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The Success Story of Hewlett-Packard (HP)

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HP is not a new name in the IT industry, and the narrative of the company is over 80 years old. The company was founded by two Stanford graduates Bill Hewlett and David Packard, in January 1939.

The two co-founders met each other in a social outing during the time they were studying at Stanford. Both were pursuing a degree in electrical engineering and shared a common interest in starting a business after completing their education. They discussed their idea with their fellowship professor Frederick Terman at Stanford and with his supervision started working on the same.

The two started their company from Packard’s garage in Palo Alto, in 1938, with an initial capital investment of US$538, even without deciding a proper name for it. In 1939, they tossed a coin to decide the name for the company adopting the surname of their names. The toss was among Hewlett-Packard and Packard-Hewlett, in which Hewlett-Packard won.

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The first product from the company was a precision audio oscillator, the Model HP200A. It was cheap and efficient, and became one of the most successful product, commercially. The same product was also used by Walt Disney Productions, for the movie Fantasia, in certifying the Fantasound surround sound systems installed in theatres.

In 1957, the company went public in its initial public offering.

In the 1960s, Hewlett-Packard started producing the semiconductor devices for the instruments and calculators. In 1966, the company entered into a new business of computer manufacturing and rolled out the accumulator-based design HP 2100 / HP 1000 series of minicomputers, followed by the HP 9800 and HP 250 series of desktop and business computers.

In the 70s the company started producing the advanced business computers, i.e. stack-based HP 3000 computers. During the same time, the HP 2640 series smart computers were also introduced that included one of the first bit mapped graphics displays. The same computer was used to develop the first commercial WYSIWYG Presentation Program, BRUNO, by coupling the HP 2100 21MX F-Series micro-coded Scientific Instruction Set.

In the same decade, the company produced the world’s first handheld scientific calculator HP-35, world’s first handheld programmable HP-65, first alphanumeric, programmable, expandable HP-41C and first symbolic, and the graphing calculator HP-28C.

In the 80s, Hewlett-Packard expanded its business to build printers and scanners for desktop computers. With the rise of the internet, the company registered its website domain as HP.com, on 3 March 1986, becoming the ninth Internet .com domain ever. In 1989, HP acquired the Apollo Computer, and in 1995 it acquired the Convex Computers.

By 1998, the company had become one of the leaders in the desktops, laptops, and servers for many different markets. Later, it also started its online service hpshopping.com, to sell its products online, which was rebranded to “HP Home & Home Office Store” in 2005.

In 2005, due to the merger with Compaq, Hewlett-Packard was facing heavy losses in the business. In 2006, the company offered a new range of products in both hardware and software, reducing the costs. In 2007, the company’s revenues skyrocketed, and HP hit the $100 Billion mark for the first time.

In 2011, Hewlett-Packard launched its first tablet named HP TouchPad, followed by the industries’ first wireless mouse. But by the end of the same year, it announced that it won’t be operating in the tablet and smartphone business anymore, and will focus more on the Cloud, solutions and software business.

In the years 2012-13, the Hewlett-Packard faced a great decline in its profits, cutting down 34000 jobs in the same years.

In October 2014, the news of splitting up of Hewlett Packard into two separate companies came into knowledge. The two wings would do their separate business of personal computers and printer manufacturing. Finally, in November 2015, the company separated into HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, HP Inc. retaining the Hewlett-Packard’s stock price history.

Although the company has seen many ups and downs during its long journey, the vast history of HP has introduced the world with many great inventions. The company also gets credits for many patents and will be known for its contribution to the IT industry.

Richard Liu – CEO and Founder of ‘Jingdong’; Journey of a Man from Nowhere to Billions

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Every big journey has a small start. Every success story has n number of hardships and failures and so does the success story of Richard Liu have. The man who rose from multiple failing businesses and everlasting debts to fame and a business worth billions of dollars. His story speaks up that sometimes taking the wrong roads might benefit as they teach important lessons for future life.

