Jack Ma, originally Ma Yun, (born September 10,
1964, Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China), Chinese entrepreneur who was
head of the Alibaba Group, which comprised several of China’s most
popular Web sites, including the business-to-business marketplace
Alibaba.com and the shopping site Taobao.com. Ma failed the entrance exam
for the Hangzhou Teachers College twice. (His weak point was mathematics.)
He was admitted on the third try, in 1984, and he graduated with a bachelor’s
degree in English in 1988. From 1988 to 1993 he taught English at the
Hangzhou Institute of Electronics and Engineering (now Hangzhou Dianzi
University). In 1994 he founded his first company, the Haibo Translation
Agency, which provided English translation and interpretation. He
founded China Pages, which created Web sites for Chinese businesses and was
one of China’s first Internet companies. From 1998 to 1999 Ma was head of an
Internet company in Beijing that was backed by the Ministry of Foreign Trade
and Economic Cooperation. He felt, however, that if he remained with the
government, he would miss out on the economic opportunities that the
Internet was bringing. Ma persuaded his team at the ministry to go back to
Hangzhou with him and found the Alibaba Group, which launched a Web
site that facilitated deals between small businesses. Ma was convinced that the
small-business-to-small-business Internet market had much greater potential
for growth than the business-to-consumer Internet market had. Small
businesses paid a membership fee to be certified as trustworthy sellers on
Alibaba, with a greater fee being charged to businesses that wished to sell to
customers outside China. In order to instill confidence in online sales, Alipay
was created (2003) to act as a third party in transactions. Growth of Alibaba
was rapid. In 2005 it attracted the attention of the American Internet
portal Yahoo!, which bought a 40 percent stake, and in 2007 Alibaba.com
raised $1.7 billion dollars.
Steve Jobs, in full Steven Paul Jobs, (born February 24,
1955, San Francisco, California, U.S.—died October 5, 2011, Palo Alto, California),
cofounder of Apple Computer, Inc. (now Apple Inc.), and a charismatic pioneer of
the personal computer era.
Founding of Apple
Jobs was raised by adoptive parents in Cupertino, California, located in what is now
known as Silicon Valley. Though he was interested in engineering, his passions of youth
varied. He dropped out of Reed College, in Portland, Oregon, took a job at Atari
Corporation as a video game designer in early 1974, and saved enough money for a
pilgrimage to India to experience Buddhism.
Apple I
Back in Silicon Valley in the autumn of 1974, Jobs reconnected with Stephen Wozniak, a
former high school friend who was working for the Hewlett-Packard Company. When
Wozniak told Jobs of his progress in designing his own computer logic board, Jobs
suggested that they go into business together, which they did after Hewlett-Packard
formally turned down Wozniak’s design in 1976. The Apple I, as they called the logic
board, was built in the Jobses’ family garage with money they obtained by selling Jobs’s
Volkswagen minibus and Wozniak’s programmable calculator.
Jobs was one of the first entrepreneurs to understand that the personal computer would
appeal to a broad audience, at least if it did not appear to belong in a junior high
school science fair. With Jobs’s encouragement, Wozniak designed an improved model,
the Apple II, complete with a keyboard, and they arranged to have a sleek, molded
plastic case manufactured to enclose the unit.
Bill Gates
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This article is about the co-founder of Microsoft. For other people of the same name, see Bill
Gates (disambiguation).
William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate,
software developer, investor, author, and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft,
along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen.[2][3] During his career at Microsoft, Gates
held the positions of chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), president and chief
software architect, while also being the largest individual shareholder until May
2014.[4] He was a major entrepreneur of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and
1980s.
Gates was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. In 1975, he and Allen founded
Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It became the world's largest personal
computer software company.[5][a] Gates led the company as chairman and CEO until
stepping down as CEO in January 2000, succeeded by Steve Ballmer, but he remained
chairman of the board of directors and became chief software architect.[8] During the late
1990s, he was criticized for his business tactics, which have been considered anticompetitive. This opinion has been upheld by numerous court rulings.[9] In June 2008,
Gates transitioned to a part-time role at Microsoft and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation, the private charitable foundation he and his then-wife, Melinda
Gates, established in 2000.[10] He stepped down as chairman of the board of Microsoft in
February 2014 and assumed a new post as technology adviser to support the newly
appointed CEO Satya Nadella.[11] In March 2020, Gates left his board positions at
Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway to focus on his philanthropic efforts on climate
change, global health and development, and education.[12]
Since 1987, Gates has been included in the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest
people.[13][14] From 1995 to 2017, he held the Forbes title of the richest person in the world
every year except from 2010 to 2013.[15] In October 2017, he was surpassed
by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who had an estimated net worth of
US$90.6 billion compared to Gates's net worth of US$89.9 billion at the time.[16] As of
September 2022, Gates had an estimated net worth of US$114 billion, making him the
fifth-richest person in the world.