Top Entrepreneurs of the Last 100 Years
Focus recently put together a list of the top entrepreneurs of the last 100 years with some interesting figures. It starts out with Andrew Carnegie, who built his Steel empire into US Steel and then turned his attention to philanthropy. Carnegie gave away a ton of money to libraries, schools and universities and is the widely regarded as the second richest man in history, behind John D. Rockefeller (who was 10th on the list).
I think one important thing to note about the computer-related entrepreneurs on the list is that they were all born from 1955-1967. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were both born in 1955 and both got started early working with computers. It's no surprise then that they built two mammoth companies in the emergine market. The internet guys came a few years later as Peirre Omidyar of Ebay was born in 1967, Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com in 1964 and Michael Dell in 1965. I know Dell builds computers, but his business model was centered on getting his product direct to the consumer, which the internet was his main tool.
I did feel like the list missed out on some of the more recent guys who started mega-businesses. Where is the love for guys like Mark Zuckerberg, who founded facebook, or Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin? Do you think anyone else is missing off the list?
Here is the complete list:
- Andrew Carnegie
- Oprah Winfrey
- Thomas Edison
- Estee Lauder
- Ray Kroc
- Bill Gates
- Conrad Hilton
- Steve Jobs
- Henry Ford
- John D. Rockefeller
- Michael Dell
- Sam Walton
- Richard Branson
- Jeff Bezos
- Walt Disney
- Pierre Omidyar
- Ralph Lauren
- William S. Harley & Arthur Davidson
- Phil Knight
- Milton Hershey