Richard Liu (also known as Liu Qiangdong) was born on March 10, 1973, in a family having a business of coal shipping. He had a vast interest in politics, so he got enrolled in the department of sociology, in the People’s University of China. During the same time, he also studied computer programming as he realized that a degree in sociology, won’t ensure him a job.

richard liu
Image Source: Forbes

While in college, he invested his money in a restaurant venture which failed deliberately and left him in debt. He passed his degree in 1996, and after that went on to pursue a degree of Executive M.B.A. from the China Europe International Business School.

After completing his studies, Liu was first employed by a Japanese health product company and served as the Director of computers and business, alongside the logistics supervisor. In early 1988, he realized that it was the right time to step into the business world and in June, he opened a business with the name Jingdong in Zhongguancun High-tech Industrial Park in Beijing. The company focused on selling authorized magneto-optical products. By 2003, his business was blooming and he managed to open 12 stores.

In mid-2003, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) forced Jingdong employees to stay back at home, and this hit the company hard. Liu’s business fell into a great loss (losing more than 8 million Yuan) and forcing Liu to think out of the box. That’s when he met with an idea to take his business online idea took him from nowhere to the entrepreneur he is now.

In 2005, Liu founded JD.com which eventually grew his business. He closed all of the offline stores and built it a full-time e-commerce company. Richard changed the company’s focus from magneto-optical products to a whole variety of products which can be seen on the site itself.

‘JD.com sets the standard for online shopping through its commitment to quality, authenticity, and its vast product offering covering everything from fresh food and apparel to electronics and cosmetics. Its unrivalled nationwide fulfilment network provides standard same- and next-day delivery covering a population of more than 1 billion – a level of service and speed that is unmatched globally,’ the site itself says.

Richard has been involved in some conflicts too, in his personal life. He was arrested in Minnesota for sexual assault but was released a day after as the company stated the acquisitions were false.

JD currently has 15,000 plus employees and is having a net worth of a massive $57.6 billion. Liu himself has a net worth of $6.1 billion (Forbes) with all-time worth being nearly $2.1 billion. In 2017, he was #25 in Richest in Tech and in 2018, was at #30 on China Rich List 2018.

Richard Liu, the CEO and founder of Jingdong, shows us that no matter how many failures you face, it is all about getting back up, learning and fighting again. Real success comes from not giving up. Richard is an inspiration to all.

Henry Ford : The Founder of Ford Motor Company

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“Follow your passion. Following your passion will lead you to the road of success.” the most common saying that we hear today. But how many of us have the courage to do that? Only a few are there who recognise their passion and pursue it to find self-satisfaction. One such prominent personality was Henry Ford, the founder and the first chief engineer of Ford Motor Company. Henry’s passion was his love for the machines, and his passion gave inspiration to many, as his only interest led him to build an empire which is one of the biggest automobile manufacturers, today.

Early Life

Henry Ford was born on 30 July 1863, in Greenfield Township, Michigan, in a farmer’s family. His fathers family belonged to England, and his mother’s parents had moved from Belgian to Michigan. In his early childhood, he was introduced to many types of machinery used in farming, and the time he became a teenager, he became more interested in the machinery repair work than farming. He used to dismantle and repair the timepieces and became a pro at it.

henry ford
Image Source: thehenryford.org

His love for machines led him to move to Detroit and join the James F. Flower & Bros. as an apprentice machinist. Later, he joined the Detroit Dry Dock Co. at the same position.

Though he was never interested in farming, he had to move back to his hometown to work on his family farms. Here too, except the farming work, he was more involved in the other machinery work. In the same time, he learned to operate the Westinghouse portable steam engine and was appointed by Westinghouse to service their steam engine.

Career

As Henry was always interested in working with the machines, with his interest he had developed great skills, too. In 1982, to pursue his dream career he started working with the Edison Illuminating Company of Detroit as an engineer. Within two years, he was promoted as the Chief Engineer in the company. He had gained enough experience and was earning good money too, so he started experimenting with his own projects and was able to build a self-propelled vehicle naming it the Ford Quadricycle.

On 5 August 1899, Henry founded Detroit Automobile Company and launched another vehicle financed by Detroit-based businessperson William H. Murphy. Since the company could not provide the best quality of vehicles, the company was shut within two years of its inception, in January 1901.

