David Packard is a very iconic name when it comes to the
Computer and IT business. He becomes a billionaire by co-founding
Hewlett-Packard a technology corporation in 1939.He began his career by
building custom electronic equipment in a one-car garage in Palo Alto. The name
of company was decided to fix as HP by flipping of a coin. Packard begin his
business by made and sold a sound oscillator to Walt Disney’s Fantasia and
continue his production by producing the radio, radar, sonar aviation and
nautical devices during the Second War World.
When we look back about his education background, Packard
has showed an early interest in science and engineering, and in high school
excelled in schoolwork, sports, and leadership. In 1930, Packard went back to
Stanford University and master’s degree in Electrical Engineering. It was the
place where Packard met with Bill Hewlett, with whom he shared dreams of
someday starting a business. Other than that, Stanford University is the place
where Packard finds his life partner, Lucile Salter.
Packard managed to make the HP as the biggest producer of
electrical measurement and testing devices through Packard’s role as a
brilliant administrator and through Hewitt’s various technological advances.
These become the main key to be the producers of computers, calculators, laser
printers and inkjet printers.
HP became a corporation in 1947 when Packard
became the company’s first President. He left the company in 1969 to work under
Nixon’s administration up until 1971 when he came back to the company and
oversaw major reorganization. He retired in 1993.
Packard has created the Monterey Bay Aquarium
Foundation and donated $55 million in total to build an aquarium which opened
in 1984 and donated another 13 million to create the Monterey Bay Aquarium
Research Institute. The success of MBARI is actually goes to his daughters,
Nancy Burnett and Julie Packard. There are the one whom suggest the project of
build an aquarium like no other, with marine creatures displayed in their
natural habits, to inspire conservation of the oceans. Thus in 1984, the
Monterey Bay Aquarium was born.
In his own words, MBARI was to "Take risks.
Ask big questions. Don't be afraid to make mistakes; if you don't make
mistakes, you're not reaching far enough.
A gifted self-publicist,
Donald Trump is a rich property tycoon who achieved notoriety for his
flamboyant style in the 1980s. Despite being declared bankrupt in 1990, Trump
has rebuilt his fortune and is currently thought to be worth around $1.6
billion.In 2001 he completed Trump World Tower, a 72-story
residential tower across from the United Nations complex. Within that same
year, he began construction on Trump Place. Trump also has an undisclosed stake
in Trump International Hotel and Tower, a 44-story mixed-use (hotel and
condominium) tower on Columbus Circle. Trump currently owns over 18 million
square feet of prime Manhattan real estate. Needless to say the Trump name is
infamous.
When we look back the
third generation of a business family, the young Trump begin his business
interest working with his mentor, his father for five years by ventures to
build affordable housing. Trump able to gained a huge knowledge of construction
and some prestigious addresses gained the Trump signature. Since he had a good eye for business, Trump
went to study finance at Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and he resolve to do
real estate on a larger scale than his father.
Trumps become the CEO
of Trump organization, a leading developer in the real estate market and the
founder of Trump Entertainment, which operates gambling casinos. Other than that, he managed to be one of the
most powerful landlords of the 1980s, with ownership of several glass towers at
exclusive addresses in New York, two casinos and the Trump Shuttle airline.
From that, he has received a great deal of publicity following the success of
his reality television show, The Apprentice, in which he serves as both executive producers and host .Just this
year he received an honor for his contribution to the show by having a star
placed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Mr. Trump has
commented often by acknowledging that it is, in fact, the funds obtained from
individuals eager for wealth that likely complimented their financial status.
He continues his speaking in a realistic and logical manner. One simply cannot
fall into real estate. It is necessary to invest to some degree. While
certainly he can provide people with skills needed to become wealthy in the
field he doesn’t offer such knowledge in a dishonest manner. Perhaps that has
something to do with the reason why he is one of the wealthiest men alive.
