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Melanie Perkins : One of The Youngest Female CEOs of Tech World

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“Persistence is what makes an idea to happen,“ the answer given by the CEO and co-founder of Canva when asked about the secret of her success at such a young age. A teenager, who was disturbed with the complexity of the designing software including Photoshop and InDesign, had never thought that she would find a $1b opportunity in this complexity. One of the youngest female CEOs, and that too of two multi-million companies, Melanie Perkins’s hard work and struggle taught her a lot about leadership and running a business.

The Career Timeline & Founding Canva Inc.

Perkins was born and brought up in Perth, Australia and was a student of commerce and communications at the University of Western Australia. At the age of 19, she started teaching graphic designing to University students. With the time, she realised, that it was way too difficult to teach those students how to use those heavy software rather the designing itself. She was frustrated with the fact that it takes almost 22 clicks to export a high-quality PDF.

MelaniePerkins
Image Source: snappystreet.com

Those difficulties, that her students were facing, made her think of developing an easy to use platform for them. She decided to convert her idea into a functional website at a small level to test its potential at a smaller scale. She raised a sum of money, that she borrowed from her relatives, to pay the software designers to build the platform.

In 2007, she along with boyfriend Cliff Obrecht, founded Fusion Books, an online platform on which various schools could design their yearbooks. Only in a few years, Fusion Books became the largest Year Book publisher of Australia. Perkins even had to drop out from the University to completely focus on the website. The website soon became widespread in France and New Zealand, too.

Perkins knew that the scope of designing is unlimited, and it would be better for her if she focuses on using the same idea on a larger scale. In 2010, she decided to raise funding for her next big idea Canva and flew to California to pitch the idea in front of the major investors of Silicon Valley.

The very first investor whom she met was the San Francisco based investor and founder of MaiTai, Bill Tai. Although she wasn’t successful in getting funding from him, her idea was convincing enough to make Mr Tai help her meet other investors. But, it took three years for her to receive the first round of funding of $3 million for Canva and finally, in 2013, she launched it with the help of Cameron Adams, third co-founder of Canva and a hardcore Googler, who now serves as the Chief Product Officer of Canva. Cameron Adams is also among the first investors of Canva along with Lars Rasmussen and Matrix Partners.

The three years of her struggle taught her how to sell, how to recruit, and how to build a business. And her hard work turned out to be most fruitful for her. Just after one year of the launch of Canva, it had 750,000 users, and in April 2014, the company welcomed Social-media and technology expert Guy Kawasaki as its chief evangelist.

In 2015, Canva was launched for the businesses as Canva Work, a professional tool for designing. In 2017, the company reported its revenue to be four times, i.e. $AU 23.5m. Currently, over 200 people are working for Canva, and it has 10 million users across 179 countries. It has its headquarters in Sydney and Manila, and an office in San Francisco. In 2018, the company was valued at $1 billion, and Perkins became one of tech’s youngest female CEOs.

Currently, Perkins serves as the Chief Executive Officer and Director of Canva, Inc.

Martin Dougiamas : The Man Behind the Open-source LMS Moodle

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

Martin Dougiamas is the Australia based educator and computer scientist, who founded one of the world’s biggest learning management system. Dougiamas has always been a keen learner, and despite lack of facilities, he was able to fulfil his desire for learning. A voracious reader and a lover of speculative fiction, he is a believer of sharing knowledge. Brent Simpson described him as “one of the rare instances in Open Source software development, where the right person with the right personality appears at exactly the right time; Martin Dougiamas is the Linus Torvalds of the LMS world and his software is the Linux of this software.”

Early Life

Dougiamas was born on 20 August 1969, in Perth, Australia. He spent most of his childhood in a deserted area in Western Australia, where, there was no facility for even basic education. He received his primary education at his home and studied from the material dropped from the aeroplane. He then joined the Kalgoorlie School of the Air, under distance education. As it was a distance learning school, he visited the school only a few times; sometimes for the school projects and a few times for the exams. He always missed being in a classroom with his classmates. At the age of ten, he became interested in wireless and internet technologies and studied books based on them.

Martin Dougiamas
Image Source: Flickr

After a few years, his family moved back to Perth, where Dougiamas joined West Balcatta Primary School and Balcatta Senior High School. He received a master’s degree and PhD from the Curtin University, Australia.

Career

At the age of 17, Dougiamas started working at Curtin University, where he taught the staff about the usage of various web applications. The internet and computers were the latest technologies that were emerging at that time, and he realized that it is not an easy task to teach people about those technologies and utilize them for teaching and learning.

The university installed the newly built learning management WebCT, one of the first learning management systems of that time, at its campus. Dougiamas was asked to improve its functionalities. But, his experience with the software was not a pleasant one, due to the restriction and software’s intellectual property rights.

