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Max Levchin

Max Levchin: A Visionary Tech Founder of Affirm

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Max Levchin is a Ukrainian-American software engineer and entrepreneur. He co-founded the business that later became PayPal in 1998. Levchin contributed to PayPal’s attempts to combat fraud and co-developed the Gausebeck-Levchin test, one of the initial commercial applications of a CAPTCHA challenge response human test. Max also co-founded Affirm along with Nathan Gettings, Jeffrey Kaditz, and Alex Rampell.

Early Life

Max Levchin, who was born into a Jewish family in the USSR, immigrated to the US with his parents as refugees when he was very young. Levchin talked about overcoming obstacles as a child in interaction with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang. Doctors questioned his prospects for survival because of his respiratory issues.

Max Levchin
Image Source: forbes.com

To increase his lung capacity, he started playing the clarinet with advice from his parents and grandmother. He decided to earn his degree in computer sciences from the University of Illinois. Soon after receiving his degree, Max partnered with Peter Thiel to establish what they referred to as “the digital wallets” through their company, Confinity. Later on, the pair transformed this into Paypal. Hugely successful PayPal was quickly acquired by eBay.

Success Story

Since the late 1990s, Levchin has started or co-founded a number of technology businesses. His first business, Confinity, merged with Elon Musk’s X.com to form PayPal, adding Levchin to the group of popular investors and businessmen known as the “PayPal Mafia” who previously held executive positions at PayPal. He also created Slide.

The slide was an app that allowed users to post photos on Facebook and Myspace. It was later acquired by Google, which shut it down after a while. Levchin also served as the CEO and Chairman of HVF, a startup lab centered on extracting insights through recordable information,” according to Crunchbase.

In 2011, he established HVF, which represents “Hard, Valuable, and Fun”. Levchin co-founded Glow, a data-driven fertility startup, which is owned by HVF. The business provides a female fertility tracking iPhone app. As a part of the inaugural portfolio of startup studio HVF, Max Levchin, Nathan Gettings, Jeffrey Kaditz, and Alex Rampell established Affirm.

Affirm is a publicly listed financial technology firm with its headquarters in San Francisco, USA. The business, which was established in 2012, provides installment loans to customers at the time of sale to help them fund purchases. He also made investments in numerous other companies, including Yelp and Evernote.

He still makes consistent investments in new businesses through SciFi VC.SciFi VC is a venture capital firm founded by Levchin. The firm was started through HVF Labs. It makes investments in early-stage organizations whose viability is based on challenging technical achievements, network effects, and intricate, highly regulated sectors.

From 2012 until 2015, Levchin served as a member of Yahoo’s board of directors. Levchin became the first executive from Silicon Valley to be selected for the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) advisory board in 2015. From 2006-2016, he also served on the board of Evernote. Levchin’s projected net worth in 2021 was just over $3 billion.

Andrew Grove

Andrew Grove: Man behind the success of Intel Corporation

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Andrew Grove was an American entrepreneur, engineer, and novelist who was born in Hungary. At the age of 20, he fled communist-run Hungary and relocated to the US, where he completed his education. Later, he was appointed CEO of Intel Corporation, where he played a key role in building the business into the largest semiconductor producer in the world.

Andrew Grove
Image Source: cnbc.com

Early Life

Andrew Grove was born in Hungary and spent a significant portion of his early years evading the Nazis by using a false identity. Grove fled the 1956 Hungarian Revolution for Austria and immigrated to the USA together with thousands of people from Eastern Europe.

Andrew Grove came to the United States in 1957 with very little money and minimal English language proficiency. While attending City College of New York to study chemistry, he had a job as a busboy. He did well in every other subject but English, in which he received mediocre grades.

At the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in California, a group of disgruntled researchers led by William Shockley included Gordon Moore, Bob Noyce, and Andy Grove. But Shockley’s poor leadership style led to discontent among his research group. They ultimately disbanded and started their own business, Fairchild Semiconductor.

Grove began working for Fairchild Semiconductor as a researcher after receiving his Ph.D. in 1963. By 1967, he had advanced to the position of assistant director of development. He became acquainted with the early stages of integrated circuit research through his work there.

