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Soichiro Honda : The Founder of the Honda Motor Company

Founder, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

Some achievers are not only achievers but are also the trendsetters. Those trendsetters bring a revolution in their field and get their name registered in the history for their contribution to the world. One such trendsetter is the Japnese Engineer, Soichiro Honda. It would be difficult to find even a single person who is not aware of Honda Motors or hasn’t seen a Honda vehicle. The owner of the company of 100,000 people, did not have an easy ride, but without struggles, there can’t be any progress.

Early Life

Honda was born to a blacksmith, Gihei and a weaver, Mika, on November 17, 1906. His father ran a bicycle repair business. Honda was never interested in the traditional education and used to forge his family’s stamp on the school grade reports, using a rubber bicycle pedal cover. Honda once went to see a demonstration of an aeroplane, that made him fascinated about machines and grew a love for them.

Soichiro Honda
Image Source: youberelentless.com

Career

Honda’s career did not start very smooth. He was just 15, when he moved to Tokyo, and joined a motor garage, as a mechanic. He worked there for over six years. In 1928, he moved back to his hometown and started his own repair business, at the age of 22. He became more interested in automobiles and motor machines, becoming engaged among new experiments with the engines.

Building Honda Motor Co. Ltd.

In 1937, he started producing piston rings for the major car manufacturing Toyota, under his newly founded company, T?kai Seiki. After two years, the second world war occurred and two of his factory plants, of T?kai Seiki, got destroyed in a US B-29 bomber attack (1944) and in an earthquake (1945). After selling the salvageable remains of the company to Toyota, for ¥450,000, in October 1946, he founded the Honda Technical Research Institute. He became the president of the company and stayed the one until he retired in 1973.

Honda designed a mass-produced engine, that he used in the Type A motorised bicycles, that his company sold till 1951. In 1949, he manufactured the first model in the Dream series of motorcycles, that became a landmark of Japanese Automotive Technology. Just in a few years, his company’s turnover was in billions, and it became an MNC, producing the bestselling bikes, in the world. Soon, his company motorcycles were competing with the sales of Triumph and Harley-Davidson. Honda Motors opened its first abroad plant in the US, in 1959.

Even after he retired from his post of President in 1973, he remained as the director of the company and became the supreme advisor of the company, in 1983.

Personal Life & Death

Honda was married to Sachi Honda till his death. His only son, Hirotoshi Honda, followed his lead and became an entrepreneur. He was the CEO of Mugen Motorsports, that produced original racing vehicles.

Honda was very active as a sports person even at the age of 77. He and his wife loved outdoor activities like golf, hang-gliding, ballooning and skiing. On August 5, 1991, Soichiro Honda died, due to liver failure.

Honda has made an impact on the industry of personal motor vehicles and was listed, among the 25 most intriguing of People magazine, in 1980. He was awarded the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun, in 1991, and even got established Soichiro Honda Medal by ASME, in his name. The medal is given for the outstanding achievements or significant engineering contributions, in the field of personal transport motor manufacturing.

Ted Turner : The American Media Tycoon and Co-founder of CNN

Founder, Inspiration, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

In every century, there comes a person who brings a revolution to the world and the world witness a new wave of development, after such revolutions. A similar person revolutionized the television industry from 1980 onwards. From starting a 24-hour news channel to broadcasting films, sitcoms and gifting the children with their favourite cartoon channel, this man named Ted Turner, is a television and media magnate.

Early Life

Born on 19th November 1938, in Cincinnati, Ohio, Ted Turner’s original name is Robert Edward Turner III. He was born to parents Robert Edward (Ed) Turner Jr. and Florence (Rooney) Turner. He was the eldest child in the family. His father owned a company, Turner Advertising, which sold billboard ads. His father suffered from bipolar disorder, experiencing mood swings, and vented out his anger on young Ted. After years Ted found out that he too suffered from bipolar disorder just like his father.