Founding Moodle

Soon, Dougiamas joined the university as a student and started working on the development of a set of online tools for distance education, as the part of his PhD thesis, “The use of Open Source software to support a social constructionist epistemology of teaching and learning within Internet-based communities of reflective inquiry”. The tools he was developing for online education were soon adopted at a bigger level, and he had to eliminate them from his PhD thesis.

The first site developed on Moodle was of Peter Taylor from Curtin University, in 2001. By the end of the year, Moodle was available for downloads on CVS. In 2003, Moodle became a community-based software, with its first contributed module released on Moodle.org, a community arm for Moodle.com. People, across the world, were translating it in different languages and were developing themes for it.

In 2015, Moodle became the most used learning management system in the world, with 70,136 registered sites, in 222 territories worldwide, and in 2017, it had over 100 million registered users. Moodle Pty Ltd. HQ has over 45 employees, and it has its branches located in Australia, Spain, Canada, and the UK. The company is financed by a partners network that consists of over 80 certified companies around the world.

Personal Life

Currently, Dougiamas serves as the CEO of Moodle, Pty Ltd. He is the winner of Google-O’Reilly Open Source Award in the Education Enabler category (2008) and was awarded an honorary doctorate at the University of Vic – the Central University of Catalonia “for his contribution to open-source software through his leadership of the Moodle platform”, in 2016. He also received another honorary doctorate at the Université Catholique de Louvain, in 2018.

Herb Kelleher : The Founder & Former CEO of Southwest Airlines

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An aspiring journalist, who eventually became a lawyer and then a successful entrepreneur- Herb Kelleher, also wanted to live the lavish life that he had been seeing people living in his surrounding, and with the help of the right business plan and with the help of right people, he not only started one of the best airlines of America but also became one of the best CEOs of the country. Under his leadership, the airlines not only became the most preferred one by the consumers but was also voted Fortune magazine’s Best Place to Work in America

Early Life

Kelleher was born on 12 March 1931, to Harry Kelleher and Ruth Moore, in Camden, New Jersey. His father worked as the general manager at the Campbell’s Soup factory. He used to work at the same factory after school and also in the summer breaks, as a part-timer. He completed his high school education from Haddon Heights High School. He was a bright student and was also active in sports. He was in the Football team of the school and was a letterman in basketball and track. Later, he joined the Wesleyan University, to pursue a bachelor’s degree in English and Philosophy, in 1953. He was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity at the university. Influenced by a Wesleyan trustee, he then went to study law at New York University as a Root-Tilden Scholar and earned a graduate degree in the same.

herb
Image Source: experience.hsm.com

Career

In 1956, Kelleher started working as a clerk at the New Jersey Supreme Court. In 1959, he joined the Newark, New Jersey, firm of Lum, Biunno and Tompkins, where he practised law for two years. In 1961, he moved to Texas and became a partner in the law firm of Matthews, Nowlin, Macfarlane & Barrett.

Founding Southwest Airlines

While living in Texas, Kelleher got influenced by the lifestyle of the local people and started looking for something challenging that could help him be like one of them. He wanted to start his own law firm or any other business. In 1966, he joined the Texas businessman Rollin King as his outside counsel. One evening in a meeting with a client, an air charter service owner, in the St. Anthony’s Club in San Antonio, they sketched out a plan on a napkin.

King and his banker, John Parker wanted to launch an affordable airline between Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. Kelleher joined hands with the two, and on 15 March 1967, with a seed money of $500,000, they launched the Southwest Airlines Co. Kelleher managed to buy a 1.8 per cent stake in the newly started airline company and was appointed as its first CEO. But due to some legalities, the airline kept from flying for a four-long year and had its first flight on 18 June 1971. The low prices of the flights, and other facilities like eliminating unnecessary services, made the airline an instant hit.

As the CEO of the company, Keheller brought a better working culture, making the employees work more passionately. In 1974, Southwest became the first airline to offer a profit-sharing plan, according to which employees owned 13 per cent of the company’s common stock. Southwest Airlines has constantly maintained its name in the top five Most Admired Corporations in America, in the Fortune magazine’s annual poll.

In 1982, Kelleher was assigned the post of the chairman and the president of the company, remaining on the position of the CEO. In 2003, the airlines had 33000 employees, and operated 2800 flights between 30 airports, with a total annual revenue of $6 billion and net profits of $442 million.

On 21 May 2008, Kelleher resigned as the chairman of Southwest Airlines.

Personal Life

Kelleher met his future wife, Joan Negley when he was in college and married her in 1955 when he was still studying law at the New York University. Fortune has also called him perhaps the best CEO in America. Kelleher was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 2004. He was named the CEO of the Year from Chief Executive magazine in 1999 and also from the Fortune magazine in 2001. In 1990, the Financial World named him as the CEO of the Decade in the Airline Industry and was also named as the CEO of the Century by Texas Monthly in the same year.

