21. Sergey Brin and Larry Page
Together they pursued Ph.D’s at Stanford, developed the Google search engine, founded Google, Inc., and became two of the richest men in the world. In 2007, along with Eric Schmidt, the man they had hired to help them look after Google, they were at the very top of PC World’s list of most important people on the Web. They are investors in Tesla Motors, a cutting-edge automobile start-up which produces electric vehicles. They also bought a Boeing 767 together, which will eventually be refurbished into an unusually large executive plane. They are still officially on leave from their doctoral studies at Stanford.
22. Ingvar Kamprad & Family
Most of the millions of people who shop at the hundreds of IKEA stores across the globe have no idea that the first two letters of the furnishing chain stand for “Ingvar” and “Kamprad.” (The last two letters stand for the farm, Elmtaryd, and nearby village, Agunnaryd, where he was born.) One of the key innovations behind IKEA’s success is the way Kamprad found ways to lower costs while offering stylish, original furniture designs that are easy to take home and put together. Kamprad is well-known for his frugality. Though he was dubbed the richest European-born person in the world (his fortune is now technically shared by his whole family), he prefers to drive an old Volvo and fly economy class.
23. George Soros
George Soros claims to have started making money as a Wall Street analyst in order to fund his interests in writing and philosophy. He studied under the great British philosopher, Sir Karl Popper, whose book The Open Society and It’s Enemies inspired Soros’ own Open Society Institute (OSI), which “aims to shape public policy to promote democratic governance, human rights, and economic, legal, and social reform,” according to its Website. A self-made billionaire and notable philanthropist, Soros has been criticized for not living up to his own ideals of transparency, because the OSI does not disclose more than is required by law and is unabashedly political in its aims. Of course, much of that criticism comes from those less sympathetic to Democrats, who Soros staunchly supports in a number of ways, such as by being the largest financial backer of MoveOn.org.
24. Steve Wynn
Called “the anti-Trump” by Time Magazine, Steve Wynn is responsible for developing the Las Vegas landscape into what it is today. He has built and operated several hotels and casinos, including The Mirage, Treasure Island, and Bellagio. He broke his own rules with his most expensive project, Wynn Las Vegas, which forgoes much of the glitz and glamor normally associated with Vegas and requires guests to actually walk inside the building to enjoy the free attractions. Wynn’s dealings in Vegas go back over thirty years, to the early 1970s, when he gained controlling interest in (and completely made-over and expanded) one of the oldest Vegas casinos, The Golden Nugget.
25. Chad Meredith Hurley
YouTube was created in early 2005 by friends who wanted a better way to share their home videos. The next year it was sold to Google for $1.65 billion. It is now one of the most widely accessed sites on the Web, and practically defines the internet experience for millions of users. YouTube’s influence on the United States presidential elections alone is staggering. Of YouTube’s three founders, CEO Chad Meredith Hurley profited the most form the sale to Google. He received approximately $345.6 million in shares of Google stock, which is about 20 million more than co-founder Steven Chen, and more than five times as much as the third co-founder, Jawed Karim. Before that, Hurley’s greatest claim to fame was having designed the PayPal logo. Just over thirty years old, Hurley’s vision helped redefine the way people communicate all over the world.
meh, they just picked guys that happen to have the combined traits of “rebel” and “successful”. misleading unless you also have the other combos mapped out too:
-’rebel’ and ’spectacular failure’
-’lockstep with convention’ and ‘wildly successful’
-’lockstep with convention’ and ’spectacular failure’.
jin
Bill gates should be #2, and Steve Jobs should #1 >.< they fail at marketing.
Linux FTW
FYI, Li Ka-shing’s family name is Li, so the in the sentence “The only difference is Shing is from China”, “Shing” should be replaced by “Li”.
Trump self-made?
Ah, no.
His father bank rolled his first projects.
Hardly rags to riches, more like riches to more riches.
Even though the title of the article implies a male bias, it’s good to see that – of all the hundreds of successful business people in the world – one lowly woman managed to grace this list of awe-inspiring power figures. And in all of your infinite wisdom, you chose the pinnacle of respectability to represent all feminine achievement. Makes me proud to be a woman.