Sergey Mikhailovich Brin was born on August 21, 1973, in
Moscow, Russia. When he was six years old, Brin emigrated to the U.S. with his
parents and younger brother, Samuel, due to increasing anti-Semitism in the
U.S.S.R. When Brin was nine years old, his father gave him his first computer,
a Commodore 64. From that point on, Brin’s interest in mathematics and
computers only grew. He attended Paint Branch Montessori School in Adelphi,
Maryland, followed by Eleanor Roosevelt High School. In 1993, Brin graduated
from the University of Maryland with an honours degree in Computer Science and
Mathematics. He then received a graduate fellowship from the National Science
Foundation, allowing him to pursue his Master’s degree in Computer Science at
Stanford University, which he received in 1995. Although he had intended to
pursue a Ph.D., a side project with fellow Stanford student Larry Page would
soon distract his attention.
Lawrence Edward Page was born on March 26, 1973 in Lansing,
Michigan. His father, Carl, is a computer science professor at Michigan State
University, where his mother, Gloria, also works as a computer-programming
teacher. Page attended East Lansing High School before earning his Bachelor of
Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan. He then went
on to earn his Master’s degree from Stanford University.
Page admits that the doctoral program was scary. But, it was
while Page was pursuing his Ph.D. in Computer Science at Stanford that he met
fellow student Brin. Although the two initially didn’t hit it off, they soon
found a common interest in data-mining and retrieving relevant information from
large data sets. Together, they wrote a paper entitled, “The Anatomy of a
Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” which has today become the tenth
most accessed scholarly paper at Stanford.
Page and Brin began to think about the relationship between
websites on the Internet, soon realizing that not all of them were created
equal. They created a software system called “BackRub”, a search engine that
checked backlinks to determine one site’s importance over another. Soon, the
two had dropped out of university – although Brin is officially still on leave
from Stanford – and began devoting themselves full-time to their thesis idea.
Working on the Stanford Digital Library Project (SDLP) its
goal was to develop the enabling technologies for a single, integrated and
universal digital library and this was made possible as it was funded through
the National Science Foundation among other federal agencies. In search for a
dissertation theme, Page considered—among other things—exploring the
mathematical properties of the World Wide Web, understanding its link structure
as a huge graph. His supervisor Terry Winograd encouraged him to pick this idea
and Page focused on the problem of finding out which web pages link to a given
page, considering the number and nature of such backlinks to be valuable information
about that page.
Those research did not go in vain as few years ahead from
that, Google was born and was first incorporated as a privately held company on
September 4, 1998, and its initial public offering followed on August 19, 2004.
The company's mission statement from the outset was "to organize the
world's information and make it universally accessible and useful “and the
company's unofficial slogan is "Don't be evil"
Rapid growth since incorporation has triggered a chain of
products, acquisitions, and partnerships beyond the company's core web search
engine. The company offers online productivity software including email, an
office suite, and social networking. Google's products extend to the desktop as
well, with applications for web browsing, organizing and editing photos, and
instant messaging. Google leads the development of the Android mobile operating
system, as well as the Google Chrome OS browser-only operating system, found on
specialized netbooks called Chromebooks. Google has increasingly become a
hardware company with its cooperation with major electronics manufacturers on
its high-end Nexus series of devices and its acquisition of Motorola Mobility
in May 2012,as well as the construction of fiber-optic infrastructure in Kansas
City as part of the Google Fiber broadband Internet service project. Google has
been estimated to run over one million servers in data centers around the
world, and process over one billion search requests and about twenty-four
petabytes of user-generated data every day.
As of September 2012 Alexa listed the main U.S.-focused
google.com site as the Internet's most visited website, and numerous
international Google sites as being in the top hundred, as well as several
other Google-owned sites such as YouTube and Blogger. Google also ranks number
two in the BrandZ brand equity database.
Born on December 5, 1901 , Walter Elias Disney
or better know as Walt Disney started out his career at a very small age
sketching rabbits. When he was 16, he was in the Red Cross and he served in
World War I as an ambulance driver. Being an ambulance driver, he customized
the ambulance that he drove with his own cartoon drawings. Realizing his talent
for art and drawing, upon his return from the war, he worked as an advertising
cartoonist in Kansas City, Missouri, but since this did not work really well in
his favor, Disney decided to move to California, where he joined forces with
his brother, Roy to continue their passion for art.
