Tech Billionaires: The Five Most Influential Geeks on Earth
Their technology drives our lives and our businesses. These super execs have changed the world and continue to do so
You wake up in the morning and one of the first things you do is pick up your Smartphone to check for messages and missed calls from the middle of the night – when, honestly, no one should be called.
After checking your phone, you log on to your computer to check your email. Upon emptying your inbox of the several emails you’ve received in the last 8-10 hours of sleep (4-6 if you’re me), it’s time to get on the internet and search for the nearest coffee shop – because you’re out of Colombian gold.
If you’re a social media fan, then you’ve probably checked your status updates on Facebook at least six times in the last 15 minutes.
All totaled, you’ve just done four things that have made technology billionaires rich via a society of people doing the same thing.
Bill Gates – Microsoft Corporation
If you’re talking about technology, the first man that comes to your mind is Microsoft guru William Henry Gates III. We all know Gates the magnate, but I prefer to remember him as a geeky high school kid who hacked the school computer to make sure all the cute girls were in his class. He’s certainly the most successful Harvard dropout in history, leaving that storied institution to start Microsoft in 1975.
When Gates and Microsoft launched Windows in 1985, it sparked the beginning of a technology revolution that continues to evolve to this day. There isn’t a home, office or business that doesn’t have some kind of Microsoft component in it.
Windows has evolved in at least a dozen different ways, and PC users continue to rely on Gates for the operating system that their computer runs on, whether it’s Windows 7, Vista or XP. Windows 8 is currently being developed, so Gates’ stock can only rise higher.
Up until recently, Gates was the richest man in the world with a net worth of $53 billion – he’s now #2, trailing another person in this column. These days, Gates spends most of his time giving away his money through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Steve Jobs – Apple Inc.
If you own a Macintosh computer, iPhone, iPod or iPad, feel free to thank Steve Jobs. Jobs may not have the monetary girth that Gates possesses, but from a technology revolution standpoint, Jobs has been every bit Gates’ equal.
Jobs and his partner Steve Wozniak started Apple in 1976 and introduced people to the Apple I, II, Power Mac and Macintosh computer. When Microsoft burst on to the scene in the mid-1980s, Apple took a hit in profits as more gravitated towards Gates’ product, but the resurgence of Macintosh in 1998 with the iBook, iMac and Power Mac G4 made Jobs and Apple players again.
Three years later, the world was introduced to two more innovations: Mac OS X, an amazingly user-friendly operating system, and the iPod, a digital music player that revolutionized how people purchase and listen to music. Today there are three main models of the iPod (the Nano, the Shuffle and the Touch).
Of course, you can’t talk Apple and Steve Jobs without mentioning the most revolutionary piece of mobile hardware: the iPhone. The iPhone debuted to a frenzy of consumers that saw what the phone could do via blogs and YouTube, and just had to have it. Now, the iPhone is one of the most popular Smartphone’s (if not the most popular) in the world.
Larry Ellison – Oracle Corporation
In the 1970s, Larry Ellison, who had worked for the Ampex Corporation, built a database for (among other agencies) the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Later in the decade, Ellison decided to take what he had built and make it universally accessible.
Ellison took $1,400 of his own money and made his database, that he called “Oracle,” publically available. Ellison was not without the same hiccups that other start up CEOs had in the 1980s and 90s; the New York native had to compete with companies in those decades like IBM and Sybase.
In 1994, Informix Software took over Sybase and became Ellison’s chief rival, but severe revenue losses in 1997 gave Ellison victory in that battle. Ellison and Oracle continued to have success until Microsoft came into the fold with their SQL Server – which only runs Windows, of course.
Despite all of that, Ellison is still widely considered a pioneer in database systems, and his $27 billion net worth illustrates that he must have been doing something right.
Larry Page – Google, Inc.
As much as I’m inclined to talk about one particular Web site that started a new era (Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook), there’s another Web site and company that should be mentioned first.
Larry Page started Google back in 1998 with Sergey Brin and today, Google is the #1 search engine in the world. It is almost impossible for a computer user to go one day without logging on to Google.com for one reason or another.
Google runs on more than one million servers in data centers and handles over a billion search requests every day, and with good reason. It was one of the first of its kind and incredibly easy to use.
Page and Google’s newest cash cow is the widely popular Android mobile operating system that is quickly rivaling Steve Jobs and his Apple iPhone. After starting slowly, Android sales have eclipsed Blackberry sales becoming the #2 mobile operating system in the world. Additionaly, Google Chrome is a relatively new Web browser that is rivaling other browsers like Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.
Carlos Slim Helu – Telmex, América Móvil and Grupo Carso
It would be naïve to think that there are only technology billionaires in the United States. Technology is a global industry, and there are plenty of opportunities in the field.
Carlos Slim Helu took that advice and has eclipsed Bill Gates as the richest man in the world with his telecom empire in Mexico. Slim led a group of investors when buying Telmex and Telnor from the Mexican government during the presidency of Carlos Salinas. Today, 90 percent of the telephone lines in Mexico are operated by Telmex, and Telcel, the mobile company Slim also controls, operates 80 percent of the country’s cell phones.
Slim has expanded his business even further with wireless carrier América Móvil as that reaches across Latin America, and with over 100 million subscribers it is the primary telecom company in the region.
When it comes to technology, there are the middle-men and the little guys who have done their parts to contribute to the new wave of electronics and gadgetry in the last 25-30 years. Then, there are the men who are the big fish in the large ocean of the technology industry.
These men are the great white sharks. These men are blue whales. These men are the ‘Moby Dicks’ of the industry.
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