Humm… these are business pundits who have their name in the history books. there have made their names with their deeds.
I’m well aware to the top 7 in the list.
Donald Trump, Jack Welch & Bill Gates tops my list.
Yeah this list isn’t sexist at all. Wth. Paris Hilton. You have to be kidding me. I’d laugh but I’m so sick of sexism showing up on delicious.
agree with Alicia – at least Anita Roddick should be in the list!
Most “successful” billionaires fell into it: DuPont, Nobel, etc. They may have broken a few laws and moral tenets, but that’s about it.
All the Kings Men /All the Kings horses
Hey, Great Post!
I love these stories. I like to read about successful people. Awesome, I’ll read more about Jim Buckmaster.
Now that we know who the businessmen are, please tell us who the businesswomen are that broke the rules. This is of significant interest to those of us who are “Mustang Sallies!”
Donald Trump is not exactly self made. He was given MILLIONS to start with by his not exactly poor real estate mogul Father. He certainly didn’t start out his career worrying about eviction or whether or not he could pay the electric bill that month.
I really enjoyed reading your post on these mavens and innovators. In order to be successful your product needs to be different. All these people did something completely different and remarkable.
I don’t believe that many of these people just fall into it. It takes hard work, a passion, enjoy being challenged and have a passion to think outside the box!
The list of 25 is missing one: “Dhirubhai Ambani” of Reliance Industries. He not only broke rules but bend them when needed. Classic rags to Riches story, where the news of his death was kept secret from public for 2 days – which otherwise would have led to financial chaos in the country.
Most famous and admired personalities, they together contributed significantly to the development of human race.
Vijyoti
And.. where are they now? They contributed nothing to the human race.
Promoted as rule breakers? The whole business is full of crooks. with the exception of a few.Branson, Jobs.
And now they stand in line for social handouts.
Privatise the profits, socialise the losses. Anyone can run a business that way.
all of them can be described as ‘highly unconventional’…awesome personalities but more intrigued by jim buckmaster’s story…totally off the rules
Ok, so you can’t say these guys didn’t improve the revenue end of the businesses the ran, run, operate or own; however, being a business owner myself, I feel that there is a way to improve your bottom line without demoralizing your employees. Putting that many people out of work may have helped their companies, but it put a heavy burdon on the tax payers that had to pay for their unemployment. I’m just saying that there has to be some happy middle ground.
http://www.datexmedia.wordpress.com
So Paris Hilton made the list but Oprah didn’t. sigh
Great post. Thanks.
Gates didn’t “break any rule” of software development (other than selling software that isn’t yours). closed source software was commonplace during the time he stole DOS and resold it to IBM. There was no prevailing “open source practices of software developent” and i don’t know where you got the “close-source ethic” there is nothing ethical about hiding source.
Putting Donald Trump in there demeans the entire list. Please do some research – his father gave him his fortune, career and first couple of Class A commercial buildings. He is an arrogant egoist that has cheated the city of NY, and virtually all of his business partners. He has walked out on tens of millions of debt to stockholders, all while marketing his brand. The guy is scum. Ask anyone who has invested with him.
You can get some inspiration form these guys. Learn the rules then break them if you know what your doing…
They all great businessman in the world!! I’m really insipred
Roman and Michael, you are my Heroes! keep it up. am proud of you two. look forward for more
Brilliant article. Steve Jobs in particular inspired us to write an article on him that you’ll find on our website.
We stumbled across this page (ie StumbleUpon) and his position at #2 is richly (no pun intended) deserved. However, his involvement and riches through Pixar are as much through luck than judgement. It ultimately came through a failed venture but it has to be said his choice of staff is what made it the eventual success it was.
Many thanks for some very interesting reading.
Trump’s dad was worth about 150 million back in the 1970s when The Donald followed him into commercial real estate development. Adjusted for inflation, his dad was a billionaire. The Donald is a mere horse’s derriere.