As Walt handled the creative aspects
of partnership, Roy focused on the business and financial end of the overall
business. The Disney brothers borrowed some money to set up a studio in their
uncle's garage. From a very humble beginning, a series of black-and-white
cartoons with sounds featuring a rabbit named Oswald. It was produced under Universal
Studios. It was a big commercial success. After the success when Walt asked Universal
for a raise, they balked. His demands were not met and on the 1928, Disney quit
drawing Oswald and to make matters even worst since the studio retained the
rights to the character, Disney also lost the first cartoon character that he
had created. The series continued however with a different cartoonist featuring
Oswald but it was never quite the same.
Disappointed, Disney went back to the
drawing board. Still with the determination and passion for drawing cartoons he
created a silent cartoon called Plane Crazy that featured a new character named
Mickey Mouse. But the use of sound in animation films has changed everything in
Hollywood. It was the best thing in Hollywood and to satisfy that demand Disney
delayed Plane Crazy and instead produced a second Mickey Mouse cartoon, this
time with sound. Steamboat Willie, released in 1928, was the first animated
film to feature fully synchronized sound. Despite the film's international success
and recognition, Walt and Roy still needed cash to license Mickey Mouse's image.
Learning from the mistake made previously, for a fee of $300, Mickey Mouse was
used on newspapers on the comic column solely for children.
Disney became fixated on the use of technology.
He wanted to apply those advances to his films and make them visually stunning.
Obtained exclusive rights to use Technicolor in animated films for two years, He
won his first Academy Award in 1932 for the animated short Flowers and Trees.
That was also the first full-color cartoon ever produced. Over the course of
his career he won 26 Oscars, the most number of awards given to any individual.
During the next few years, Goofy, Donald Duck and several other memorable
characters joined Mickey. But Disney believed the future of company was in
feature-length films, and having that in mind he released Snow White and the
Seven Dwarfs in 1937. It was the first feature-length animated movie to be
produced in Technicolor, and cost nearly $1.5 million to make, but that movie
made Disney and his company stand out from the rest as a pioneer in the
animated entertainment business.
As
the company grew, Disney diversified production beyond cartoons and animated
movies.Treasure Island, released in 1950, was the studio’s first
live-action film, and the company formed Buena Vista Distribution a few years
later. The
popular Mickey Mouse Club debuted as a TV series in 1955.But
it was the TV program called Disneyland,
which debuted in 1954 that showed Walt Disney, had even bigger plans for
the company.
Disney established WED Enterprises as a separate company and
began drawing up plans for Disneyland, a giant theme park. Because the park was
technically part of a separate corporation, Disney was able to develop it in
secret and Disneyland opened in 1955 as a theme park unlike any other the world
had seen. He solicited several corporate sponsorships to subsidize costs, and
outsourced food and merchandise within the park. Once Disneyland was earning
revenue, the company repurchased those rights and kept the revenue internally.
Plans for a second park, which ultimately became Walt Disney World, began with
the acquisition of land in Florida in the 1960s. This second park would contain
Disney's vision of what the future urban community would look like; he called
it the "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow", now commonly
known as Epcot Center. This unique strategy of Disney to made the theme park
very successful in a very short time
Walt
Disney died in 1966, five years before Disney World opened in Orlando, Florida,
and 16 years before Epcot Center opened in 1981, leaving behind a legacy that
started with a mouse.
Born on February 24, 1955, Steve
Jobs showed an early interest in electronics and gadgetry when way back in high
school, he boldly called Hewlett-Packard co-founder and president William
Hewlett to ask for parts for a school project. Impressed by Jobs boldness,
Hewlett not only gave him the parts, but also offered him a summer internship
at Hewlett-Packard. Jobs then met Steve Wozniak, a young engineer five years
his senior there.
