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Ren Zhengfei – The Founder of Huawei

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Revolutionary ideas are changing the way we live (of living) our lives. Humans have surpassed their genius and brought innovations which are making this world a better place. As they say, there’s no age limit for you to take charge of your life and invent something that would bring a revolution in the world. While most of today’s innovative start-ups are coming from youngsters the story of Huawei is something entirely different. The Chinese tech giant came into existence when its founder was in his forties. His determination led him to start a company which now is valued over $140 billion.

Early Life

Born on October 25th, 1944 in Anshun, China, Ren Zhengfei to a school president father and schoolteacher mother. His father worked as an accounting clerk in a government arms factory. Ren completed his secondary school and went on to attend Chongqing University in 1960. From there, he joined People’s Liberation Army research institute, to work as a military technologist in the IT unit. Due to his innovations and achievements, he was recognized at various levels and was selected to attend the National Science Conference in 1978 as a PLA delegate.

He retired from the army in 1983 after nine years when the Chinese government discontinued the whole engineering unit. After retiring, Ren went on to work with Shenzhen South Sea Oil Corporation. But soon left the job in 1987 as it was not as satisfactory work as per his talent. By the time he left Shenzhen, he had capital of about sh10 million.

The Beginning of Huawei

Ren founded Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd the same year as he left Shenzhen. With the initial investment of 21,000 yuan (about $5000) Huawei’s first business was to sell telephone exchange equipment from Hong Kong. He took the position of Chief Executive Officer and lead the company to make it the world’s third top smartphone selling brand after Apple and Samsung.

Ren Zhengfei
Image Source: www.flickr.com

Huawei focuses on manufacturing different components required for the electronic gadgets. Almost every electronic gadget is made with components made by Huawei. Apart from smartphones and small components, Huawei dominates the market in producing the highest mobile devices like routers, broadband, and 4G network devices. Huawei became the first firm to roll out 5G network across the world.

Ownership

Unlike other big firms, Huawei’s ownership is held by its 85,000 employees. All the employees hold a percentage of the company’s share. That leaves only 1.4% share stake with Ren Zhengfei valued at $450 million, as of 2010. Ren still remains the founder of Huawei and is respected by the employees.

Joe Kelly, Huawei’s VP for international media relations, says, “Zhengfei relinquished ownership of the firm to employees to guarantee its continuity and attract talent.” The company’s campus at Shenzhen in Guangdong province is surrounded with trees and makes a beautiful sight for the workers.

Unique Working Style

Huawei is probably the only company to follow a unique leadership style. Most of the decisions are made by the engineers in the company. Company’s day to day activities are run by three different executives, each one of them retains the position of CEO every six months on a rotational basis. Ren introduced this strategy which was inspired by the migration of the birds. Kelly further added, “Birds migrate in a ‘V’ formation, and engineering shows that the bird at the apex takes the heaviest burden.”
ally, this rotation system helps the company from facing bad politics. Often workers in a corporation tend to follow a certain person, which might create an imbalance among the company’s workforce. But, the rotation system gives equal chance to each one of the leaders to show their talent and take the company forward.

Investment in Research

Huawei is an active investor in innovative research projects and invests 10% of its annual revenue into R&D. The research department holds over 10,000 patents and keeps innovating each year than the previous one.

Ren is an active supporter of Communist Party of China. The company is growing rapidly and Forbes has estimated Zhengfei’s wealth at $2.1 billion. Although he is a billionaire, Zhengfei prefers a low profile lifestyle and even travels on the public transport. He lives with his daughter Cathy Meng who is also the CFO of Huawei.

The Founder of upWork – Odysseas Tsatalos

Founder, start-up, Tech Story / By
Odysseas Tsatalos
Image source: business.financialpost.com

World’s most successful business ideas are born out of personal passion, belief, and, sometimes, pain. When the spark ignites, it sets a fire in motion. A fire to create something that the world has never seen, but, will be benefited from it, the most. A true entrepreneur is not the one who works for money, but, the one who seeds the idea into the world, whose fruit will benefit the society and of course, the money will follow. Today, when unemployment is at its peak, and talented individuals are wandering in search of good jobs, a man from Greece gave a platform to such individuals to earn their living.