Robert Pera : The Wireless Wonder of Silicon Valley

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The CEO of Ubiquiti Networks, Robert Pera, is one of the youngest entrepreneurs and a self-made billionaire of the Silicon Valley. With the passion for designing products, he left a lavish job at Apple and started a company in an economical $650-per-month apartment/office, reminding himself that he must not fail. A media-shy entrepreneur who is living a lean life has the ambition to create internet connectivity that is available everywhere.

Early Life

Robert Pera was born on 10 March 1978 in San Carlos. His father worked as a business consultant, and his mother was a public relation officer. He was always interested in technology and computers. He started his first business when he was still in high school. He used to set up computers, networks, and some databases that ran the software. He was also a member of his school’s basketball team. The same time he was diagnosed by a heart-valve infection and had to leave the school for a year. After completing his school, he joined the University of California in San Diego, where he pursued a B.A. degree in Japanese Language and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering. He also obtained the M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the same university.

Robert Pera
Image Source : networthstat.com

Career

Pera was a Steve Jobs admirer, and after completing his education, he got the opportunity to work at Apple Inc., as a hardware engineer. His work was related to testing the company’s Wi-Fi devices. After working there for some time, he discovered that the signal emitted by the power sources used by the Apple’s WiFi devices were below FCC limits, and the transmission range could be enhanced by boosting their power so that to make internet accessible at the places where the telephone and cable companies did not reach. He consulted his superiors regarding the same matter, but nobody took him seriously.

Founding Ubiquiti Networks

Pera had an idea, and he himself started working on his own low-cost, high-performance WiFi module, at his apartment for a long period of one year, and in early 2005, he quit Apple Inc. to form his own company, i.e., Ubiquiti Networks.

With the savings and credit card cash debt, he managed to raise $30,000 to invest in his company, and started Ubiquiti Networks, in March 2005. The main goal, to start this company was to wirelessly deliver the Internet to the underserved areas, using the existing wifi technologies. The first product series launched by the company included the Super Range mini-PCI radio cards SR2 and SR5.

The Super Range module used the Atheros chipset, operating at 2.4 and 5.8 GHz bands. The card received a successful welcome and was used by many small and medium scale Wireless Internet service providers, all over the world. Currently, the company deals in the four major products: airMAX, airFiber, airVision, UniFi and has spread its branches to other fields including wireless access points, security cameras and traditional networking equipment, etc., as well. Currently, more than 180 countries are using the equipment from Ubiquiti Networks, around the world.

Personal Life

The American entrepreneur secured a place in the Forbes’ list of 10 youngest billionaires in the world, at the age of 36. He is the 229th richest man in the United States, and the 642nd richest person, in the World Billionaire list. Pera took the company public in 2011 and raised US$ 33.5 million in the IPO. He owns the 64 per cent shares in the company.

In October 2012, he purchased the National Basketball Association franchise Memphis Grizzlies from Michael Heisley paying $350 million. Pera also supports the sports charity named Grizzlies Foundation operating in Memphis.

Alec Oxenford : Co-founder & Former CEO of OLX

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Alec Oxenford, born and brought up in Argentina, is an entrepreneur and a technology enthusiast, who has the credits for the establishing the foundation of some multi-billion projects. The native of Argentina, Oxenford completed his graduation in Business Administration from the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina, and later, joined Harvard University to pursue a master’s degree in the same stream.

Career

As soon as Oxenford completed his education, he started working at Boston Consulting Group. After working for six long years with the same company, Oxenford gained more skills and experience and founded DeRemate, an online consumer-to-consumer trading platform in Latin America, that was later acquired by eBay in 2005.

The time he was successfully running DeRemate, he also co-founded DineroMail.com, a popular payment platform in Latin America, in March 2003 and was associated with the same till December 2010.

Founding OLX

In 2006, Oxenford joined his hands with a French native and angel investor, Fabrice Grinda, to co-found another internet-based platform, as a Craigslist alternative for the world outside of the United States, OLX, a free classified for advertisements. Both were assigned the position of the CEO of the company. The idea was new, and there were not many supporters for the same. But, Oxenford and his partner were quite confident about it. The two came to the conclusion that first, they must test their portal in a native place or a developing country, to properly endorse its services. Hence, they first launched OLX for the people of Argentina, and then in a country overseas, i.e., India.

alec oxenford
Image Source : fortune.com

With good marketing techniques, it became popular in India in no time as a platform to online sell the second-hand items, and the goods that were no more required. Currently, OLX operates in 45 countries, with 330 million users and 60 million listings a month, becoming the largest online classified ads company.

