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Alan Trefler : World Open Chess Champion & the Founder-CEO of Pegasystems

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Alan Trefler is a chess master and successful entrepreneur, who keeps a low profile for its multi-billion company. Having a bright future in Chess and winning against multiple grandmasters, Trefler decided to stick to software development, that too proved to be the best of his decisions. Although he has not entirely left the game, he still plays the exhibition matches with former grandmasters of the game.

Early Life

Alan Trefler was born on 15 March 1956, in Boston, Massachusetts. His father Eric Trefler was the owner of an art and furniture restorer, named Trefler’s, and his mother, Dorothy Trefler, was a schoolteacher. He spent his childhood in Brookline, Massachusetts, living with his parents and brother Leon.

Alan Trefler
Image Source: Forbes

Trefler attended the Brookline High School and became a chess champion there, winning numerous school level chess competitions. As a teenager, he started his first part-time job at his father’s shop. In 1973, he joined Dartmouth College, where he studied economics and computer science. In 1975, he participated in the World Open Chess Championship and won the championship against the grandmaster Pal Benko.

Career

After completing his B.S., Trefler joined his first job at Casher Associates Inc., in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, as the project manager. He got the job even he was underqualified for it, as the company needed an employee on an urgent basis. Although Trefler could easily pursue his Chess career, he chose to work in a software company.

After leaving the job as the project manager, Trefler joined a software engineering firm. Later, in 1980, he successfully built a computer system that could play chess. In the same year, he started working at TMI Systems, as the team leader.

Founding Pegasystems

In April 1983, Trefler left TMI Systems, to found his own software company, named Pegasystems. He was 27, when he started the company, with an aim to enable business people to more directly instruct the machine and get the computer to really understand how business people wanted things to work. He became the CEO and the chairman of the company, and in 1996, the company went public on NASDAQ. The United States govt conferred a patent to Trefler, for Pegasystems’ distinctive rules-based architecture, which provides the framework for Pegasystems’ business process management (BPM) solutions.

The American Business Awards presented Trefler with the Stevie Award for Computer Software CEO of the Year, in 2009. He was also named the Public Company CEO of the Year, in 2011, by the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council. Pegasystems entered into the field of telecommunications and healthcare when it acquired Chordiant for around $161.5 million. By the beginning of the year 2015, the company had 3,000 employees and 30 offices.

Personal Life

In 1992, Trefler married an investment banker, Pamela. The couple resides in Brookline, Massachusetts. Both of them are active philanthropists and in 1995, donated $1 million to Dorchester High School in Dorchester, Boston. In 1997, they founded The Trefler Foundation that aims to improve the urban education system. Trefler also competed in a charity chess tournament alongside grandmasters such as Garry Kasparov and Boaz Weinstein, in 2010. In March 2017, he appeared on the Forbes Billionaire’s List for the first time. He also published a book named Build for Change in 2014.

Don Valentine : The Legendary Venture Capitalist of the Silicon Valley

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A start-up always is an unpredictable and a doubtful move for any of the founders as well as its investors. But taking risks is the key to innovations. To attract the investors the founders must have a convincing idea and a self-belief so that the investors can also trust them. Donald T. Valentine is one of the biggest venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, and the founder of Sequoia Capital, who has been the investor for various new ideas, resulting in the foundation of many famous multi-billion companies. According to Don, the start-ups are compelling, as the survival is the prime motivation for the people who are behind it.

Early Life

Donald T. Valentine spent his childhood in the suburbs of New York. He was born on 26 June 1932, in Yonkers, New York. His father was a minor official in labour unions in the Teamsters and worked all his life to earn his living. Donald joined a nearby Catholic school at the Fordham University, and himself is a Catholic. After completing the school, he entered the same university to pursue an undergraduate degree in Arts.

Founding Sequoia

In the early 50’s, Don got a chance to work for the military and was moved to California for some time. There he came to know the very first time that there are also some places in the world, where it did not snow. He liked the fact so much that he decided to move to such a place. After he was back in New York, he joined the Sylvania Electric, where he worked at various different projects. The company was the manufacturer of the cathode-ray tubes, semiconductor, and the vacuum tubes. Just after some time of working in the company, he was promoted to the sales engineering department and was transferred to California, the place, where he always intended to be.

