After writing the review for the book “Strategy Rules Five Timless Lessons from Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs” by David B. Yoffie and Michael A.Cusumano that I trully enjoyed, I felt like writing a quick recap on the lives of the famous CEO and founders of IT companies mentionned by the book. Here we go!
Andy Grove: Survivor of the Holocaust and immigrant to the United States, he studied and got a Ph.D. in Chemical engineering from the University of California. He ventured in the world of semiconductor in 1963 by creating Intel, to manufacture memory chips for computers. Intel is the creator of the first CPU (Central Processing Unit). Intel powerd most of the chips and CPUs for PCs and became a powerhouse in data centers.
Bill Gates: Discovering the power of computer science while in middle school, and wrote software to schedule courses and keep track of traffic data while in high school. He enrolled into Harvard for two years, but then dropped to start off his business Microsoft. They are the creator of the vastly used Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office softwares (Outlook, Excel, Word, etc).
Steve Jobs: Having a passion for creating, engineering and designing since young, he went through a discovery phase as a teenager. After a trip to India, he comes back ready to create Apple Computer with his friend Steve Wozniak. Recognizing the importance to create “world-class” products that are appealing to the consumer, he made Apple the company it is today.
Larry Page: Dropping out from Stanford’s Ph.D computer science program to co-found Google with Serge Brin in 1998, he knew the importance of riding the “cloud” wave. All the services offered are Internet-Based and fully advertisement funded. Their innovative free Android system made them the leader of mobile app.
Mark Zukerberg: Another Harvard drop-out who ended up doing extremly well for himself, Zukerberg is the pioneer of social media as we see it today. He wanted to make it into an operating system so it can run full applications and offered the facebook data free to use such that others could create apps using tools like sharing photos and playing games.
Jeff Bezos: Founder of Amazon in 1994, he learned early the potential of Internet and quickly crashed all competitors, monopolizing the online buying market. He creates more than just an online shop, but a real platform. Focused on the customer’s needs, he made his team look carefully at the science of pricing and wanted to controle every aspect of the website.
Pony Ma: Founder of the largest Chinese Internet company Tencent, Ma is a Shenzhen University graduate in computer science. Investing in the world of interconnected Web platforms, he only charged his product for enhanced options. The company monopolizes the Chinese market by venturing in microblogging, multiplayer gaming and social media, they are the creator of the most popular Chinese app WeChat. His strategy to diversify his products paid off as it has a heavy number of members/subscribers and advertisement is now not their main source of revenue.
Cathartic Life 