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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.”

Enzo Ferrari : The Founder of Ferrari Automotive Comapny

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

When we see through the life journey of the successful people, most of them did not have an easy life. The hurdles and struggles, they faced, made them strong and they kept working towards their dream. One such personality, Enzo Ferrari was the man who brought himself out of all the problems and controversies. He created history by putting his share in the world of car racing and manufacturing some of the fastest luxury sports cars.

Early Life

Enzo Ferrari was born as Enzo Anselmo Ferrari, to Alfredo and Adalgisa Ferrari, in Modena, Italy. He was born on 18 February 1898, but his birth certificate has recorded his birthday as on 20 May, since his father got stuck in a heavy snowstorm and the registration got delayed for two days. His father operated a workshop fabricating metal parts. He had an older brother named Alfredo Junior. In 1916, he lost his father and brother, due to a viral Italian flu. The death of his father and brother shattered him completely and he became responsible for his household.

During the world war 1, he joined the Italian Army and in 1917 and shoed mules for the 3rd Alpine Artillery Division. But, after suffering himself too with a flu pandemic in 1918, he was discharged from his service.

Racing Career

When Enzo was just 10 years old, his father took him and his elder brother to Bologna, to watch a race, where he was introduced to Felice Nazzaro. After watching a few races, he was certain that in future he will become a car racer. But, the death of his father and brother, made him leave his studies and focus on earning money for his family.

After his exit from his job, in the Italian Army, the struggle, for him, started again. He even went for a job interview at Fiat, but there too, he was rejected. Finally, he joined another smaller car making company named as Costruzioni Meccaniche Nazionali, in Milan. He was appointed as the test driver. After working for some time, he was promoted as a car race driver and he was back on the track to achieve his childhood dream.

Ferrari debuted as a car race driver in 1919 Parma-Poggio di Berceto Hillclimb race, followed by the Targa Florio in the same year. In 1920, he joined Alfa Romeo and won his first car race, in 1924, the Coppa Acerbo at Pescara. He was promoted and was offered many other prestigious races. But, after the death of a fellow racer, Antonio Ascari, in 1925, he lost his confidence and until 1927, he did not participate in any other car race.

enzo-ferrari
Image Source: motor24

In 1929, he founded a race team named as Scuderia Ferrari, that included the superstar drivers Giuseppe Campari and Tazio Nuvolari. In 1932, Ferrari decided to retire as a car race driver, influenced by the birth of his baby boy Alfredo. He now wanted to focus on the management of his racing team. His Scuderia Ferrari was shut down in 1937 and he resigned from Alfa Romeo in September 1939. The company relieved him from his job, after signing an agreement that stopped him from using the name Ferrari in any of his racing or car ventures for next four years.

Founding Ferrari

In the same year, he left Alfa Romeo and started his own company Auto Avio Costruzioni, in his hometown, Modena. In 1940, he manufactured two cars, that he used in the Mille Miglia, and driven by Alberto Ascari and Lotario Rangoni. Due to the effect of the world war 2, he had to move his venture from Modena to Maranello, in the same year.

After the end of the agreement with Alfa Romeo, in 1947, he founded Ferrari S.p.A. He mainly manufactured the racing cars, and in1948 formed his own racing team that debuted in the Turin. The team’s major victory was in the 1949 24 Hours of Le Mans, with a Ferrari 166M.

Since the beginning of his company till his death, Ferrari made several racing cars and participated in many races with his team. He saw many accidents leading the deaths of his drivers and faced controversies related to them. But, his team always supported him saying that the deaths were never caused due to any mechanical failure in the vehicle. By the year 1952-53, he also started manufacturing cars for roads.

There is another incident that is an important part of Enzo Ferrari’s life timeline. Known as the Great Walk Out, the incident took place when many of Ferrari’s engineers, managers, sales managers and other key figures left the company because of Ferrari’s stubborn behaviour. Although, many of them regretted their decision later.

In 1969, Fiat bought the 50% shares in Ferrari. However, Ferrari had the 100% control over the racing activities. The deal also included the lifetime subsidy for Enzo.