Early Life
Born in Athens, Greece, Odysseas Tsatalos completed a diploma in Electrical Engineering, followed by a degree in Computer Science from the National Technical University, Athens. He later joined the University of Wisconsin, at Madison, to pursue a Master’s degree and a PhD in Computer Science. With such a broad expanse of knowledge, Odysseas became a research member at IBM Almaden Research Center. Odysseas’ parents wanted him to become a doctor, but his mind was inclined towards the computers, since his childhood. His father was a lawyer by profession and had always considered Information Technology as an end of the career before even it began. However, Odysseas’ interest in computers, encouraged him to take computers as his main subject in college and led him to become one of the most successful entrepreneurs.

Birth Of oDesk

Odysseas’ first entrepreneurial venture was born out of nostalgia and pain, from being away from his school friend, ‘Stratis Karamanlakis’. While working at Intacct Corp., in the United States, Tsatalos tried to convince Karamanlakis to come and join him at Intacct Corp., which did not work out. So, he found another way. Both the friends, collaborated on a project through teleconferencing, and soon co-founded a venture they called as ‘oDesk – Online Desk’.

The concept of oDesk was simple yet so powerful that it carried the potential to provide employment to thousands of individuals all over the globe. oDesk let the businesses hire freelancers, anywhere over the globe to work on their projects online. The business seemed like a huge risk at the time, but, the novel concept made it popular among the people. Odesk freelancers are working for companies and organizations, they would have never even heard of otherwise.

Odysseas gave birth to his company with initial self-investment of $50,000, through charging his credit card. Both, Odysseas and Karamanlakis, out-sourced low-cost software developers to save money. Initially, the company faced numerous problems as various large corporations were constantly turning them down and pointed out many loopholes in their platform. One of them was not paying the workers on an hourly basis. But, one day, a computer firm approached oDesk, with the requirement of freelance software developers, who were willing to work for a cheap pay. Odysseas grabbed this opportunity and advertised about the requirement online. Soon, hundreds of freelancers, all over the world, contacted him for the gig, and oDesk took a flight.

The Success Flight

The company soon raised $29 million, and took one step ahead, in becoming the world’s largest online workplace. Odysseas took the role of Chief Technical Officer, the job he is best at, and made Gary Swart the CEO of the company. The company was officially launched in 2005. oDesk got merged with Elance, on 18th December 2013, and was renamed as Elance-oDesk. Two years later, the company got a new name, Upwork Global Inc., also shortly known as Upwork.

Upwork currently has more than 12 million registered freelancers, and 5 million registered clients. More than 3 million jobs are posted each year, which worth $1 billion. According to the expert analysts, this figure is expected to reach $5 Billion, in the next five years. The company is based in Mountain View, California, United States. The co-founder of the company, Karamanlakis, still resides in Athens and handles more than 250 full-time oDesk contractors from Athens.

William Ding Lei

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“Life is just like chocolates with liquor and you never know what’s inside”, said a man who dreamt of being an excellent mechanical engineer and is now the richest person in China. Being the most populated country, China also offers numerous opportunities to individuals to invent a product or a service that millions of people can use on the go. William Ding , the founder of NetEase, did just the same. Keeping money as his secondary target Ding aimed for something extraordinary that would evolve China.

Early Life
Born on 1st October, 1971 in Ningbo, Zhejiang, China, Ding was interested in electronics from the early age of 13. And at 16 he managed to assemble electronic parts to make six transistor radios. Ding earned a bachelor’s degree from Chengdu College of Electronic Science and Technology. Just after graduation he took a job as an engineer in the local state department. He quit that job soon to join Sybase in Guangzhou. After working there for a while William Ding decided to go on his own and start a company.

The Birth of NetEase
It was 1997 when Ding finally started his own venture with dozen other employees. The company, for first two years, focused on development of Internet applied software, one of its kind in China, a bilingual e-mail system. The e-mail system quickly earned popularity and became buzz of the town. William Ding then conceptualized and brought the company into new light by hosting a search engine platform and microblogging on NetEase. The next thing they knew was NetEase becoming the largest internet portal in China.