In the month of October the same year, Henry built another 26-horsepower automobile. The vehicle was of high quality and encouraged the shareholders of the Detroit Automobile Company to invest in another newly built company named Henry Ford Company, established on 30 November 1901, where Ford became the chief engineer. But in the very next year, due to some dispute, Henry left the company.

Leaving the company did not stop Henry from manufacturing vehicles, and in 1902, he, with the help of former racing cyclist Tom Cooper, manufactured the 80+ horsepower racer “999” that participated and won a race, in the same year.

Founding Ford Motor Company

The success of “999” was enough to attract more investors, and that is what happened next. Alexander Y. Malcomson partnered with Henry to form Ford & Malcomson, Ltd. to manufacture an inexpensive automobile. Soon, other investors including Dodge Brothers also partnered with Henry and Malcomson, and they incorporated the company as Ford Motor Company, on 16 June 1903, with a capital of $28,000. The next model from the company set a new land speed record at 91.3 miles per hour that drove on the ice of Lake St. Clair.

It was the race driver Barney Oldfield who became the most important person in terms of marketing of the cars produced by the company, as he drove the “999” around the country.

The next popular model that the company produced was the T model, having a cost of around $825 (1908). It was the first car model that had steering on the left, and the engine and other machine parts were enclosed under the metal covers. The design was impressive, and various other companies copied the design.

In 1914, the recorded sales passed 250,000 units, and in 1916, sales reached 472,000. In 1927, the final total production of the T model was 15,007,034, which set a record that stayed for the next 45 years.

By the year 1918, Henry acquired the sole ownership of the company. The next hit model that the company produced was the model A, introduced in December 1927.

Henry was not only a visionary inventor but was also an excellent entrepreneur. He tried to get everything under one-roof and tried to avoid any kind of dependence on any other company. He had established an empire where he could manufacture the products from scratch. He always supported the economic independence of the United States.

In 1911, he established the first two international Ford plants in Britain and Canada, followed by the establishment of the other plants in Germany, Australia, India, and France, by the year 1920.

During the first World War Henry also invested in the aviation industry and built the most successful aircraft, the Ford 4AT Trimotor. The company also acquired the Stout Metal Airplane Company. In 1927. The Smithsonian Institution has honoured Ford for changing the aviation industry. In 1933, the aviation wing of the Ford Company was shut down due to the sales issues.

During the war, Henry was one of the 170 peace leaders who were against the war and was making efforts to stop it. In the second World War, too, he opposed America’s participation in the war.

After the death of his son Edsel Ford, in May 1943, who was also serving as the President of the company, the company started facing a kind of decline. Henry had left the Presidency over twenty years ago, and due to his son’s death, he reconsidered to regain the post. Although due to his health issues, there were only a handful of people who wanted him to take the position, he was chosen with majority votes as the President of the company. But due to bad health, he appointed his grandson Henry Ford II, as president and the company was back on the track.

Personal Life & Death

Henry had married Clara Jane Bryant on April 11, 1888, and had a son Edsel Ford, who later became the President of the Ford Motor Company.

Henry ran as a Democrat for the United States Senate from Michigan in 1918 but lost to the Republican candidate, Truman Newberry with a small margin.

He also took immense interest in the car racing and manufactured cars, especially, to compete in various races. He himself, too, participated in a few car races.

On 7 April 1947, he died of cerebral haemorrhage at Fair Lane at the age of 83.

Ford Henry will always be remembered for his contribution to the automobile industry and the leadership qualities that he possessed. He was a great inventor, and his story is a motivation for many.

Steve Case – The Founding CEO of AOL & One of the Most Accomplished American Entrepreneurs

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It is very difficult to find variety in the services in a single company, but there are possibilities for everything in the tech industry be it anything. Such possibility was put into effect by AOL (American Online) and is still doing the same, as it fulfils multi-tasks for its users. The company was not always doing this well. The man, who helped the company to rise through the ranks is Steve Case. The story of Case speaks that success is hard but not impossible to achieve.

