position of the chief technology officer.

In 2006, YouTube was sold to the Google Inc. Subsequently, Chen and his friends moved to work on other projects. The video sharing app Mix-Bit and internet company AVOS Systems were two of them. In 2014, Chen joined Google Ventures. 

           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.

Continue reading “Why is it said that Pinterest was a major breakthrough in the lives of its founders, Ben Silbermann and Paul Sciarra?”

Ben Silbermann is an American entrepreneur who founded the popular application Pinterest that allows sharing of photos.

Born in 1982 into a family of ophthalmologists, Silbermann was raised in Iowa. A brilliant student, he attended the Research Science Institute at MIT, and then the Yale University from where he graduated with a degree in political science.

As a young boy, Silbermann had a fascination for collecting dried insects, stamps etc. and pinning them to card boards. It was this hobby that later gave birth to the idea of Pinterest. The site enables users to upload, save, and arrange images or videos that are called ‘pins’. Their collection is termed as a ‘pinboard’. Users can also browse other pinboards and ‘like’ them.

Prior to the creation of Pinterest in 2010, Silbermann worked at Google on its online advertising group. He left the company shortly after that, and started designing iPhone apps with his college mate Paul Sciarra. This did not work well, and soon the duo, along with their friend Evan Sharp started working on Pinterest.

The site was not successful in the beginning; it only had around 10,000 users in the first 9 months. But the following year, it shot into fame, and received media attention. Today, Pinterest has around 20 million users worldwide. 

          Canadian computer scientist James Arthur Gosling is best known to the world as the father of the Java programming language.

          Introduced in 1995, Java is a high level programming language developed by Sun Microsystems as a foundation for designing and delivering web content. Its importance is such that applications and websites will not work unless Java is installed in them. A user can download its latest version from the official website of Java. According to Oracle, the company which now owns Sun Microsystems, there are more than 3 billion mobile phones that run this programming language.

Continue reading “Why is it said that James Gosling changed the phase of IT by the introduction of Java programming language?”

Richard Matthew Stallman is an American computer programmer and an advocate for free software. He is the founder of the Free Software Foundation.

Born on March 16th, 1953, Stallman obtained a degree in physics from Harvard University, and became a programmer at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He has been an active campaigner of free software since then. The concept behind it is to distribute software in such a manner that its users receive the freedom to use, study, distribute, and modify that software.

In 1983, Stallman started working on the GNU Project. GNU is an operating system and a collection of free software. He developed the GNU Compiler Collection and GNU Emacs, and wrote the GNU General Public License (a free software license) too.

In 1985, Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation. It worked on promoting free software and development of the GNU General Public License. There also arose the concept of the ‘copy left’ agreement, providing authors a way to allow their works to be modified by users without releasing them to the public domain.

Though Stallman did not complete his PhD, he has received around 15 honorary doctorates. He is also a recipient of many international awards including the MacArthur Fellowship, Yuri Rubinsky Memorial Award, and the ACM Software System Award for the development and leadership of GCC. 

            Besides being a successful entrepreneur, Azim Premji is also a benevolent philanthropist. He founded the Azim Premji Foundation in 2001 with an aim to ensure education of universal quality to the needy. It operates across various states including Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Pondicherry, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh. The foundation mainly focuses on elementary education in rural areas.

          In 2010, Premji pledged to donate two billion US dollars towards school education in India.

         He has also established the Azim Premji University in Bangalore. It focuses on effective programmes of learning, research, and development in fields like health, nutrition, livelihood etc.

         The first Indian to sign up for The Giving Pledge, Premji has donated 39 per cent of his personal wealth to charity so far. His motto is that those who are privileged to have wealth should contribute to create a better world for the millions who are far less privileged.

          For his charitable work, the Forbes magazine named him ‘the Bill Gates of India’. In 2009, the Wesleyan University in Middletown, US awarded Premji an honorary doctorate for his outstanding philanthropic work.

           Azim Premji was only 21, pursuing his BS degree at Stanford University when his father Muhammed Hashem Premji died. Subsequently, young Premji had to return to India and take over the family business.

            The Western India Palm Refined Oil Limited, which the family owned, was set up in December 1945. It manufactured vegetable and refined oils in Amalner, Maharashtra. The main products of the company were the cooking oil brand Sunflower Vanaspati and laundry soap. The brilliant businessman in Azim soon managed to diversify the range of products and started producing bakery fat, different kinds of lights, toiletries, hydraulic cylinders, hair care soaps and baby products. The business became extremely successful under his leadership.

            Towards the 1980s, the country witnessed the growth of IT. Premji seized the day, and entered the new technology sector. He changed the company name to ‘Wipro’, an abbreviation of the former name. Collaborating with the American company Sentinel Computer Organization, Wipro started manufacturing mini-computers. In no time, the company met with success and the rest is history.

            Today, Wipro is a global provider of IT solutions and services and has over 1,40,000 employees. It has a client circle across 54 countries and revenue of $7.7 billion as of March 2016.