Success Story

In 1968, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore co-founded Intel, after they and Grove left Fairchild Semiconductor. Grove started off as the business’s director of engineering and assisted with setting up its early manufacturing processes. In 1997, he subsequently take over as chairman and CEO of the business, helping Intel along the road to becoming one of the key players in the information economy and a billion-dollar firm.

Even though Intel invented the majority of the memory types in use at the time, including EPROM, Grove was forced to make significant changes in 1985 as a result of declining demand for their memory chips caused by the Japanese “dumping” of memory chips at prices below cost.

As a result, he decided to stop making DRAMs and concentrate on building microprocessors. Grove and Earl Whetstone, Intel’s sales manager to IBM, were instrumental in convincing IBM to only utilize Intel microprocessors in all of its new personal computers. In 1979, Grove was named Intel’s president.

He later became the company’s CEO in 1987 and its chairman of the board in 1997. In its first year, the company’s revenue was $2,672; and in 1997, it increased to over $20.8 billion. Grove is recognized for transforming Intel from a memory chip manufacturer into the leading global manufacturer of microprocessors for personal computers, servers, and general-purpose computing.

Andrew Grove oversaw a 4,500% gain in Intel’s market value from $4 billion to $197 billion during his time as CEO, elevating Intel to the seventh-largest corporation in the world with over 64,000 employees. The majority of the corporation’s profits were put back into R&D and the construction of additional facilities in order to create better and faster microprocessors.

Jonah Peretti

How Jonah Peretti built a billion-dollar company Buzzfeed?

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Internet entrepreneur Jonah Peretti is co-founder and CEO of BuzzFeed, the company, which was formerly renowned for online quizzes, “listicles,” and pop culture pieces has developed into a global internet and technology organization that covers a range of subjects, such as politics, Crafts, animals, and business. He was the co-founder of The Huffington Post, and creator of the “Reblog” project, which pioneered reblogging.

Jonah Peretti
Image Source: theverge.com

Early Life

Jonah Peretti’s life appeared to be fairly typical until he founded the billion-dollar media giant BuzzFeed. He earned an environmental studies degree from UC Santa Cruz and found work as a teacher in New Orleans.

His passion for viral media was then kindled following an email argument with sportswear giant Nike. Before going to MIT to acquire his master’s, he spent over three years instructing computer science. During his time at MIT, his email conversation with Nike regarding a request to print “sweatshop” on specially ordered shoes became viral.

Read More: The Success Story of the Founder of The Huffington Post

Nike continued to cancel the order after several emails back and forth, so Peretti copied the emails together and forwarded them to a select group of pals. His idea became an initial email forward and eventually reached millions of people at a time when the idea of “going viral” hadn’t yet been coined.

Success Story

In 2005, Jonah Peretti co-founded the Huffington Post with Arianna Huffington after meeting her through the widely circulated Nike email. Peretti founded BuzzFeed as a side gig soon after HuffPost was acquired by AOL for $315 million in 2011. In November 2006, Peretti launched the “Internet popularity contest” website BuzzFeed.

After quitting HuffPost, Peretti started a full-time job at BuzzFeed. BuzzFeed began as an Instant Messenger bot. The bot distributed links to groups of buddies after identifying trendy content online. Although the website was initially recognized for its blend of listicles and internet memes, it was the first to report that John McCain will support Mitt Romney in the 2012 Republican Primary.

After then, the website kept expanding and the following year raised over $35 million in capital from investors. The website received an additional $50 million in funding from the investment firm Andreessen Horowitz in August 2014, almost doubling its prior fundraising rounds. According to Peretti, BuzzFeed’s audience has roughly doubled every year since its start.

Over 400 employees now work for the website thanks to Peretti, who Business Insider once dubbed “the web’s king of viral content.” Over a short period of time. Ben Smith, a well-known political journalist, was even hired by Peretti in 2012 to help develop Buzzfeed’s more serious journalism.

By 2021, BuzzFeed News had invested years into developing its investigative reporting, and it had been awarded the National Magazine Award, the George Polk Awar, and been nominated for the Michael Kelly Award. BuzzFeed news crew was a nominee for a Pulitzer Prize in the foreign reporting category in 2018. In 2021, BuzzFeed received the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for a series of investigations into the Xinjiang detention camps.