NetEase then ventured into their most profitable launch ever – multiplayer gaming. NetEase’s gaming portal has thousands of massively popular games one of which is World of Warcraft. Millions of players from China as well as the whole world visit NetEase to play these multiplayer games. This web portal has made Ding Lei the richest man in China with billions of net worth. Popularly known as the ‘video game billionaire’ in China Ding Lei has made it to the top by creating opportunities for himself. In one of his interviews Ding Lei said, “Smart guys seize opportunities and never let them slip between their fingers. And those who think themselves weak always wait for opportunities.” The engineering genius considered Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison as his heroes. His intellect and love for reading always made him stand out among his classmates. During his college he chose to read as many IT books as possible from the school library rather than to focus on getting high marks. Ding Lei often raised questions which would be so unique that they sounded weird.

His constant reading and practicing what he believed led him to write an entire software code unlike his other classmates. He also quit good paying job to pursue his dream.

Ding Lei’s Goals
Lei considers NetEase as a responsibility towards users, clients, investors, and employees. His aim was to make gaming enjoyable, educational and believes that the next decade will see a massive rise in e-business. William Ding believes in talent and spends both time and money to upgrade skills his employees through training. He prefers to personally recruit people from his own alma mater and other colleges and universities.

Apart from the internet business Ding Lei plans to bring the farmers who have lost their farms for factories back into business. He plans to invest in organic farming to produce quality food. He can, thus, bring some of the country’s capital towards countryside. His another share for the Chinese people is to make them literate. Lei has appointed a team who translated American college lessons into Mandarin with subtitles.

Despite of his busy schedule, Lei has particular time devoted for his study. He likes to read as many books on IT as possible and to increase his knowledge base. In 2004 he was awarded as the ‘Technology Change Agent for Innovative use of Technology’. He lives in Guangzhou with his wife Wang Xunfang.

Story of Lee Byung-chul- Founder of Samsung

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An entrepreneur is a person who has a vision that could change millions of lives and help the country grow economically at the same time. This vision brings creative ideas and creates employment opportunities helping the society prosper.

Countries like USA, China, India, South Korea and many more have made a significant contribution to the global industrial sector. When it comes to electronics and plastic market, China tops the list, top apparel, software and hardware brands are from US and South Korea is famous for electronics and automobiles industry. One man from South Korea changed the entire electronics and smartphones market when his company called Samsung came to the market with their world changing technology. The founder Lee Byung-chul’s Samsung has seen many crests and troughs all these years and today stands as a symbol of growth, innovation, and prosperity.

Early Life
Born on 12th February, 1910 in Uiryeong County in South Korea Lee was the only son of a wealthy family. His family was of landowners and left behind huge wealth for him to inherit. Chull attended Waseda University in Tokyo but left his degree incomplete. Initially, he used his inherited wealth to start a rice mill. Although he dedicated himself in this first business it failed to float and sunk without generating any major profits.
Lee Byung-chul
After the failure of his first business Chul established an export business in Daegu on 1st March, 1938 and named the company Samsung Trading Co. The company exported varieties of goods and eatables like fish, vegetables, and fruits to the regions of China. The company saw a major boom in growth as it was supplying goods throughout Korea and even to other countries by 1945. The company was then shifted to Seoul in 1947. Samsung Trading Co. was considered to be one of the ten largest trading companies during that time. But, Chul had to face another difficulty. This time, the war. As the war broke out Chul had to shift his company to a safer location in Busan around 1950.

But this shifting came as a boon for Chul. The massive influx of US army troops and the military equipment boosted his trucking business for the next year and a half. Chul also started a sugar refinery which saw the light of success quite early. After the war, he went on to set up a wool factory in 1954 in Daegu which later became the largest wool factory in the country. As the business was growing Chul ventured into various other sectors like finance, insurance, retail, and security.

Chul had a strong belief in industrialization and wanted Samsung group to become leader in every sector. It was in the 1960s that Samsung ventured into electronics industry to take over the market just like other sectors. Samsung focused on creating innovative products and soon the company released their first product – a black and white television. By the mid and late 1960s Samsung already had six divisions focused on departments like semiconductors, telecommunications, hardware, etc.