N. R. Narayana Murthy is a prominent figure in the field of IT for co-founding Infosys, the global software consulting company headquartered in Bangalore. Murthy has played a key role in taking the company to a global platform after serving as its chairman and CEO.

Born on 20th August 1946, in Sidlaghatta, Karnataka into a middle class family, Murthy stood out as a meritorious student since an early age. He completed engineering at the National Institute of Engineering, and his master’s degree at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. Soon after, he found himself flooded with job offers. However, Murthy chose to work at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmadabad as a chief systems programmer.

After a brief stint at the IIM, Murthy went overseas only to return to his homeland, and start a company named Softronics. It was a failure, and he joined Patni Computer Systems in Pune.

In 1981, Murthy and six other software professionals founded Infosys. He served as its CEO for long 21 years and made significant contributions. He designed and developed what is known as the Global Delivery Model for IT services outsourcing from India. Murthy was also the chief mentor of the company till his retirement in 2011.

Now he is the Chairman Emeritus of Infosys. Murthy was often described as the ‘father of Indian IT sector’.

    Nandan Nilekani is an Indian entrepreneur known for two reasons-as the co-founder of Infosys, and as the former chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).

Born on June 2nd,             1955 in Bangalore, Nandan Nilekani was noted as a promising student since the beginning. After his school education in Dharwad, Nilekani joined the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay where he completed a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering.

        Nilekani’s career began at Patni Computer Systems, where he met N.R. Narayana Murthy. In three years, he left the company with six others, and started Infosys. For two decades, he served as the managing director, president and the chief operating officer. In 2002, Nilekani became the CEO of the company, and worked till 2007. After that, he served as the co-chairman of the company’s board of directors.

        In 2009, Nilekani’s life took a different turn after he became the chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), a cabinet-ranking position. He was responsible for implementing the Unique Identity Card (Aadhar card) project in the country, that later became the biggest social project on the planet.

        His work has won Nilekani many awards including the NDTV Indian of the Year’s Transformational Idea of the Year Award in 2011, the Joseph Schumpeter Prize for innovative services in economy, economic sciences and politics and the Legend in Leadership Award by the Yale University.

       In 2009, TIME magazine named him in the list of ‘World’s Most Influential People’.

           Senapathy Gopalakrishnan or Kris Gopalakrishnan is a co-founder and the executive vice chairman of Infosys, the global IT service providing firm.

            Born on April 5th, 1955 in Trivandrum, Kris did his schooling in the Government Model Boys HSS, Thycaud. After graduation, he joined the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and obtained an M. Sc in physics and M. Tech in computer science. His career began at Patni Computers, Mumbai, where he met N.R. Narayana Moorthy, Nandan Nilekani and other founders of Infosys.

Continue reading “Why is Kris Gopalakrishnan an icon in the Indian IT sector?”

           Ajit Balakrishnan is an entrepreneur and the founder of Rediff.com, hailing from Kerala. He is currently the chairman of the successful internet company.

            Born in Kannur, Balakrishnan completed his graduation from the University of Kerala, and a Post Graduate diploma in management with a master in business studies from IIM Calcutta. It is said that Balakrishnan was a huge fan of football, and aspired to be a footballer in his childhood. But of course, he treaded a different path.

             At the age of 22, he started his first business venture, Re-diffusion. It is now known as Re-diffusion DY&R (Dentsu Young & Rubicam). In 1995, Balakrishnan founded the Rediff.com, a web portal for information, news, entertainment and shopping. The next year, the site became the first website domain name registered in the country. 

             Other than at Rediff.com, Ajit Balakrishnan has served top posts in various organizations and governmental bodies. He is also known to the world as an established writer.

             As we saw, Balakrishnan joined the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta in the start of the 1970s to do a post graduate diploma course in management with a master in business studies. Today, he is the chairman of the board of governors at the reputed institution. He has also served as the chairman to the Working Group of Internet Governance and Proliferation that comes under the Ministry of Information Technology, Government of India.

            Besides being an entrepreneur and an inspiring patron, Ajit Balakrishnan is also an established writer. He writes columns in the Business Standard, and is the author of the book titled ‘The Wave Rider’. He has also co-authored a research paper with Alkesh Patel. 

Satyanarayan Gangaram Pitroda or Sam Pitroda is one name without which the history of Indian IT and telecom sector remains incomplete. For his efforts in taking the country to the global map, Pitroda was rightly named the father of India’s communication revolution.

           Sam Pitroda was born on May 4th, 1942 at Titlagarh, Odisha. After completing master’s degree in physics and electronics from Maharaja Sayajirao University in Vadodara, Pitroda moved to the US and obtained masters in electrical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago.

           For the next two decades, Pitroda was fully involved in technology research. In 1974, he started a digital switching company called Wescom Switching. Thereafter, he made several inventions and won patents. In 1975, he invented the electronic diary, and became a pioneer of handheld computing. In 1983 he designed Compu-cards, a computer-themed card game. The following year Pitroda returned to India, and founded the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT).