Don Valentine
Image Source: alchetron.com

In California, Valentine was introduced to a bigger industry and was convinced that there is much more than vacuum tubes, and the future is all about the semiconductor. In 1959, he joined the start-up company, Fairchild Semiconductor, in Los Angeles, as one of the first West Coast salesmen of the company. After working in Fairchild for seven years, he left the company and subsequently, switched between almost ten other companies, before joining the National Semiconductor, as the senior sales and marketing executive, in 1967.

Valentine founded a venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, in 1972. The company was focussed on the investments to small, risky tech companies. The firm’s first investment was to the startup company Atari (1975). Sequoia has financed probably six hundred different companies, including LSI Logic, Oracle Corporation, Cisco, Electronic Arts, Google, YouTube, etc.

Don has served as a member of the boards of dozens of those companies, for a long time. Also, Sequoia was one of the original investors of Apple Computer. Valentine met Steve Jobs when he was a line engineer at Atari and financed Apple Inc., with $150,000 as its capital investment, in 1978. He is the former Chairman of NetApp and Traiana. He was featured in the 2011’s documentary film Something Ventured. He has also been called the “grandfather of Silicon Valley venture capital”.

Mike Cannon-Brookes & Scott Farquhar : The Accidental Billionaires From Australia

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Life is better with friends, and it is best when your friendship leads you to achieve your goals. An example of similar friendship is from Australia, where two college friends achieved their mutual goals and became the Accidental Billionaires of Australia. Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes are the co-founders and co-CEOs of the software company Atlassian, who together started the company with the simple plan to replicate the A$48,000 graduate starting salary typical at the big corporations without having to work for someone else. But their hard work paid them beyond their imagination.

Early Life

Mike Cannon-Brookes was born in November 1979, as Michael Cannon-Brookes, to a global banking executive Mike, and his wife, Helen. He spent his childhood in Sydney and attended Cranbrook School there. On the other hand, Scott Farquhar born in the December of the same year as Mike. He was the student of James Ruse Agricultural High School in Carlingford, NSW.

After graduating from school, the two enrolled in the University of New South Wales, where they met each other the very first time. Both of them were in the same class and grew a strong bond with one another. Both received a Bachelors in Arts and also a Bachelor’s degree in Science.

Founding Atlassian

The two shared an interest in starting own software company, so they went through a lot of research and work to design, launch and run their new business. Finally, in 2002, they founded their software company with the name Atlassian. They established the company’s first office in Sydney with a $10,000 credit card debt.

scott farquhar and mike cannon-brookes
Image Source: dailynews.lk

The same year, the Atlassian was launched, it released its flagship product, Jira. Jira is an issue tracker software that is used by various big and small companies for bug tracking and agile project management. In 2004, the company released another software named Confluence, written in Java. The software is a team collaboration platform that lets users work together on projects, co-create content, and share documents and other media assets.

Within four years of the founding of the company, Cannon-Brookes and Farquhar were named Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneurs of the Year for Australia, in 2006. It also raised a funding worth $60 million in venture capital from Accel Partners, in the year 2010. In the same year, the company acquired Bitbucket, a hosted service for code collaboration. Just after a year, the company announced a revenue of $102 million, followed by a $144 million revenue in 2013, and $215 million revenue in 2014. In November 2015, Atlassian produced a revenue worth $320 million.

In May 2012, the Atlassian launched its official website, that allowed the users to download plug-ins for various Atlassian products. In 2014, the company was restructured and renamed as Atlassian Corporation plc opening, an office established in London, keeping the headquarter of the company remain in Sydney. Atlassian has over 2,200 employees serving more than 60,000 customers and millions of users across the world, having its offices in five different countries.

Atlassian made its initial public offering (IPO), putting its market capitalization at $4.37 billion on the NASDAQ stock exchange, in December 2015. It has many programming-based products under its name, including Crucible, FishEye, Bamboo, and Clover. It has also tried its hands in the chat business by acquiring HipChat, an instant messenger and launching Stride, a web chat alternative to Slack, but soon quit their operations in the same. Atlassian biggest acquisitions include Trello for $425 million, in January 2017, and OpsGenie for $295m, in September 2018.