Shou Zi Chew

Shou Zi Chew Success Story: From Ex-Facebook Intern to TikTok CEO

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Shou Zi Chew is the CEO of TikTok. He was the former CFO of ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok. He is in charge of the app’s government and public relations, cybersecurity, and legal compliance issues. His effort has helped TikTok achieve one billion downloads globally, inadvertently helping launch the career of many individuals.

Shou Zi Chew
Image Source: gadgets360.com

After working for Goldman Sachs for two years, he joined the then-young investment business DST Global before taking the helm of the Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi.

Early Life

He graduated from University College London with a bachelor’s in economics before enrolling in Harvard Business School to obtain an MBA in 2010. Chew spent two years as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs after graduating from UCL. Chew made the decision to continue his education in 2008.

He was awarded a fellowship to study at the esteemed Harvard Business School. It was a wise decision for him to continue his study. His two-year MBA program at Harvard, which placed a strong emphasis on real-world skills, gave him the expertise he needed to achieve his goals.

Success Story

Chew’s education at UCL served as a launching pad for his career at the prominent investment bank Goldman Sachs. From that point on, the TikTok CEO simply kept moving up the corporate ladder. Chew claimed in a post on the Harvard Alumni website that he worked for a company that “was called Facebook” while he was a student.

Read More: Success Story of Dyslexic Kid becoming Billionaire

Shou Zi Chew had interned at Facebook which was just a startup at that time. He also spent five years working for the Russian IT tycoon Yuri Milner’s investment company DST. While he was working there in 2013, he managed a team that later became an early investor in Bytedance.

In 2015, he was appointed CFO of the Chinese smartphone juggernaut, Xiaomi. Shou Zi Chew assisted in securing significant funding and guided the business throughout its 2018 IPO, which turned out to be one of the biggest tech IPOs in the country. He was also named the president of Xiaomi’s global business in 2019.

He left the CFO position in April 2020, but he continued to serve as the company’s International Business President until March 2021, after which point he completely severed ties with Xiamoi. Shou Zi Chew acknowledged having a history with ByteDance dating back to when he assisted in making investments in the company about ten years ago.

Chew was hired as the CFO of ByteDance in March 2021 After two months, TikTok named Chew as the CEO of the company citing his strong grasp of the business and the industry. Kevin Mayer, the previous CEO, had left the organization just after three months of serving the role due to criticism from politicians regarding the platform’s security issues.

Chew left his position with ByteDance in the latter part of last year to concentrate on TikTok. With more than 1.2 billion monthly active users, TikTok has continued on its path of explosive growth under Chew’s direction.

Do Won Chang

Do Won Chang: The success story of the founder of Forever 21

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Do Won Chang is an American businessman of Korean descent. Together with his partner Jin Sook Chang, he established the popular clothing retailer brand Forever 21.

Do Won Chang
Image Source: failurebeforesuccess.com

Early Life

Do Won Chang was born in Seoul, South Korea. He developed a strong work ethic early from an early age. He never went to college. Growing up, he worked at coffee shops before launching his independent coffee delivery business. Don Chang and his wife Jin Sook immigrated to the United States in 1981.

They worked almost 19 hours every day to sustain themselves after arriving in Los Angeles. Chang had to work multiple jobs at once. He held jobs as a janitor, a gas station attendant, and a barista in coffee shops. However, after settling in the United States for some time, he realized that a career in fashion might be his passport to success. He observed that all the rich people around worked in the fashion industry.

Success Story

The pair was able to save $11,000 after working three years in the country. They started a 900-square-foot clothing boutique. Do Wan Chang opened his first clothing store in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1984 utilizing the earnings from previous jobs.

He promoted it to his fellow Korean Americans under the name Fashion 21. Sales increased tremendously from $35,000 to $700,000 in just the first year of the launch. But as the company prospered, he desired to increase the diversity of his customers. In order to draw in more people, Chang renamed his store Forever 21.

By 2013, there were over 480 outlets and $3.7 billion in sales. With $4.4 billion in worldwide sales in 2015, Forever 21’s sales hit an all-time high. In 2016, the business generated $4.4 billion in revenue and employed 43,000 people over 790 outlets throughout 48 nations, including his home South Korea.