Ted was left alone in the Cincinnati boarding school after his father signed up for Navy when World War II broke out. Ed came back after the war and moved to Savannah, Georgia, with his family. He enrolled Ted into Georgia Military Academy. Ted attended McCallie boarding school, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he received military training. He wanted to attend the United States Naval Academy, but his father wanted him to attend Harvard. Due to low grades, he had to join the Brown University, in 1956. In 1959, Ted was kicked out of the University for having a woman in his dorm room. He could not earn his diploma and the same year his parents, too, got divorced.

The beginning of Business Career

Ted, then came back South, in 1960, and took up the position of general manager at his father’s company. He was the general manager of Macon, Georgia branch of Turner Advertising. Just in his first year, Ted showed tremendous growth and doubled the revenue of the company. But soon, the company was in a difficult financial condition, when his father bought the company’s competitor, in 1962. This led him into depression and he committed suicide, in March 1963.

Ted Turner
Image Source: Forbes

After this shocking incident, Ted engrossed himself more in work. He took the positions of president and CEO at the age of 24, and consequently, made the company a global enterprise. The company boosted in financial profits and was considered to have a monopoly in Savannah, Macon, Columbia, and Charleston. In 1969, Ted bought several Southern radio stations and renamed the company as Turner Communications. He sold the radio stations and purchased a couple of struggling television stations. By 1970, Ted Turner became famous as the owner of the largest advertising company, in the southeastern United States. His investment in television channels proved highly profitable as he believed that people wanted several choices. He also purchased rights to old movies, sitcoms, and some cartoons.

But it was in 1976, that a big leap occurred when the FCC gave him the permission to use satellite technology to transmit content to local cable providers. This led Turner to reach an even larger audience. Now, with more audience base and even more broadcasting options, Turner changed the company’s name yet again to Turner Broadcasting Company. He was constantly on the lookout for new business ideas and expanding his broadcasting to larger and larger audiences. It was in the late 1970s when he came up with an idea of starting a 24-hour news network. And in 1980, he launched Cable News Network (CNN) with the help of Reese Schonfeld who was then appointed as the first president and chief executive officer of the channel.

Throughout the years, Turner was constantly investing to expand his business horizon. In 1976, Turner acquired Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), and in 1992, he launched Cartoon Network, which went on to grow one of the most famous cartoon channels, all over the world. In the same year, he launched Turner Network Television and Turner Classic Movies, which made him the leader in both television and internet fields. In 1996, he sold his company to Time Warner for a whopping $7.5 billion. He ventured into yet entirely new business just the next year i.e. a steakhouse serving bison named Ted’s Montana Grill.

Personal Life

Ted Turner married three times and is divorced all the three times. He is the father of five children from his first two marriages. Two from his first wife, Judy Gale, and three from his second wife, Jane Shirley Smith. His most famous marriage was with the actress Jane Fonda, that lasted for ten years and broke over religious disagreements. He is known as the individual owner of largest land in North America.

Eugene Kaspersky : Russian Entrepreneur & Cybersecurity Expert

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The innovations in the technology have taken the human way ahead of his time. Today, the use of internet has increased tremendously, as the service is reaching to every corner of the world. And, the wireless technology is increasing this expansion, like never before. But, every innovation has an anti-hero, which makes things worse in the system. The similar anti-hero, in the internet place, is a virus. It has become a potentially dangerous threat that can bring down huge companies just in a matter of hours or sometimes less than that.

But, humans have always found a solution to the problem. Our capability of solving issues is unmatched and therefore, we are the most genius brains on this planet. A solution to eradicate, and even avoid, such dangerous viruses is an ‘anti-virus’. Today, world’s biggest cybersecurity companies are constantly developing programs to make the internet and the computers a safer place. Kaspersky is one such leading company, founded by a cybersecurity expert and a math genius, Eugene Kaspersky.

