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Caterina Fake : One of the Most Influential Women in Silicon Valley

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In the past more than 15 years, Flickr has been the best Photo and Video hosting platform across the world. It allows you to share and host your pictures online, becoming the most favourite photo sharing website among all. At a time there was nothing like Flickr and then the idea of creating it hit two cleaver minds; Caterina Fake and her ex-husband Stewart Butterfield. Caterina is among the Time’s Magazine’s 2006’s list of 100 Most Influential People and was awarded the Silicon Valley Forum’s Visionary Award (2018).

Early Life

Caterina Fake was born on 13 June 1969, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As a child, she had a keen interest in poetry and classical music and was not allowed to watch TV. She became familiar with computers and the internet through her friends.

She went to Choate Rosemary Hall to pursue her high school and attended Vassar College to do her B.A. In English. Meanwhile, she was also an alumnus at Smith College.

Career

Even being an Arts student, her interest in computers and programming, led her to grab a job as the lead designer at one of the first web development companies, named as Organic Online. She worked on the first online ventures of many famous companies including McDonald’s, Nike, Levi’s, etc.

Caterina fake
Image Source: wikimedia.org

Caterina also operated as a research staff member of ‘Interval Research and in 1990, served as the Art Director at Salon.com, where she played a key role in creating an online community, social software, etc. In 1997, Caterina started working at Netscape, managing its community forum.

Founding Flickr and Rise as an Entrepreneur

In 2002, Caterina, along with Stewart Butterfield and Jason Classon, founded a company and, named it Ludicrop. Together, they created a Game Neverending, that they somehow, could not launch. Later, she started working on a new project named as Flickr with Stewart and, launched it on 10 February 2004. Soon after its launch, it became a hit and Yahoo acquired it in 2005 along with Ludicorp, paying an amount of $25 million. Later, Yahoo! added more features to Flickr, like social media integration, community open APIs, tagging, etc to enhance its functionality. In the same year, Caterina also joined Yahoo! as the head of a Technology Development group, Hack Yahoo! along with Brickhouse.

After leaving the job at Yahoo, on 13 June 2008, Caterina started working on a new project named as Hunch, which she co-founded with an entrepreneur Chris Dixon, in June 2009. The website was acquired by eBay in 2011 paying $80 million. In 2012, Fake launched a website named Pinwheel later renamed to Findery, which is her latest venture.

Caterina won Business Week’s Best Leader of 2005, followed by Forbes 2005 eGang and Red Herring’s 20 Entrepreneurs under 35 awards (2005). In 2006, she appeared on the cover of Newsweek magazine. She has also received two Doctorate degrees (Honors), one from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2009 and another from The New School 2013.

Caterina was a member of the board of directors of Creative Commons and for a time period, also invested in and chaired the Board of Etsy.

Personal Life

Caterina Fake was married to Stewart Butterfield the co-founder of Flickr and her business partner, for 7 years (2001-2007) and the two have a daughter together. Currently, she is living in San Fransisco, with her boyfriend Jaiku the co-founder of Jyri Engeström and their three children.

Maurice Flanagan – The Founding CEO of Emirates

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Emirates, world’s number one airlines that have been consistent in maintaining their position on the top for past many years. It is known for providing the world’s best customer service. The company was founded in 1985, with just two aircraft that carried the passengers from and to Dubai, connected with other operators. Emirates is a subsidiary of the government of Dubai and had received $10 million as the startup capital from it. This money was used to lease their first two aircraft from Pakistan International Airlines, along with some technical and administrative support.

The Founder

The founder of Emirates, Maurice Flanagan, was born on 17th November 1928, in Leigh, Lancashire, England. He started his high school at the Leigh Boys Grammar School and then, was transferred to Lymm Grammar School as the World War II broke out.

After completing his high school, Flanagan went to Liverpool University to do his Bachelor’s in History and French and, performed his National Service in the Royal Air Force as a navigator commissioned officer. In November 1951, he received the rank of pilot officer, and in the March of 1954 Flanagan was promoted to the post of flying officer and served as the same, for two years.

Maurice Flanagon
Image Source: www.asiatraveltips.com

Flanagan wanted to become a professional football player. Blackburn Rovers showed an interest in nurturing Flanagan’s talent and take him towards his dream. But, unfortunately, during one evening outing, Flanagan suffered a knee injury that became the reason for his degrading football career.

As his athletic career came to an end, Flanagan started working as a management trainee, with the BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation) and worked in the parts of Kenya, Sri Lanka, India, UK, and Iran. Flanagan worked with BOAC for 25 years, before the launching of Emirates, in 1985. He also had a flair for writing and even won a TV playwriting competition in 1969, organized by a newspaper named Observer. Kenneth Tynan, an English theatre critic and writer, invited him to write for the National Theatre, but, Flanagan chose to go for an airline career as it seemed more secure.

The Dubai Government looked up to Flanagan’s years of experience in the airline industry and were impressed by his talent. So, they appointed him to launch the Emirates. The company was an immediate success, as it recovered all of its initial investment money just in the following year.