American Online Inc. is an online service provider, headquartered in New York City. As of now, AOL is a division of Verizon Media, but it had started out all its own. It dates back to 1983 when the company started as Control Video Corporation (CVC). The company provided game consoles at a fixed cost, and after that started charging $1 per game to its users. Steve Case, initially, was hired as a part-time marketing consultant by Bill von Meister (the then CEO of the company) for Control Video and was recommended by his brother, Dan Case. At that time, the company was not in a good financial condition and was nearing bankruptcy. But then Jim Kimsey founded Quantum Computer Services from the remains of CVC.

steve case
Image Source: entrepreneur.com

Jim Kimsey hired Case as the Vice President of Marketing during the launch of Quantum Computer Services, and later, promoted him to the position of Executive Vice President. As the Executive Vice President, Steve changes the company’s strategy and introduced Quantum Link. This was an online service for Commodore 64 and 128 computers. Quantum Link, (Also known as Q-Link) was based on software licensed by PlayNet Inc. AOL had included the online games since the very beginning of its launch date. Quantum Computer Services grew in popularity during the 90s period as it became the leading internet service provider in the United States.

Kimsey saw the potential in Case and decided to appoint Case as the CEO of the company after he retires. Eventually, in 1991, when he retired from the services of the company, Kimsey appointed Case as the CEO of the company. Steve, in late 1991, renamed the company to American Online, and from then, the company began to touch new heights.

He began the journey with complete enthusiasm and with the decisions he was making for the company, it didn’t feel like he was a newly-appointed CEO. Steve made AOL pioneer in the social media concept. The instant messaging app that AOL rolled out was called out to be an absolute ‘killer’. He looked out into all the services to make them affordable, easy to use and fun for the consumers. AOL user base grew up to be as large as 26.7 million. By 2000, AOL’s worth was $125 Billion and was the nation’s biggest internet provider.

In that period, AOL was delivering a massive 11,616% return to its shareholders. It began to roll out more and more web services. Many services like e-mail, search engines, news, sports, weather etc. were introduced by AOL in the market.

Steve personally had many successful interactive online titles to his name. Quantum Space was one of the fully automated Play by email game. His other contributions were graphical chat environments, Habitat and Club Caribe. Alongside that, he induced the first Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) Neverwinter Nights.

It was 2001 when Steve negotiated the largest merger in the business history that has ever been done. Under his leadership, he managed to bring AOL and Time Warner together with AOL stockholders getting the majority stakes. The merger included more than $164 billion. The merger, however, failed as AOL – Time Warner fell into recession, followed by accounting scandals and much more. In January 2003, Steve resigned as the CEO of the company but still remained in the Board of Directors. “It took me 10 years to finally realize that the company was a success,” said Steve in an interview when asked about his time in AOL. In 2005, he resigned from AOL’s Board of Directors. AOL, in May 2015 was brought by Verizon in a deal valued at $4.4 billion.

Steve is a die-hard entrepreneur, and even after his stepping down as the CEO, he still continues to invest in upcoming entrepreneurs. He went on and became the founding chair of Startup America Partnership, which was launched by the White House to accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship through the nation. Alongside that, he was a member of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. In 2014, he was named Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship. Since then, he has been a leading voice in shaping government policies, like the passing of the JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups). He is also the Chairman of Case Foundation, that has invested in more than a hundred organizations, initiatives and partnerships. Steve has pledged to donate his major wealth for the philanthropic causes.

Steve Case, who has the spirit of true entrepreneurship, gives us the clear message that passion is what drives a person to his ultimate goals. Steve is a living inspiration and is someone to learn from if you are looking to start up your own business.

Sebastian Knutsson : The Co-founder of ‘King’ & its Sagas

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It is inevitable that games are an enormously great way to pass the time and for the recreation of mind, be it offline (real-world) or online (virtual). But since the recent years, the ‘gaming’ (virtual) industry has been putting up a lot of effort to provide the best experience, and with the games that have been rolling out, it is hard to not let the spotlight fall on them. According to IAB (Trends -2016), mobile gaming will be the one to have more than 190+ million users which clearly tells the addictiveness of the games. One such creator of ‘addictive’ games is King.com (King) which is playing a major role in providing the world what it desires. The co-founder and the Chief Creative Officer of King, “Sebastian Knutsson” shares a story of his failures and successes, and how creativity can shake the world.