The Logo

Ferrari has been using the prancing horse emblem as its logo since he started manufacturing cars. The emblem was created by his close friend and the famous Italian fighter plane pilot Francesco Baracca. It is said that Baracca gave a necklace with the prancing horse to Ferrari, just before his last flight, in which he was shot dead by an Australian fighter plane in 1918. In the remembrance of his friend, Ferrari used the prancing horse emblem as the logo of his company.

Personal Life

Ferrari was married to Laura Dominica Garello and had a son with her. He named his son after his father’s name Alfredo. Unfortunately, Alfredo also died after suffering from ill-health in 1956. His another son Piero, from his mistress, is serving as the vice-president of the Ferrari and owns 10% shares of the company.

Ferrari died at the age of 90, in 1988. Before dying, he witnessed the launch of one of the greatest road cars of that time, the Ferrari F40. The news of his death was disclosed after two days, as requested by Ferrari himself, as a compensation of the late registration of his birth.

Ronaldo Mouchawar : The Biggest Online Retailer in the Middle East

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Starting a business is itself a huge challenge and starting in a sector dominated by giants just makes the challenge double-fold. Amazon, undoubtedly, is one of the leading e-commerce company today. It has expanded to almost every part of the world and has become the top e-commerce company.

With a fierce competition already present in the market, a man decides to start his own e-commerce venture, in the middle-east, and just within a year, reaches maximum people in the country. The website was named Souq.com and co-founded by Ronaldo Mouchawar. How he became the most successful self-made businessman? Let’s get to know more about him.

Early Life

Ronaldo was born in Aleppo, Syria, to a merchant father. His father’s business became an inspiration for him to name his e-commerce site. Mouchawar went to Northwestern University in Boston to earn a Master’s degree in digital communications and a Bachelor’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from Massachusetts in the United States. Initially, Mouchawar took a job at the Boston engineering firm. He also worked as a technical and systems consultant in the technology and business management sector at the Electronic Data System (EDS).

Entering into Start-Ups

After completing his education, Mouchawar joined Maktoob, the first successful web portal in the Middle East. He was not quite fluent in English and Maktoob was not looking for the fluent ones. As the web portal was gaining attention and becoming popular in the country, Mouchawar realized the potential of e-commerce business and wanted to create a separate commerce-only website.

Then, in 2006, he started a website called Souq.com. The word means ‘market’ in Arabic and Mouchawar’s hometown, i.e. Aleppo was famous for its souqs. The company was set up in Dubai as UAE had a larger population of young people and could prove a very profitable marketplace for an e-commerce website.

ronaldo mouchawar
Image Source: webit.org

Initially, Souq was launched as an auction website which later was diversified into an automobile and real estate. The business grew pretty quickly and was getting popular. Mouchawar expanded the business to Saudi Arabia and, by the end of 2009, Souq became independent of Maktoob. At that time the website was witnessing 3 million UAE dirhams worth of auctions i.e. the US $1 million.

There was also a time when smartphones were entering the market and more and more people were shifting from their laptop to smartphones. As Souq was available only for the desktops and there was no app developed for it, further growth of the business seemed to be limited. Mouchawar took a smart decision and quickly adapted to the changing technological era. And in 2012, Souq launched its first app. Today, more than 70% of purchases are done using smartphones.

Next big change was introduced in 2010. With Wisam Daoud joining as CTO, Mouchawar decided that Souq would no longer run auctions and classifieds. The company, at that time, had 80% business from the auction and 20% from fixed price. But in May 2010, they closed the auction site. Initially, the company lost most of their transaction but they made for it in around six months and also doubled its revenue each quarter.

Mouchawar, in 2014, launched ‘White Friday’ sales which coincide with the ‘Black Friday’ sale in the US. He explained that ‘Black Friday’ does not make cultural sense in Arab as Friday is the traditional day of prayer. The sale received a thunderous response and raised more than $275 million. At the time of its next White Friday Souq had doubled its sales and witnessed 13 million visitors and around 600,000 products sold during 25th-28th November.

In March 2017, Amazon acquired Souq by paying $580 million in cash.