Early Life

Kaspersky was born on 4th October 1965 in Novorossiysk, Russia, to an engineer father and historical archivist mother. His family moved to Moscow when he was just nine. Kaspersky became interested in mathematics at an early age. He also got attracted towards technology, which would prove beneficial for him in his future. As his interest grew in mathematics, he started participating in competitions and soon, he won the second prize at the age of 14, in one of those competitions. The same year, he went to attend A. N. Kolmogorov School, specializing in mathematics, run by Moscow University.

eugene kaspersky
Image Source: http://www.abc.net.au

Two years later, at the age of 16, Kaspersky got selected for a five-year program, with the technical faculty of KGB higher school. He was to be prepared for intelligence officer for the military of Russia and KGB.

In the year 1987, Kaspersky graduated in mathematical engineering from the Institute of Cryptography, Telecommunications, and Computer Science, Moscow. During his graduation, he gave special attention to cryptography and upcoming computer technologies.

Early Career

Kaspersky started working at a cryptography institute, sponsored by KGB. During this time he was introduced to computer viruses and quickly got attracted to solving these threats. His interest got serious when he first discovered a virus called Cascade Virus, in 1989. He went forward to analyze the virus and developed his first antivirus disinfection program. He kept on finding new viruses and subsequently, kept developing disinfection programs for the same.

He left the research institute in 1991 and took a job at Information Technology Center of KAMI, where he worked on his antivirus program full-time. Kaspersky set a base for what would be known as Kaspersky anti-virus company. He worked on AVP (Antivirus Toolkit Pro), which was also improved by his colleagues at KAMI. He released the product officially in 1992 and the product was sold to 10 clients, per month, bringing in the revenue of about $100. His clients mostly included companies from Ukraine and Russia.

Founding Kaspersky Anti-Virus

In 1997, Eugene Kaspersky decided to set up his own company. He co-founded AVP, along with his wife Natalya. This was due to the boost in sales, the product witnessed from 1994 when Hamburg University placed Kaspersky’s antivirus software at the first place. And, in 1995, Kaspersky’s software was only one software, which could get rid of the Chernobyl virus which made the software even more famous.

In 2000, AVP was renamed to Kaspersky Anti-Virus after its business was weakened, as an American man registered the AVP trademark. Soon, the company started growing in terms of employees and its software capabilities.

Finding Harmful Threats

Over the time, Kaspersky gained phenomenal success and fame by discovering cybersecurity threats. They brought down harmful threats one after another. The company hired a researcher, who discovered the Stuxnet worm, which destroyed Iranian centrifuges. In 2012, the company discovered another Stuxnet like virus called Flame.

Kaspersky was also successful in bringing down a group of hackers, Carbanak, who was stealing money from the bank. Kaspersky then became an internationally famous cybersecurity Russian company. Eugene Kaspersky became the CEO of the company, in 2007, and from 2012, he started working on software to protect important infrastructures, like power plants from cyber-warfare.

The company has over 3000 employees and has annual revenue of $711 million. Today, the company’s evaluation has reached $1 billion.

Personal Life

Kaspersky has a net worth of 1 billion dollars, and currently, lives in Moscow, Russia with his wife and five children. He divorced his first wife and the co-founder of the company, in 1998. After the incident, when his son was kidnapped, in 2011, Kaspersky travels with bodyguards.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin : The Intellectual Friendship Behind Google

Founder, Google, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

It is a bit difficult to imagine that a college research project can land you to own one of the biggest companies in the world. But, why not? If you are applying your knowledge and efforts in the right direction, unusual things can happen to you. Same goes for the success story of two college mates, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who joined their hands for a college project and are now leading the most powerful company in the world together.

Early Life

Larry Page was born on March 26, 1973, to Carl Victor Page Sr., a computer science professor, and Gloria Page, a computer programming instructor. He lived with his parents and elder brother in East Lansing, Michigan. He grew among the people, who loved computers, and eventually, developed an interest in the same, at an early age. After graduating from East Lansing High School in 1991, he joined the University of Michigan, and did a degree in Computer Science, followed by a master’s degree in the same from Stanford University.