The Success Flight of Emirates

Emirates carried more than 260,000 passengers in the year of the launch itself and, promised to grow even further at a staggering rate. Just in the next year, the company launched its services to Southeast Asia and Egypt. And the next year, their expansion reached 11 destinations, with regular flight services. During the first decade, the company reported an average of 30% growth each year and, declared profits for seven years.

Currently, the company has the largest fleet of Boeing 777s, the biggest aircraft in the market, and Airbus A380. Emirates maintain an average age of each aeroplane to about 6.3 years and, is committed to sustaining that standard. Emirates flight services run for 142 destinations in 78 countries.

The central hub of the airline is located at one of the most beautiful airports in the world i.e. Dubai. Emirates are also popular and widespread in the South and Southeast Asia regions. In India itself, the Emirates serves to 9 Indian airports and is the most preferred airline among the businessmen. It’s in-flight, as well as ground services, are commendable. Even economy class passengers get top-class services including comfortable sitting and in-flight entertainment, etc..

Personal Life

Maurice Flanagan retired from executive vice chairman post on April 2013. In his 35 years of service, the airline witnessed staggering growth and profits. He was recognized as Personality of the Year by Flight International Magazine.

He married a journalist named Audrey Bolton in 1955 and gave birth to three children. He has five grandchildren. He died on 7th May 2015 at the age of 86 at his home in London.

Jack Dorsey – The Founder of Twitter

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Today, every successful entrepreneur aims towards giving the world something which will make the lives of people easier. In order to achieve success, an entrepreneur must think of benefitting the people in any way possible. Therefore, with the help of technology, several apps are being launched which are bringing the world closer. One such entrepreneur is Jack Dorsey, who has made a tremendous contribution to bringing the world closer with his revolutionary ideas.

Early Life

Born on 19th November 1976 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, Jack Dorsey was a computer lover from the early years of his life. His parents Tim and Marcia Dorsey continuously supported and encouraged his passion for computers. Tim worked as an engineer in a company manufacturing mass spectrometers, while Marcia was a housewife.

In his teenage years, Jack spent hours studying the early versions of IBM. His first ambitious idea was to build a live map of New York City, displaying small moving dots, which would represent ambulances, taxis, police vehicles, fire brigades, etc. After moving to a new place Jack would go on long late night walks in the city to get a visual idea for his map.

Jack Dorsey
Image Source: wikimedia.org

As a child, Jack faced a stuttering problem while speaking, so he used to keep quiet most of the time. But, taking control over this weakness was what made him a survivor and ready to face more difficult challenges and how to solve them. Therefore, he would sign up for various oratory competitions. After several failed attempts, he finally managed to speak normally.

Jack attended high school at Bishop DuBourg in St. Louis, Missouri. Then he further went to attend the University of Missouri of Science and Technology, but, soon transferred to New York University. He was an active member of computer club during his high school. Jack’s first computer programming experience was at the age of 14 when he wrote few programs for taxi dispatching and firefighting services. He made this programs using an open source platform and they are still used by some taxi companies even today.

Early Career

Jack initially applied for an internship at Mira Digital Publishing Company in the summer of 1991. And just within a few weeks, he was leading a team of programmers. This was quite a sight when a teenager was leading a team in their thirties. His second company was Dispatch Management Services Corp. Jack got a job at this company in an unusual way. He hacked the company’s website and contacted the manager explaining the loophole in their company’s software. He was immediately hired as a programmer and here’s where Jack was first introduced to an idea which would later become biggest social networking platform – Short Messaging Services (SMS). He also learned about a program through which a dispatcher could track the movements of couriers in real time.

This led him to move to Oakland and start his own company of dispatching taxis and emergency services, through the internet. However, the dot-com bubble left him jobless and for the next five years, he focused on freelancing.

Birth of Twitter

Later, with the idea of SMS, he was hired by ODEO, which specialized in Internet Startups. Here Jack met other talented programmers including Biz Stone. Jack discussed his idea of short messaging services with Stone, and they both went on to make the first prototype of Twitter. On March 21, 2006, Twitter took first entry into the microblogging service when Jack twitted the very first tweet, “just setting up my twttr”. The service was officially launched for the public in June 2006.

When ODEO ran into financial crises, it also caused a funding problem for Twitter. But, Fred Wilson soon showed interest in the company and offered Jack about a half-million dollars cheque. Later, Evan Williams and Noah Glass also came aboard Twitter. As per a recent survey, by SimilarWeb analytics tool, Twitter gets 2.2 billion visits per month.

Founder of Square

Jack did not stop at the success of Twitter but moved on to create some more exciting projects. His next successful venture was set up in 2010 called Square – a café POS system and mobile payment company. The unique feature of this product is its size. It is small square-sized hardware, which is inserted into the headphone jack. It has a magnetic reader to read credit/debit cards. Due to its small size and great potential Starbucks invested $25 million, on August 8th, 2012 in Square.

Jack Dorsey is counted as one of the most successful and genius people in the world. As of 2015, his net worth was calculated to be $2.3 billion. Today, Twitter is actively used by politicians, celebrities, and artists across the globe. And, Square is on the path to change the mobile payments industry.

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.

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.

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.