After graduating from high
school, Jobs was in Reed College but only for one semester before dropping out.
He had become fascinated by Eastern spiritualism, and thus took a part-time job
designing video games for Atari to finance a trip to India for the sole purpose
of studying Eastern culture and religion.
Jobs did made his trip to India
and when he returned, he met up with Wozniak, who was in the process of build a
small computer. Visionary Jobs grasped the marketing potential of it and
convinced Wozniak to join too. In 1975, the 20-year-old Jobs and Wozniak set up
shop in Jobs' parents' garage, thus the venture Apple began as well as works on
Apple I.
Apple I sold mainly to a small
group of people, but it was enough to generate enough cash to enable Jobs and
Wozniak to improve and refine their design. In 1977, they introduced the Apple
II -- the first personal computer with color graphics and a keyboard. Designed
for beginners to computers, the user-friendly Apple II was a tremendous
success, ushering in the era of the personal computer. First-year sales topped
$3 million. Two years later, sales ballooned to $200 million.
But by 1980, Apple's shine was
starting to wear off. Increased competition combined with less than stellar
sales of the Apple III and its follow-up, the LISA, caused the company to lose
nearly half its market to IBM. Faced with declining sales, Jobs introduced the
Apple Macintosh in 1984. It was the first personal computer to feature a
graphical-user interface controlled by a mouse and the Macintosh was a true
breakthrough in terms of ease-of-use. But the marketing behind it was flawed.
Jobs had envisioned the Mac as a home computer, but at $2,495, it was too expensive
for the consumer market. When consumer sales failed to reach projections, Jobs
tried pitching the Mac as a business computer. But with little memory, no hard
drive and no networking capabilities, the Mac had almost none of the features
the corporate world wanted.
He clashed with Apple's board
of directors and, in 1983, was ousted from the board by CEO John Sculley, whom
Jobs had handpicked to help him run Apple. Stripped of all power and control,
Jobs eventually sold his shares of Apple stock and resigned in 1985.
Later that year, using a
portion of the money from the stock sale, Jobs launched NeXT Computer Co., with
the goal of building a breakthrough computer that would revolutionize research
and higher education. Introduced in 1988, the NeXT computer boasted a host of
innovations, including notably fast processing speeds, exceptional graphics and
an optical disk drive. But priced at $9,950, the NeXT was too expensive to
attract enough sales to keep the company afloat. Undeterred, Jobs switched the company's
focus from hardware to software. He also began paying more attention to his
other business, Pixar Animation Studios, which he had purchased from George
Lucas in 1986.
Jobs set out to create the
first ever computer-animated feature film and four years in the making;
"Toy Story" was a hit when it was released in November 1995. Fueled
by this success, Jobs took Pixar public in 1996, and by the end of the first
day of trading, his 80 percent share of the company was worth $1 billion. After
nearly 10 years of struggling, Jobs had finally hit it big. But the best was
yet to come.
Within days of Pixar's arrival
on the stock market, Apple bought NeXT for $400 million and re-appointed Jobs
to Apple's board of directors as an advisor to Apple chairman and CEO Gilbert
F. Amelio. It was an act of desperation on Apple's part. Because they had
failed to develop a next-generation Macintosh operating system, the firm's
share of the PC market had dropped to just 5.3 percent, and they hoped that
Jobs could help turn the company around.
At the end of March 1997, Apple announced a quarterly loss of $708 million.
Three months later, Amelio resigned and Jobs took over as interim CEO. Once
again in charge of Apple, Jobs struck a deal with Microsoft to help ensure
Apple's survival. Under the arrangement, Microsoft invested $150 million for a
nonvoting minority stake in Apple, and the companies agreed to "cooperate
on several sales and technology fronts." Next, Jobs installed the G3
PowerPC microprocessor in all Apple computers, making them faster than
competing Pentium PCs. He also spearheaded the development of the iMac, a new
line of affordable home desktops, which debuted in August 1998 to rave reviews.