King.com was founded by Riccardo Zacconi, Toby Rowland, Sebastian Knutsson, Thomas Hartwig, Lars Markgren and Patrik Stymne, in 2003, in Sweden. Zacconi and Toby, after the selling of udate.com, joined four of the co-founders to start a new venture with the help of investments of Angel Investments which were provided by Melvyn Morris.

Sebastian-Knutsson
Image Source: svd.se

The company started with Morris as chairman, Zacconi and Rowland as co-CEOs, Sebastian Knutsson as CCO (Chief Creative Officer), CTO Thomas Hartwig, Managing Director Lars Markgren and Chief Systems Architect Patrik Stymne. All but Rowland are still with the company.

King, initially, focused on the production of web browser compatible games but the company nearly went bankrupt, as it generated no profit. A key investment that saved the company arrived just a day before the doom-day by Melvyn Morris. Within two years, the company started generating revenues with them, growing from $2.60 million in 2004 to $12.21 million in 2004. In 2005, Apax invested a massive $32.68 million with Index Ventures invested $5.65 million. “We became dominant in Europe” quoted Knutsson on the achievement of King.

Knutsson, in the company, is referred to as ‘the gamer guy’ and is the key man which designs games for King. He has been with the company since the very beginning with being at the CCO post, since June 2004. He also served as the Executive Product Developer from February 2003 to June 2004. He had done his BA from Stockholm School of Economics, which enables him to have a sharp business brain. He also co-founded ‘Spray’ which became the main link between Zacconi and him. Alongside Spray and King, he founded Fjord Network AB and Midasplayer.com Ltd. He currently is an investment committee member at Sweet Capital.

It was in 2009 when King again saw a downfall in its users’ count. It was because Facebook started to suck up their lot of users with the interactive games it brought up. “In 2009 and 2010, the growth was stagnant. We had this term when we were talking about our partners, as being ‘F by F’” said Sebastian, mocking their situation back in the day.

In October 2010, the company was revised and shook up the whole system within. The company wanted to integrate with Facebook. The web team was slashed in half, releasing coders to work on five new projects to crack Facebook.

Knutsson was the lead to all this. “We knew we had to manage the transition with improving the communication internally, managing that risk of trying to pivot and make sure the staff were part of that journey and understanding why we are doing it,” he added. Out of five games, one game was in vain, three did okay, and one did all the work that was required. These ‘saga’ games required very little of time investments, unlike the Zynga games. This, turned out to be very successful for the company, as the game ‘Bubble Witch Saga’ managed to gain more than 10 million players and became one of the most played games on Facebook. Their next release, which emerged from the Stockholm Studio of Knutsson, Candy Crush Saga topped the Charts, be it the Facebook or the play store. The game was all over, and this helped King in their IPO.

Knutsson refers to the ‘Saga’ concept as a very simple one. “It is the simplicity that is the strength, not its complexity.” “Candy Crush was our strongest game on Facebook; we knew we had to get it right.” Candy Crush and its Saga proved to be a gem for King as the game was played by more than 93 million people, more than a billion times daily in December.

As of now, King has 13 studios in different locations, is generating revenue of US $1.59 billion, net income of US $575 million (2014). Company’s valuation at IPO is 7.1 Billion. Sebastian owns more than 17 million shares of the company. (Third most in the company)

The life story of Sebastian Knutsson, the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of King.com, clearly shows that creativity never lets you down. He claims to have designed 10 out of the company’s 15 worst games ever but still leads the company to the best.

Linus Torvalds : The Creator & the Principal Developer of the Linux Kernel

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Necessity is the key to invention, and the story of Linus Torvalds is the greatest proof to that. A student and an enthusiast programmer from Helsinki University started working on his own Operating System when he was unable to buy a basic UNIX system that costed around US$5,000 at that time. Although it was a modest effort of improving the small clone of UNIX, his creativity and curiosity led him to build a whole new and free OS software, Linux, which accidentally became an alternative to the Microsoft monopoly.