Personal Life

Ronaldo Mouchawar has received a number of accolades including Gulf Business Industry Awards CEO of the year in 2013 and Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2015. He currently lives in Dubai, UAE.

Reid Hoffman : The Mind Behind the Largest Corporate Social Network

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Sometimes, it takes a long process for a person to understand and choose the right way that leads to his goals. Only a few can dream to help others achieve their dreams and bring out a positive change in the world. But if one truly wants to accomplish his dreams, he will find out a way. Same is the story of the infamous American internet entrepreneur and the venture capitalist- Reid Hoffman, who had initially dreamt about changing the world through his motivational speeches and eventually, reached out to a bigger platform and definitely have brought out his share of change.

Early Life

Reid Hoffman was born to William Parker Hoffman Jr. and Deanna Ruth, on 5 August 1967. He was born in Palo Alto, California and spent most of his childhood in Berkeley. He did his high school from The Putney School and earned his Bachelor Science degree in Symbolic Systems & Cognitive Science, from Stanford University. He was awarded a Marshall Scholarship and hence went to the Wolfson College, Oxford University to pursue a Master in Studies in Philosophy in 1993. He had also received a Dinkelspiel Award in his graduation from Stanford University.

Career

As a child, he always loved playing the tabletop roleplaying games. So in 1982, when he was just 12, he got his first job as an editor at a game developing company named as Chaosium. His work at the company was quite impressive, and in 1984, with the release of Chaosium’s ‘Borderlands’, a role-playing game, he got his name featured on its box, at the time he was just 14. He always wanted to become an influential person so that he can bring a change in the world. He had thought of becoming a professor. But soon he realised that writing books and reaching people can be a long way. So he diverted his mind towards entrepreneurship.

Reid Hoffman
Image Source: twimg.com

After graduating, he went to do an internship at Inglenook, a winery, followed by a job at Apple Computer. In Apple, he worked on a social network named as eWorld. After working for some time in Apple, he took a job at Fujitsu and in 1997, found his first company named as SocialNet.com. Soon after, setting up SocialNet.com, he joined PayPal as the COO, in 2000. His boss at PayPal, Peter Thiel says about Hoffman that he was a firefighter-in-chief at PayPal. At Paypal, he was responsible for most of the high-level jobs like payment infrastructure, government, legal issues, etc., that he handled efficiently under a great pressure.

Founding of LinkedIn

After eBay acquired Paypal, in 2002, Reid Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn, a professional social media network, with his old colleagues from SocialNet.com and Fujitsu. He also received some investment from his colleagues from Paypal, Peter Thiel and Keith Rabois. LinkedIn became a huge success and Hoffman became its founding CEO. Today, Hoffman holds a share worth $2.34 billion in Linked in and he serves as the Executive Chairman of the company. By 2014, LinkedIn had spread in more than 200 countries, with over 332 million members. In June 2016, Microsoft offered him an amount of $26.2 billion in cash for the acquisition of LinkedIn.

Investment, Writing & Motivational Speeches

LinkedIn was a huge success, after which, Hoffman found his interest in investment. He is one of the Angel investors, who are happily ready to invest in potential startups. It is said that Hoffman was the one who arranged the $500,000 angel investment meeting between Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel. Along with Peter, he had also invested in Facebook initially.

Reid Hoffman always wanted to become a positive influence the for its betterment. His desire of becoming a motivational speaker and writing books was always alive. He started writing from local blogs, followed by his ‘LinkedIn’s Series B Pitch to Greylock: Pitch Advice for Entrepreneurs’ and ‘LinkedinInfluencr’ blogs on LinkedIn. In February 2012, he released his first book ‘The Start-Up of You’ with co-author Ben Casnocha, that became the bestseller in New York and was critically acclaimed. In July 2014, he came with another release, ‘The Alliance’ with Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh.

Hoffman also started a podcast named as ‘Masters of Scale’ on 5 May 2017, where he discusses various counterintuitive business theories with successful entrepreneurs.

Personal Life

Hoffman got married to Michelle Yee, in 2004, and the two live in Palo Alto, California. Hoffman is also in Philanthropy and is a member of many NGOs. In 2016, he donated $20 million to a charity Biohub.