Success in the Electronics Business
In 1980, Samsung acquired Hanguk Jeonja Tongsin, a major company in telecommunications. This was the same year when the company had its own electronics division under Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. unit. The company then started producing telephones, fax machines, and various other electronic devices on a large-scale.

The founder of Samsung, Lee Byung Chul, died on 19th November, 1987 in Seoul, South Korea. But the company kept following his philosophy of large-scale expansion. The company expanded as never before setting up their plants in New York, Texas, London, etc. Samsung’s construction company garnered major projects including that of the Burj Khalifa in Malaysia.

Major Successes
Samsung raced on the top of the list as the number one memory chip production company in the whole world in 1992. Soon it also acquired second position, just behind Intel, in the chip-making industry. The year of 1995 came with a huge success as Samsung made first LCD screen revolutionizing the television hardware industry.

Samsung accounts for 15% of South Korea’s GDP (as of 2012). In the same year the company’s total revenue was a whopping $265 billion and earned profits of $26 billion. Samsung has employed over 425,000 people providing a good life for people all over the world.

Blake Ross – The Founder of Firefox

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Achieving great heights of success in a young age is not everyone’s cup of tea. A passion for work and dedication towards it is demanded rigorously. The technological evolution has made young minds sharp and enthusiastic to create more and more customer service based applications. For example, one of the most used and most preferred internet browser Mozilla Firefox is the application developed by one such genius youngster Blake Aaron Ross.

Early Life
Born on 12th June, 1985 in Miami, Florida, United States, Blake was raised by his highly qualified parents in the Key Biscayne area. His mother is a psychologist and father is a lawyer. Blake’s interest in software development arose at quite an early age. He completed his high school from Gulliver Preparatory School in Miami and graduated in 2003 from Stanford University. Blake’s first individual project was his first website named America Online which he developed at the mere age of 10. As his interest grew through the Sim City show Blake started creating small video games. And while he was graduating he simultaneously worked for Mozilla in California.

Blake’s interest in programming took a new leap when Netscape became open-source and he joined as an intern at the age of 15.

The Firefox Project
The name ‘Blake Ross’ is known as the name behind creating Mozilla Firefox web browser. Along with his two colleagues Dave Hyatt and Joe Hewitt, Ross conceived the idea of developing a user-friendly web browser. The idea was born when Ross and Hewitt were working on an open-source project. Soon, they put this idea into programming codes and developed the first version of Firefox and released it to the world on 9th November, 2004. Blake Ross was just 19 when the first version was released.

The first version of Firefox drew massive attention worldwide. Due to its user-friendly interface Firefox instantly became popular among the people and just within a month of its launch the application was downloaded 100 million times. The project saw it’s yet another success just within a year when Firefox became the most preferred web browser all over the world. He also published a book named ‘Firefox for Dummies’ on January 11, 2006.

A Parallel Venture
Along with the massive success of Firefox Ross kept working on his newer creative ideas to make internet more accessible and simple place. One such ideas Ross worked on was his startup named Parakey. Through this new user interface Ross aimed at bridging the gap between web and desktop. Parakey was developed by Ross along with Hewitt in 2006. Parakey was featured on the cover page of IEEE Spectrum Magazine in November, 2006 issue. Just a year later, i.e. in 2007, Facebook saw the potential in Parakey and purchased it for a muli-million price.

Driving Force Behind Firefox
From his early childhood interest in programming, which eventually led to the development of world’s most preferred web browser, Blake Ross has come a long way. The main driving factor behind the development of Firefox was his experiences during the internship at Netscape. He used to face lot of troubles in the browser he used to work on. And, other driving force was his mother’s frustrated experience with internet explorer. Ross then thought of developing something small yet powerful and simple to use. And, thus, was born Firefox.

Blake Ross’ Profile and Achievements
Blake’s constant working on newer ideas created a buzz among the companies. Soon after Parakey was purchased by Facebook, Blake Ross joined Facebook in 2007 and worked as Director of Product till 2013. He resigned from Facebook in 2013 to focus on his other interests. Ross has received multiple renowned awards and nominations for top magazines including the nomination for top Rave award of Wired magazine, Renegade of the year, etc. In 2005 Ross was listed on Rolling Stone magazines hot list.