Early Life

Linus Torvalds was born on 28 December 1969 in Helsinki, Finland. His father Nils Torvalds and mother Anna Torvalds, both worked as journalists. His parents named him after the Nobel Prize-winning American chemist, Linus Pauling. Torvalds was 11 years old when he got familiar with computers and the BASIC programming language. This was the time when he grew an interest in computers and coding. Soon, he was able to write codes for his own assembler and editor, as Finland was not a place where software were easily available. Later, he also developed a few games, including the clone of Pac Man, naming it the Cool Man.

linus-torvalds
Image Source: zdnet.com

Torvalds joined the University of Helsinki in 1988, where he studied Computer Science as his majors. But within the first year of his college, he joined the Finnish Army Uusimaa brigade and completed the 11-month officer training program, as the Second Lieutenant, under the mandatory military service of Finland.

After completing the military training, Torvalds came back to his home town, to resume his college. While in college, he got introduced to Unix for the first time. At the same time, he also started studying a book named ‘Operating Systems: Design and Implementation’, written by the computer science professor Andrew Tanenbaum, which described the educational stripped-down version of Unix, ‘MINIX’.

Founding Linux

In 1991, he bought the Intel 80386-based clone of IBM PC, having a 33MHz Intel 386 processor and a huge 4MB of memory. The system came with the MS-DOS operating system, that according to Torvalds did not do justice with the 386 Intel Processor. As he was already working on UNIX in the college, he was not much comfortable with working on MS-DOS but getting a UNIX copy too expensive. This led him to the other alternative for the OS, and he ordered a copy of MINIX for his system.

MINIX was faster than MS-DOS but still had some flaws. So he decided to make some changes to MINIX in order to improve the OS. To work on the idea, even before receiving his MINIX copy, he went into the depth of Unix and studied books covering all the aspects of the development phase. He started with writing a small piece of code that could improve MINIX. This also became the M.Sc. thesis project for Torvalds, and he titled the project as ‘Linux: A Portable Operating System.’

On Aug. 25, he posted to the internet’s Minix newsgroup, saying, “Hello everybody out there using MINIX – I’m doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like GNU) for 386 (486) AT clones. I’d like any feedback on things people like/dislike in MINIX, as my OS resembles it somewhat.”

Eventually, with great hard work, Torvalds managed to release the first version of the OS, i.e. 1.0, on September 17, followed by the second version, i.e. 2.0, on October 5, in the same year. The second version OS was a text-based user interface and was officially named as Linux. Torvalds put the 0.2 version over FTP and used Stallman’s GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2) for his Linux kernel so that other developers could use it and modify it for further improvements.

Developers from across the world also became curious about Linux, started working on the same, resulting in rapid improvements to the platform. Even being a student at Helsinki University, Torvalds was doing really well. The college authorities appointed him as an instructor at the University, which helped him continue his development work for Linux.

By 1996, people started using Linux on their systems, and by 1997, Linux was installed on over three million computers. Organisations like NASA, Dell and IBM were also using Linux. At the same time, Red Hat started building software based on Linux, that boosted the popularity of Linux even more.

In 1999, when Red Hat went public, the company presented Torvalds with stock options in gratitude for his creation, making him an overnight millionaire. Also, when IBM started its research work on Linux in 2001, to support this free software, a few other companies also stepped in to do the same.

Today, Linux is serving those people, who need to use a computer, but cannot and does do not want to spend a huge amount on the other operating systems. According to Torvalds, he started working on Linux for fun, and it is also a fact that for almost a decade, he was working on it for free. Linux, certainly, is the result of his dedication and brilliance.

Personal Life

Torvalds is married to Tove Torvalds and has three daughters. In 2010, he obtained US citizenship. In 2000, he became interested in scuba diving and have received many certificates in the same. He also launched Subsurface, a software for logging and planning scuba dives, in 2011.

In 1998, Torvalds received an EFF Pioneer Award. He also shared the Takeda Award for Social/Economic Well-Being with Richard Stallman and Ken Sakamura. In August 2005, Torvalds received the Vollum Award from Reed College. He also received an honorary doctorate degree from Stockholm University.

Torvalds also founded the distributed version control system Git, in 2005. The system is widely used to track the changes in source code during software development.