Do Won Chang and his spouse successfully built Forever 21 utilizing their own resources. Many business owners around the world are inspired by their success. Unfortunately, in 2019 the company sought bankruptcy protection as a result of the rise in internet merchants. Forever 21 remains one of the most well-known brands in the world, despite this.

Do Won claimed that he values his family more than any other standard of achievement. Linda and Esther, his two daughters, are also working for the company. Riley Rose, a line of cosmetics and accessories sold in Forever 21 stores, was founded by Esther and Linda Chang.

Forever 21 has been sued numerous times in recent years for allegedly violating the copyright of designers like Diane Von Furstenberg and Gwen Stefani. The family has never, however, been held accountable for copyright violation. In fact, jewelry designer Alexis Bittar was ecstatic when they began selling inexpensive replicas of his jewelry because he saw it as praise that someone considered his ideas were significant enough to replicate.

Chang and his spouse immigrated to the United States with only a high school degree,  In order to provide for his family, he worked three jobs. The pair put forth a lot of effort early on and never gave up. Their success story suggests that anything is possible if one has faith in themselves.

Kevin O’Leary

Kevin O’Leary: Success Story of Dyslexic Kid becoming Billionaire

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Kevin O’Leary, also known as “Mr. Wonderful,” is a Canadian entrepreneur, businessman, and television personality. O’Leary was a co-founder of SoftKey Software Products, a tech business that offered software for family entertainment and education. 

Kevin O'Leary
Image Source: techstory.in

Early Life

In 1954, Kevin O’Leary was born into a middle-class household. His mother was a skilled investor. Most of Kevin’s business insight comes from his mother. She gave him important financial and economic lessons at a young age. These ideas were Kevin’s guiding principles and the cornerstones on which he eventually construct his empire.

Kevin O’Leary experienced additional difficulties in school when he was growing up due to dyslexia. When O’Leary was a student at St. George’s School, his dyslexia started to hinder his academic performance. He had trouble reading and doing simple addition and multiplication problems.

He had to use supplemental tools to keep up with the learning content because his teachers did not assist him as they were unaware of his dyslexia. While pursuing MBA, O’Leary interned for Nabisco. O’Leary started a short-lived stint as a TV producer after leaving Nabisco. He co-founded Special Event Television(SET) with two of his fellow MBA classmates.

SET produced original sports programs as a freelance television production firm. With small television programs, soccer movies, sports documentaries, and quick intermission ads for nearby professional hockey games, the company had only little success. Later, for $25,000, one of the partners bought out Kevin’s portion of the business.

Success Story

In 1986, O’Leary established Softkey in a Toronto basement with partners Gary Babcock and John Freeman.SoftKey made hostile takeover approaches to buy competing businesses in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including Compton’s New Media, The Learning Company, and Broderbund. Later, SoftKey changed its name to The Learning Company.

Softkey’s well-known position in the software sector finally aided “Mr. Wonderful” in becoming a millionaire. In 1999, Mattel recognized the software company’s absolute supremacy in the market and decided to acquire Softkey for an astounding $4.2 billion. 

In 2003 he joined “StorageNow Holdings,” a company that builds climate-controlled storage facilities, as a Director and co-investor. In 2007, the company was acquired by InStorage REIT for a staggering $110 million. O’Leary sold his shares in the company, which had a starting value of $500,000, for close to $4.5 million.

After experiencing incredible success at his software firm, Kevin began appearing on television. He soon established himself as a popular host and personality on a variety of programs, including CBC’s Dragons’ Den and Shark Tank.

Later he took control of his capital from his unreliable money managers and established his own mutual fund business, O’Leary Funds. Since then, Kevin has established O’Leary Fine Wines and a best-selling financial literacy book series.

In 2014, Kevin established the O’Leary Financial Group, a collection of companies and products that adhere to his core values of transparency, simplicity, convenience, and, excellent value.

Kevin O’Leary is a passionate supporter of environmental rights and makes an effort to invest in companies that share his views. He even co-hosts Project Earth on the Discovery Channel, a program dedicated to combating global warming. O’Leary also ran for the position of Canadian Conservative Party leader in 2017. Despite being in the lead, he withdrew one month prior to the election in April.