Ross, from his experiences in the industry he works in, wrote a fan fiction original screenplay for HBO’s sitcom Silicon Valley. The TV series grabbed a lot of attention and went on to become popular among the audiences worldwide.

Personal Life
Ross, 30, found out back in 2016 that he has an extremely rare condition known as aphantasia. This condition takes away the ability to visualize anything. Ross wrote;

“I have never visualized anything in my entire life. I can’t “see” my father’s face or a bouncing blue ball, my childhood bedroom or the run I went on ten minutes ago. I thought ‘counting sheep’ was a metaphor. I’m 30 years old and I never knew a human could do any of this.”

Liu Chuanzhi Founder of Lenovo

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Hardships are the rigorous tests in a determined person’s life. Hardships come in numerous faces and it is this time when a human being’s ability and patience to deal and overcome the difficult time is tested. Those who come strong out of this deadly storm are the one’s who create history and make a difference in the world. Liu Chuanzhi is one such person who despite of humongous political constraints, managed to build a company which now ranks number two in the production of computers in the whole world.

Born on April 29, 1944 in Shanghai, China, Liu Chuanzhi grew up during the worst of times. Liu’s father was an executive with the Bank of China in Shanghai. However, his connections with the Chinese Communists would create a problem in Liu’s future. Liu’s childhood was encompassed with the years of unstable politics and tension in the government. In 1961, he admitted himself in Xian Military Communication Engineering College. Due to his father’s political connections Liu was not allowed to study sensitive subjects and he completed his graduation in 1966 specializing in Radar Systems. This course, however, exposed him for the first time to the computing world.

Just two years after graduation, Liu’s past yet again haunted him and sent him down for labor work. This time it was due to his anti-revolutionary ideas which led the officials to send him to work on a state-owned rice farm as a laborer and learn by living among the peasants from 1968 to 1970. By this time, the Chinese Academy of Sciences was reopened which was closed due to Chinese Cultural Revolution. Liu returned to his job at Beijing and went on to work as an engineer and an administrator. Liu provided a lion’s share in developing the 757 mainframe computer. He resigned from his job in 1984 to join Chinese Academy of Sciences – the place where the computer producing giant Lenovo would be born.

Early Days

After joining Chinese Academy of Sciences Liu stumbled upon an idea to start a computer company. But, there were multiple barriers standing in front of him and his dream. First, the Chinese government did not encourage start-ups and ran a strictly planned economy. So the funding from government was out of question. Second, for a scientist to jump into business was considered below one’s dignity and, therefore, the company Liu would start won’t have a single market expert who knows how the business should work. Despite of this barriers, Liu received a 200,000 yuan ($24,000 USD) loan from his superior at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Liu’s computer company, initially named Legend, was compared to the early days of Apple. The company’s manufacturing unit began in a small 20 square yards room in Beijing. The company worked on the research of magnetic storage technology in its initial stage. In 1985, Legend did something which no other computer company had ever done, they built a Chinese character set for computers. Since, the Chinese language consisted of huge number of characters it was almost an impossible task to bring all those characters in digital form. But, the development of a character set put Legend multiple steps ahead of any other company. Due to the lack of business knowledge the company often faced opinion problems among the members. But, Liu’s leadership and his study of other big companies like HP and IBM helped him to sketch an influential business and marketing strategy.

Legend started selling computers six years after its foundation, i.e., in 1990. And by 1996, the company climbed on top of the computer manufacturing company’s list surpassing IBM. Liu believed in young people in their energy and talent which could pave a way to keep the company on cutting edge of innovation and technology. Most of the company’s higher staff included young people during the 90s. By developing Pentium II processor Legend once again proved that they are and will always be on the top of the market.

The company saw its massive success in 2004 when they were declared as the largest PC manufacturing company. In 2006, Legend was renamed as Lenovo Group to enter into the UK and Europian market where the name ‘Legend’ was already trademarked. Legend also became the first company to join the sponsorship for Olympic Games held in Turin, Italy in 2006.

In 1995, the Chinese government honored Liu as the Model of National Work Force and Man of Reform in China. In 2005, Liu has also been listed in Time’s one of the 25 most influential global executives.