Personal Life

Mike is married to Annie Todd and has four children with her. Farquhar is married to Kim Jackson, and they have three children together. Mike and Farquhar are neighbours and live in Centennial Park, Sydney, in their lavish homes. Farquhar bought the Fairfax family’s former ancestral Sydney harbourside home worth A$75 million, in 2017, and in 2018, Mike also purchased Australia’s most expensive house for around $100million, the Fairwater, next to Farquhar’s.

The two were named among the richest Australians, aged under 40 on the BRW Young Rich list in 2007. In 2016, the two were also placed in the Forbes list of Australia’s 50 Richest people.

Hitachi : The History of Japanese Multinational Business Conglomerate

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Hitachi is a name that is more than a hundred years old and has been dealing in a number of fields successfully at a global level. The company has its global branch in more than eleven business segments including Information & Telecommunication Systems, High Functional Materials & Components, Financial Services, Electronic Systems & Equipment, Automotive Systems, Railway & Urban Systems, Digital Media & Consumer Products, etc. The company is the largest manufacturer of electric machinery and has made its name into the Fortune Global 500 list of 2012.

The Founder

Hitachi was founded by a Japanese electrical engineer Namihei Odaira, who was born on 15 January 1874, in Ienaka, Tochigi, Japan. Odaira graduated from the electrical engineering department of Tokyo Imperial University, in the year 1900. After graduating, Odaira started working as an engineer in a mining company. Within six years after graduating, he switched between various such companies, and after six years in 1906, he joined Kuhara Mining Company as an engineering section chief. His responsibility in the company included the maintenance of mine’s electrical equipment and electricity.

Hitachi
Image Source: hitachimed.com

During his job at the Kuhara Mining, he started manufacturing a five-horsepower electric motor with the help of one of his colleagues. Eventually, with the development of the induction motor, Odaira happened to found Hitachi, in the Kuhara Mining Company’s Hitachi copper mine, in the year 1910, hence, making the owner of Kuhara Mining, Fusanosuke Kuhara, the official president of Hitachi, instead of Odaira himself.

The History

Hitachi is a combination of two Kanji characters, Hi and Tachi, where Hi stands for sun and tachi means to rise. In 1918, the headquarter of Hitachi was moved to Tokyo. In 1920, Hitachi Ltd. was incorporated as an independent company, and Kuhara was removed from the position of the president. Odaira became the managing director of Hitachi and stayed at the same position from 1910 to 1929.

During the second world war, the American forces tried to destroy the Hitachi plants and disband Hitachi altogether. Also, Odaira got expelled from the company by the U.S. occupation authorities. It took three years for Hitachi to convince the armies to continue its functioning and except 19 of its plants came back into operation. In 1951, Odaira was taken back as the chairman of the company. The same year, in the month of October, Odaira passed away at the age of 77.

At the time of Korean war, in 1949, the American military offered various manufacturing contracts to the Japanese industries, including Hitachi, that saved the company from a complete collapse, after so much damage, and the death of Odaira. The company started gaining its previous position, and in 1959, it established the Hitachi America Ltd., followed by the establishment of Hitachi Europe, Ltd. in 1982.

In the year 2011, Hitachi Ltd. came into talks with Mitsubishi, for Japan’s largest merger, but due to some reasons, the deal got cancelled. In 2012, Hitachi acquired the United Kingdom-based nuclear energy company Horizon Nuclear Power, and it plans to establish up to six power plants in the UK.

Hitachi and Mitsubishi again had words regarding merging their thermal power businesses, in November 2012 and began the operations of the joint venture in February 2014. Hitachi owns the 35% shares in the joint venture, whereas Mitsubishi owns 65% shares of it.

Currently, Hiroaki Nakanishi KBE chairs the company, and Toshiaki Higashihara is the president of the company. Along with America, the company has expanded to the various parts of Asia, Europe, Middle East and Africa, etc.

Collett E. Woolman : The Co-founder & First CEO of Delta Air Lines

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Collett Everman Woolman was one of the principal founder and first Chief Executive Officer of the infamous Delta Air Lines. Woolman with his vision took a great leap in the airline business. From an employee of the Delta Air Lines to the CEO of the same, Woolman worked rigorously to lead the airlines, to be one of the best in the world. His hard work and inspirational life even took his name to the Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame.