In 2006, OLX acquired Mundoanuncio.com, another classified site to target the Hispanic market, and also invested in a Chinese classifieds site Edeng.cn, in 2007. It also started a partnership with Friendster, in 2008, and social network Hi5, in 2009. The website was modified with the social network widgets, improved search, Ajax-based editors, interactive maps, and mobile versions, with the addition of Web 2.0″ features to it, in 2008.

In 2010, the South African group Naspers acquired OLX, Oxenford remaining CEO through 2014, and Grinda remaining CEO until 2013.

In 2014, Oxenford left OLX and started working on his next project. In 2015, he co-founded another online buying and selling platform, this time especially for the mobile marketplace, named letgo. In the year 2017, the annual revenue of letgo was $375 million and confirmed for the first time that the company had a $1 billion valuation.

Personal Life

Oxenford has been an art lover and has collected various art pieces from around the world. He is also in writing and has spoken at Jóvenes Líderes in 2010, the Web 2.0 Conference in 2015, Red Innova in the years 2014, 2015, and 2016, Art Basel in 2016, and ArteBa in 2017. He was elected as the Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum (2006-2011) and also received the CNN Internet Leader Award in 2001 and the Entrepreneur Award in 2003.

Zhou Qunfei : The Self-made Billionaire & the Founder of Lens Technology

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Zhou Qunfei, the founder of Lens Technology, is the world’s richest self-made billionaire, and one of the richest women in the tech sector. She despite facing a lot of difficulties and struggle, managed to accomplish what seemed impossible at a time. She, even, achieving so much in life, is still a grounded person and is not hesitant to sit down and work as a worker in her company. Travelling back and forth between China, Korea and the Silicon Valley, Apple and Samsung are one of the biggest clients of her organisation. Her rags-to-rich story is an inspiration to millions of women in a man dominating society.

Early Life

Zhou Qunfei was born in 1970, in Xiangxiang, Hunan province, in a family with bad financial conditions. Her father had retired from the army. He had become partially blind and lost a finger in an industrial accident before Zhou was born. Zhou lost her mother when she was five. Her father made his living by making bamboo baskets, chairs and repairing bicycles. As a child, Zhou started raising animals to earn a small profit to help her family financially.

zhou-qunfei
Image Source : vivify

Zhou completed her secondary education from a local school and moved to the Guangdong province, to live with her uncle’s family, at the age of sixteen, to become a migrant worker in Shenzhen. She aspired to join a government job, but due to lack of a diploma, she had to drop the idea. But, being a bright student, she took jobs nearby the Shenzhen University so that she could easily complete her studies along with work. With her dedication, she was able to pursue various courses and received multiple certifications in the subjects including accounting, computer operations, customs processing.

Founding Lens Technology

Although Zhou had started earning with her part-time jobs when she was a little kid, her first full-time job was with the small family-run firm making watch parts, where she was paid 180 yuan a month. In just three months, she wrote a humble resignation letter to her boss, as she was unable to co-op with the working conditions of the company. Her resignation moved her boss, who instead of accepting the resignation, promoted Zhou to a higher rank.

After working for a few years in the same company, in 1993, Zhou founded her own company that sold high-quality watch lenses, at the mere age of 22. The company’s first employees included her brother, sister, their spouses, and their cousins, who started their work in a three bedroom apartment. Zhou used her savings of HK$20,000 (~USD$3,000), to start the company. She got involved in every operation of the company and became proficient in each of it, including the repairs and creating improved designs of factory machinery. Her big break came when the Chinese electronics giant TCL Corporation approached her with a contract to make mobile phone screens, in 2001. In 2003, she again received an order from Motorola, to develop glass screens for their Razr V3. By the time, mobile companies had started using glass screens replacing the plastic screens for the mobiles.

Earning major profits in mobile phone screen manufacturing, in 2003, Zhou founded Lens Technology and started producing touch screen for smartphones. The company received its name, in order to be more visible for its potential customers, in the online searches. The company soon received orders from HTC, Nokia, Samsung Electronics and also from Apple, in 2007, the biggest breakthrough for Lens Technology, and became the topmost touchscreen supplier. The company also supplies the watch glass for the apple watches. By the year 2017, the company had established 32 factories at different locations and had hired 90,000 employees. In 2015, Zhou made the company IPO public on the ChiNext A-share market of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, and Lens Technology became China’s largest technology IPO, in the first quarter of 2015 and raised Zhou’s net worth by 452%.

Personal Life

Zou is married twice, and her first marriage was with her former factory boss. She has a daughter with him. In 2008, she married Zheng Junlong, an old colleague from Lens Technology, and the two have a son together. Along with working as her hobby, she also enjoys mountain climbing and playing ping-pong.

Zhou is China’s richest woman and is listed at number 61, in the Forbes list of 2016 Power Women. She was also named the number 18 on the Fortune 2016 Most Powerful Women of Asia-Pacific list.