On the other hand, Sergey Brin was just 6 years old when his parents brought him to the US, from the Soviet Union, in 1978. At that time his family has faced a tough time. He joined the Montessori School in Adelphi, Maryland for some time, but left the school to continued his education at home. Later, in 1993, Brin attended the University of Maryland and received a Bachelor’s degree in Science. In 1994, he went to the Stanford University to study Computer Science.

The BackRub Project

After his post-graduation, Larry enrolled in the PhD program, at the Stanford University. At the time he became interested in exploring the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web. Larry met Brin during the orientation program for the new students and became close friends.

page_brin
Image Source: vox-cdn.com

Brin was looking for a topic for his PhD thesis project and found Larry’s project the most convincing. He joined Larry for the research and both published a research paper, “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine”. Ultimately they developed BackRub a web crawler to crawl the backlinks on the web, along with the PageRank algorithm.

In the beginning, both turned their hostel rooms into their lab and office, to create a search engine, based on the PageRank algorithm. The search engine became very popular among the internet users at the university. In 1996, they released the initial version of Google for the users at the Stanford University.

Founding Google

Page admits that he understood the importance of the project only in mid-1998. The popularity of the search engine made him buy more servers to handle the searches. Brin and Larry received their first investment from Andy Bechtolsheim, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, who wrote them a cheque in the name of Google, Inc., worth $100,000. At the time, they did not have a registered company with that name.

In 1998, they finally officially registered Google, Inc. as their company, Larry becoming the CEO of the company and Brin the President of the company. By June 2000, Google became the most comprehensive search engine, indexing one billion Internet URLs. It grabbed the attention of many angel capitalists and raised funding in millions.

New Ventures & Acquisition

In 2005, Google acquired Android for $50 million. This acquisition mainly aimed at the convenience for the user to use Google at any place at any time. In 2008, Larry and Brin with T-Mobile launched the first phone embedded with Android OS, named G1. By 2010, Android became the most popular OS for smartphones beating Apple’s iOS.

Following the lead of Facebook, the team launched a social media platform Google+. The most important products of Google includes the AdWords, YouTube and Gmail. It also owns the Google Chrome web browser and unveiled a Chromebook laptop in 2012. Google as a company has also launched a series of smartphones that are as popular as its rival companies Apple and Samsung.

Personal Life

Both Page and Brin, live in Palo Alto, California, U.S. Page is married to Lucinda Southworth since the year 2007 and have two children with her. Brin was married to Anne Wojcicki for 8 years (from 2007 to 2015). They also have two children together.

Currently, Page is serving as the chief executive officer and Brin is the President in the Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc, that they co-founded in 2015.

Terry Gou : The Founder & Chairman of Foxconn

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Terry is also called the Trump of Taiwan for his resemblance to the former in the matter of wealth, influential business empires and the number of marriages. Always avoiding the media attention this business tycoon knows how to handle the competition as well as the market pressure. Even being a part of many controversies, he never failed to amaze people with his tactics. By never compromising the quality, Terry’s Foxconn has become one of the biggest electronics contract manufacturing companies.

Early Life

Gou was born on 8 October 1950, in Banqiao, Taipei County, Taiwan. His father was in the police. His parents moved from China to Taiwan in 1949, when the civil war occurred in China. Terry is the elder son among the three children of his parents. Later, his brothers Tai-Chiang Guo and Tony Guo also became successful businessmen of Taiwan.

Terry Gou
Image Source: forbes.com

Gou received a proper high school education followed by a college graduation. Until the age of 24, he tried his luck in every kind of jobs, from working in a rubber factory and at a grinding wheel, to working in a medicine plant.

Founding of Foxconn

After working at the various places, in 1974, Gou started a company named Hon Hai, in his hometown in Taiwan. He investing $7500, rented a shed and employed ten elderly persons as his first workers. His company produced the parts of television sets. In 1980, he received his first big order of making console joysticks, from Atari. After completing a big order, an encouraged Gou thought of expanding his business and approaching many other big companies. So he flew for an eleven months long business trip to the USA.