Early Life

Woolman was born on 8 October 1889, in Bloomington, Indiana, but spent most of his childhood in Urbana, Illinois. He completed his high secondary education from a local public school and entered the University of Illinois to pursue a Bachelor degree in agriculture. After his marriage with Helen H. Fairfield, in 1916, the couple moved to Monroe, in northeastern Louisiana.

Founding Delta Air Lines

After completing his education, Woolman joined Louisiana State University as an Agricultural Extension Agent. At the time, the Southern United States were facing a big issue with their agriculture works, i.e., the boll weevil, a cotton-destroying pest. A United States Department of Agriculture entomologist, Dr B. R. Coad, was trying new methods to solve this problem, and Woolmen also joined him in his mission. The ultimate solution, that they used against the boll weevil was to sprinkle calcium arsenate over the crops. As it was difficult to sprinkle the dry-powder over big fields, the team started doing the same with the help of army-loaned aircraft. The aircraft would dust out the powder over the fields, and the issue was solved.

C. E. Woolman
Image Source: deltamuseum.org

An aircraft manufacturer, Huff-Daland Aero Corporation, noticed the whole matter and formed a new division for crop dusting, naming it as Huff Daland Dusters, on 30 May 1924, and established the headquarter in Macon, Georgia. The Airborne crop dusting organisation was the first of its kind, in the world. Woolman was selected as the lead for the department and was appointed as the vice president and general manager of the same.

The company earned profits in the business, but as soon as the summer growing season ended, the need for the air dusting deceased, simultaneously. Woolman advised moving the service to other places, where the season was reversed and started operating in Mexico and Peru. With the help of Peruvian Airways Corporation, Woolman also started the passenger service in Peru. The agreement did not last long, but, Woolman gained the much-needed experience in the business.

In 1925, the company setup was moved to Monroe, Louisiana. At the same time, the Huff Daland Dusters was in financial trouble. The company was looking for a buyer for its bailout, and Woolman took the advantage of the opportunity, and on 13 September 1928, Woolman acquired the company, naming it Delta Air Service. The company started its passenger service on 17 June 1929 and received funding from its three new investors C. H. McHenry, Travis Oliver, and Malcolm S. Biedenharn. The first flight by the airlines was between Dallas, Texas and Jackson, Mississippi. In 1930, Woolman was named to the board of directors of the company.

At that time, there was a very less number of people who travelled through an aircraft. Hence, the company took a break from the passenger service and started functioning as an airmail service. Later, in March 1934, the passenger service was started again. In 1941, the headquarter of the company was relocated to Atlanta. After moving to Atlanta, Delta Air Service started adding new air routes and acquired a few other airlines. The propeller planes were replaced by the jets, and it started expanding towards the europian countries and across the Pacific. On 1 November 1965, Woolman was appointed as the chief executive officer of the company. Only after one year, on September 1966, at the age of 76, Woolman passed away, leaving a great legacy behind him.

Delta Air Lines After Woolman

In 1987, the company had a merger with the western airlines, and throughout the 90’s the airline saw rapid growth. In the late 90’s in competition with Southwest Airlines, the company launched a new sub-airline, named as Song. But soon, it started seeing failures due to the lower yields, higher fuel prices, and economic challenges. In the year 2005, the company got bankrupt.

During the bankruptcy, the company sold the old and unused aircraft, and the company shut the unprofitable routes and hubs. At the same time, Delta was trying to find out the loopholes in their functionality and was preparing itself for future with new strategies. In 2007, the company emerged as a polished and better version of its own, hence, operating to lead the company towards success.

On 14 April 2008, the company announced a merger with Northwest Airlines, forming the world’s largest airline. In 2010, the Northwest Airline accepted retirement, making the Delta Air Lines the wholly-owned company. Currently, the airline is functioning as the most prefered airlines across the world, due to its excellent customer service.