           Pitroda is also credited to have democratized the telecom industry in India, by introducing public call offices (PCO) throughout the country, thereby making calls accessible and affordable to all. Till date, Pitroda has won more than 100 patents in his name. 

          Ajay Bhatt is a computer architect best known for developing the USB (Universal Serial Bus), the cable used to connect different devices. He also invented the Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) and the PCI Express. Altogether, this Indian- American owns more than 130 patents.

          Bhatt was born in 1957 in India, and lived here till his completion of graduation at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. He then moved to the US and obtained a masters from the City University of New York. In 1990, he joined Intel as a senior staff architect after which he designed the devices and technologies. He was part of the chipset architecture team in Folsom, California.

          For his contributions, Bhatt has won several awards including the Achievement in Excellence Award in 2002 for the PCI Express specification development. In 2013, he received the Outstanding Achievement in Science & Technology Award at The Asian Awards in London. The same year he won the Europe an Inventor Award too, in the Non-European countries category. The award is institute by the European Patent Office.

           Vinod Khosla is an Indian American venture capitalist best known for co-founding Sun Microsystems. It was a company that sold computers its components, software and IT services, headquartered in Silicon Valley. Khosla was the CEO and chairman of the company in the early 1980s.

           Born on 28th January 1955 in Delhi, Khosla was inspired to make a career in technology after reading an article about the founding of Intel. To chase his dreams, Khosla studied electrical engineering at IIT Delhi, and masters in biomedical engineering at the Carnegie Mellon University. He also did an MBA at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

           In 1980, Khosla co-founded Daisy System, an electronic design automation company. Two years later, he joined hands with his classmates Andy Bechtolsheim, Bill Joy, and Scott McNealy to set up Sun Microsystems. For two years, he served the company as its chairman and later quit to become a venture capitalist.

             Pranav Mistry is an Indian computer scientist known for many interesting innovations, including the Sixth Sense and the Samsung Galaxy Gear smart watch. At the age of just 35, this young man is the head of the Think Tank Team and the Director of Research at Samsung.

             Known to have developed in less than five months, Sixth Sense made Mistry a celebrity in the field of IT. The device is like a pendant which people can wear, but is a combination of a mini projector, camera, sensors and computing device. It helps users to use their fingers to interact with different objects around them. Mistry’s other inventions include the Mouseless, an invisible mouse with an infrared camera and laser; Sparsh, a way to transfer data between devices easily by simple touch gestures, and Blinkbot, a system which use users’ blink to control a robot. Yet another, Quickies are smart sticky notes that can send reminders and messages to users.

             For his works, Mistry was made the Young Global Leader, 2013 by the World Economic Forum. In May 2011 he was listed as one of the 15 Asian scientists to Watch by the Asian Scientist Magazine.

             Pranav Mistry was born on 14th May 1981 in Palanpur, Gujarat. After schooling he pursued bachelor’s degree in computer science. The bright boy then moved to the US, and obtained a master’s degree in media arts and sciences from MIT and later, a PhD at the MIT media lab. Mistry also holds a master of design degree from the Industrial Design Centre, IIT Bombay.

            After his studies, Mistry worked in various companies, including the Microsoft, Google, and NASA.

           In 2012, he joined Samsung as the director of research. Currently, he is the global vice president of the company. 

Vinod Dham is an Indian – American inventor and entrepreneur, popularly known as the father of Pentium chip.

          Born in Pune, Dham did his BE degree in electrical engineering at the Delhi College of Engineering, and a masters at the University of Cincinnati.

          In 1971, he joined a Delhi-based semiconductor company called Continental Devices as an engineer. Then he moved to National Cash Register (NCR) in Ohio. After a brief stint there, Dham joined Intel, and developed the famous Pentium processor. It was a huge success in the market, and took Dham to the position of the vice president of the Intel’s Microprocessor Products Group. He also co-founded Intel’s first Flash Memory technology (ETOX).

          He worked there till 1995, and then moved to NexGen, a startup, as its COO and executive vice president. The company was later acquired by Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), where Dham developed the K6 processor, which even briefly held the title of fastest computer processor.

          In the years that followed, Dham founded many ventures. He is currently the managing director of the Indo-US Venture Partners, as well as the CEO of Acadglid. In 2000, he was appointed to the President’s advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders by the then US President Bill Clinton. 

           Bill Gates was born on October 28th, 1955 in Seattle to William H. Gates, Sr., a prominent lawyer, and Mary Maxwell Gates.

           During his school days, Gates stood out as an ambitious and intelligent student. He wrote his first software program at the age of thirteen. It allowed users to play games against the computer.

           In 1973, Gates graduated from the Lakeside School, and won the National Merit Scholarship. He then enrolled at Harvard University. But by 1975, he dropped out of college, and started working with Paul Allen to form Microsoft. Thus, at the age of 20, he co-founded the world’s largest PC software company, and established himself as an entrepreneur.

Continue reading “Why is it said that the life of Bill Gates is an inspiring one?”