Anyone who embarks on a creative journey of designing and initiating a small business while being solely accountable for all its risks, but also reaping all its benefits with the objective of advancement and higher profits is an entrepreneur. In the present day, there are a some entrepreneurs whose ideas were innovative and competent enough to make a mark in the world of business and entrepreneurship.
Here are a few of them
Larry Page
Lawrence Edward Page is the co-founder of Google and Alphabet Inc. and also the co-creator of PageRank who has a net worth of US$69.4 billion as of July 2020. He attributes his skills in computing to his home environment and parents who were very computer proficient. But Page also found support in fellow Ph.D. student Sergey Brin and together they have made the journey from the inception of their thesis titled BackRub to founding Google in 1998 with the sole objective “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” All Page really wanted to do was validate every relevant backlink on web pages to present a more organized, relevant, and easily accessible data to the world at the click of a button. Looking back, he didn’t even know what he was getting into but he was convinced of his idea!
Brian Chesky
Brian Chesky is the co-founder and CEO of the famous lodging service called Airbnb with a net worth of US$3.1 billion as of April 2020. What got him there? In 2007, Chesky and Joe Gebbia were running short of money to pay the rent of their shared apartment when they hatched the idea of sub renting out their apartment as, during the time, all hotels were booked on account of a conference being hosted in the city. They bought three air mattresses and advertised under the name ‘Airbed and Breakfast’ which earned them three guests for a night and rent money. This humble idea eventually evolved into the giant business that it is today with the help of innovative strategies and also funding from seed money startup – Y Combinator. Talk of humble beginnings!
Reid Hoffman
Reid Garrett Hoffman is the co-founder and executive chairman of the business-oriented professional networking giant – LinkedIn with a net worth of US$1.9 billion as of 2019. The idea of social networking for benefit was already introduced by Hoffman way back in the ’90s which eventually paved way for the idea of a business and professional networking site in 2002 called ‘LinkedIn’. Today LinkedIn is a part of Microsoft with Hoffman being elected to its board of members. All this besides being on the founding panel of PayPal and the most sought after investors of today. Hoffman’s exceptional business development skills are any business developer’s dream and envy!
Kabeer Biswas
He is the CEO and co-founder of the Indian delivery services startup funded by Google and established in 2014 called ‘Dunzo’ headquartered in Bengaluru, India. It also runs a bike-taxi service in Gurugram, India. Kabeer experimented with his idea for a year with a small WhatsApp group comprising of friends and neighbors. How is it different from other delivery services? It is an app-based hyper-local service which focuses on the most mundane activities of an ordinary man’s life, like delivering anything from a packet of chips from a store, pick and drop off laundry to a laptop left back at home to your current location. So an app dedicated to fulfilling the most ordinary tasks that you would otherwise find time-consuming with no real added value is so out of the box! Especially, in these COVID times, the concept of Dunzo is a lifesaver and has emerged a winner when many other businesses are struggling.
Jeff Bezos
Jeffrey Preston Bezos is the founder and CEO of the multinational tech company established in 1994 – AMAZON with a current net worth of US$185.6 billion as of September 2020. As per Forbes, Bezos is the first person in history to have a net worth exceeding $200 billion. Bezos, a PRINCETON graduate started an online bookstore from his garage with an initial investment from his parents. He always knew there was scope for expansion and explored possibilities to become the largest internet company in terms of sales, revenue, and AI services and the list goes on. It would suffice to say, AMAZON has witnessed unprecedented growth and expansion, unlike others.
Amancio Ortega
The son of a Spanish railway worker who learned to make clothes by hand under the guidance of a local shirt maker, went on to become the richest man in the world for a brief period in 2015 is definitely a story to tell. He is the founder and CEO of Inditex, the parent company of the famous textile retail chain opened in 1975 – Zara. Inditex was officially founded in 1985 to bring together various operations under one banner.
The above list is just the tip of an iceberg. We already know of similar other brilliant minds like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Mark Zuckerberg, Bernard Arnault, and many others. Each of their journeys is as different as they are common in many aspects. They all started off pretty modestly, resigned from existing jobs, and really good ones at that if you notice. Most of them hold degrees from highly renowned universities while some possess hands-on experience in their respective fields. Also, noteworthy is the fact that they all had people who shared their passion and walked hand-in-hand in their journey to the top. So clearly an in-depth knowledge, support of people with shared beliefs, embracing the digital landscape, and above all an innovative and creative mind and the conviction to go after it combined with the right kind of marketing is what has propelled the top entrepreneurs of today to their enviable position.