Pavel Durov : The Founder of Hack-Proof Messenger App Telegram

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A believer of no government and a pure vegetarian, Pavel Durov is a Russian entrepreneur, who was among the most promising Northern European leader under 30, in 2014. He is leading a life on his own rules. Known as the Russian Mark Zuckerberg, Durov surely is inspired by the same and has a few similarities with the life of the American entrepreneur. Pavel Durov, who founded the social media platforms, Vkontakte, the most visited websites in some Eurasian countries (2017), and Telegram, is working towards protecting the users’ data from governmental data requests.

Early Life

Durov was born on 10 October 1984, in St. Petersburg, Russia, to Valery Semenovich Durov and Albina Durova. His father is a Doctor of Philological Sciences, and his grandfather Semyon Petrovich Tulyakov participated in the second World War. His brother Nikolai Durov is a mathematician and a programmer, who later, co-founded Telegram and VK, with Pavel Durov.

Pavel spent most of his childhood in Turin, Italy, where he attended the Italian elementary school. In 2001, the family returned to Russia, and he joined the Academy Gymnasium, in St. Petersburg. He became inclined towards programming languages while in school. After completing the school, Pavel went to the Saint Petersburg State University and earned a degree in Philology.

Career Rise with Vkontakte

Soon after Durov completed his college, he started working on a social media network, as he was inspired by the success of Facebook. He named his project as Vkontakte and started the beta testing of the same, in September 2006. Just after a month, he bought the domain for Vkontakte and opened the registrations to the website for the students of the Saint Petersburg State University.

Pavel Durov
Image Source: eyerys.com

Early in the next year, the website registered more than 100000 users and became the second largest social networking website, in Russia. The rapid growth of the platform, brought a trio of Russian-Israeli investors, Vyacheslav Mirilashvili and Lev Leviev, to invest in the website, acquiring 60%, 10%, and 10% stakes in the company, respectively. Later, the 39.99% shares were acquired by Mail.ru Group. By the year 2014, the Mail.ru Group was able to acquire 52% of the shares in the Vkontakte.

After losing most of his shares, Durov faced a lot of trouble in maintaining his position in the company. He received offers from the few of the political parties of Russia to sell the data of the Vkontakte users, to them. But, he never accepted. In fact, in 2012, he was asked to remove the groups, from Vkontakte, that were protesting against the Russian President Vladimir Putin, but again he denied. At that time he emerged as a libertarian hero for the dedicated protesting groups.

On 1 April 2014, as an April Fool prank, Durov presented his resign in front of the board members of Vkontakte. But, he got caught into his own prank, when, on 21 April 2014, he got dismissed from his post. The reason behind his dismissal was that he failed to withdraw his resignation, within the fixed time.

Founding Telegram

According to Durov, his resignation and getting out of the company was a result of his resistance from sharing the user’s data with the political parties. During the same time, he was working on a secret project. He had started working on the project early in 2012, with his brother, Nikolai Durov, who was the lead programmer of the project. Pavel Durov financed the project and had launched it in August 2013, as Telegram. After his dismissal from his company, he flew to Buffalo, New York, where he established his secret company. He also took some of his Vkontakte employees with him, to New York to continue working on Telegram.

After moving to New York, he also obtained the citizenship of Saint Kitts and Nevis, through donating $250,000 to the country’s Sugar Industry Diversification Foundation. He implanted his employees in various parts of the world, due to the complicated documentation formalities for each of his employees. Basically, controls the working of his company from his secret office in New York.

Telegram was an instant hit, as the app did not allow any third party to use the data of the Telegram users. Also, the secret chat feature of the app does not have any cloud backup. The success of the app can be measured from the 200 million monthly active users reported at the beginning of 2018, and a 50 per cent rise in the annual profits of the company in 2017.

In 2017, with 23-page white paper and a detailed 132-page technical paper, Durov launched a blockchain platform, named as Telegram Open Network (TON). Reportedly, the ICO raised $1.7 billion in April 2018.

Personal Life

Pavel Durov calls himself a libertarian and is living a private life. His past life was filled with a number of controversies and politics. Hence, he maintains his life as private as possible. He, also, never discloses the address to his secret office, established in New York, to avoid influencers from the media and government. Allegedly, he along with his brother, migrates to different places after a certain period of time, in self-imposed exile.