Despite being uninvited at many places, Terry’s stubbornness helped him to break into companies and receive many orders from them. He was even kicked out of many places several times. His determination made him grab other greatest opportunities and hence, he managed to establish his largest factory in mainland China, in Shenzhen, in 1988.

Terry was hardworking and was always aware of his goals. His hard work paid off and he soon bagged many big deals with multinational companies like IBM, Blackberry, Intel, Playstation, HP, Apple, etc. Today, he is one of the biggest tech giants and in 2016, Forbes listed his net worth at US$10.6 billion. Along with Foxconn, he also owns the HMD Global, that sells Nokia branded phones.

Personal Life

Terry has lived a controversial professional as well as private life. He has been in the spotlight for his sharp comments and also for his affairs. One of his affairs also led him to a blackmail situation. Even the police were involved which later got control of the situation, but, the case ruined his reputation.

Terry was married to Serena Lin. In the year 2000, he started an educational charity with Lin and donated one-third of his wealth to charity. Lin died in 2005 from breast cancer. He has a son and a daughter with her.
Later, he married Delia Tseng, on 26 July 2008. Tseng is a choreographer by profession. The two have three children together. Terry and Delia have decided to donate 90% of their wealth to charity.

Pip Jamieson : The Founder & CEO of The Dots

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The 21st century has brought many revolutionary changes across the globe. Today, female entrepreneurs are competing, shoulder to shoulder in the male-dominated sectors. Now each field is witnessing several such brilliant women exploring, creating, and leading, amazing businesses and inspiring women across the world.

One such female, Pip aka Phillipa Jamieson, from the United Kingdom, has set up a company named ‘The Dots’, which is also popularly known as ‘LinkedIn for Creative people’. She is a passionate, enthusiastic, and always on the lookout for great collaborators.

Early Life and Career

Pip, being dyslexic, struggled with everything, in her early years. Her father worked in the creative industry, which groomed her to become interested in the creative field. When everyone believed she would choose the creative field as a career, her rebellious nature led her to do a degree in Economics. She topped the batch and proved that she could do anything, even if she was dyslexic. Later, she was appointed by the UK government as a fast-stream economist. She joined the government, but, soon left the job to pursue a career in the creative industry.

In the Creative Industry

Pip, initially, worked for the Brit Awards in London and then worked on various roles, while working at MTV, around the world. The idea for Dots arose when she was working with MTV. As a head of marketing at MTV, Pip was finding it really hard to connect with great creative talent and service providers. Also, her colleague Matt Fayle working as a digital director for Viacom in Australia was being asked by creatives for advice on how to set up an online portfolio.

Pip Jamieson
Image Source: startups.co.uk

The creative industry is all about connecting and finding perfect talents. And with the boost of the internet, setting up an online platform for creative people and the ones searching for such talents could prove a boon to the industry. Pip and Matt’s vision was to bridge the gap between the talent and the client creating a commercial outcome.

Pip worked in the creative industry for over 13 years before founding The Dots. She held senior positions in MTV Australia and New Zealand. In 2009, she co-founded The Loop, a leading professional networking site for the creatives in the region. The site has more than 67% of Australian creative people registered. She left The Loop in 2014, to start her own venture.

On 25th September 2014, Pip Jamieson launched her most ambitious and daring business- The Dots. Pip aims to take over LinkedIn as she believes that the future belongs to the creatives. She firmly believes that the speed at which this world is being automated robots will replace most of the jobs/ But, one thing a robot cannot do is to be creative as a human being. Therefore, The Dots serves a great promising future for creative individuals and the whole industry.

The Dots has joined hands with the top UK brands including BBC, Net-a-Porter, Spotify, TATE, V&A, Vice, Jamie Oliver Media Group, AKQA, Liberty, Conde Nast, Sony Music, Virgin Group, and many more. The company plans to expand in Europe and then slowly to the United States.

In an interview, Pip said, “The Dots is set to revolutionise how creatives and businesses connect, collaborate and commercialise; helping to build stronger, more profitable and diverse creative sectors around the world.”