Under Jobs' guidance, Apple quickly returned to profitability, and by the end
of 1998, boasted sales of $5.9 billion.
Against all odds, Steve Jobs
pulled the company he founded and loved back from the brink. Apple once again
was healthy and churning out the kind of breakthrough products that made the
Apple name synonymous with innovation.
But Apple's innovations were
just getting started. Over the next decade, the company rolled out a series of
revolutionary products, including the iPod portable digital audio player in
2001, an online marketplace called the Apple iTunes Store in 2003, the iPhone
handset in 2007 and the iPad tablet computer in 2010. The design and
functionality of these devices resonated with users worldwide. Apple says it
has sold more than 300 million iPods, over 100 million iPhones and more than 15
million iPad devices. The company has sold billions of songs from its iTunes
Store.
Despite his professional
successes, Jobs struggled with health issues. In January 2011, following a
liver transplant, Jobs said he was taking a medical leave of absence from Apple
but said he'd continue as CEO and "be involved in major strategic
decisions for the company."
Eight months later, on August 24, Apple’s board of directors announced that
Jobs had resigned as CEO and that COO Tim Cook would replace him. Jobs said he
would remain with the company as chairman.
Steve Jobs passed away on October 5th 2011, at 56
years old, dying as the man who envisioned the future.
William Henry
"Bill" Gates III was born on born October 28, 1955 and he is the
former chief executive and current chairman of Microsoft, a name quite familiar
to all of us, as it is the world’s largest personal-computer software company.
He cofounded the company with his long time friend, Paul Allen.
Gates' first exposure to
computers came while he was attending the very famous Lakeside
School in Seattle. A local company offered the use of its computer to the
school through a Teletype link, and the primitive machine entranced young Gates.
Along with fellow student Paul Allen, he began ditching class to work in the
school's computer room. Their work would soon pay off as when Gates was 15, he
and Allen went into business together. The two teens netted $20,000 with
Traf-O-Data, a program they developed to measure traffic flow in the Seattle
area.
Despite his love for computer programming, due to his father's influence, Gates
entered Harvard in the fall of 1973. By his own admission, he was there in
physical terms but preferring to spend his time playing poker and video games
rather than attending class.
However in December 1974, all that changed when Allen showed Gates a magazine
article about the world's first microcomputer, the Altair 8800. Seeing an
opportunity for themselves, Gates and Allen called the manufacturer, MITS, in
Albuquerque, New Mexico, and told the president they had written a version of
the popular computer language BASIC for the Altair. When he said he'd like to
see it, Gates and Allen, who actually hadn't written anything, starting working
day and night in Harvard's computer lab. When Allen flew to Albuquerque to test
the program on the Altair, neither he nor Gates was sure it would run. But it
did run. This catalyzed Gate’s decision to drop out of Harvard and moved with
Allen to Albuquerque, where they officially established Microsoft. Gates and
Allen were already writing software for other computer start-ups as well including
Commodore, Apple and Tandy Corp.
The both of them then moved the company to Seattle in 1979, and that's when
Microsoft hit the big time. When Gates learned IBM was having trouble to obtain
an operating system for its new PC, Gates bought an existing operating system
from a small Seattle company for $50,000, developed it into MS-DOS (Microsoft
Disk Operating System), then licensed it to IBM. The genius of the deal was
that while IBM got MS-DOS, Microsoft retained the right to license it to other
computer makers.
Much as Gates had anticipated, after the first IBM PCs were released, cloners
such as Compaq began producing compatible PCs, and the market was soon flooded
with clones. Like IBM, rather than produce their own operating systems, the
cloners decided it was cheaper to purchase MS-DOS off the shelf. As a result,
MS-DOS became the standard operating system for the industry, and Microsoft's
sales soared from $7 million in 1980 to $16 million in 1981.
Microsoft expanded into applications software and continued to grow until 1984,
when Apple introduced the first Macintosh computer. The Macintosh's sleek
graphical user interface (GUI) threatened to make the Microsoft program
obsolete. In response to this threat, Gates announced that Microsoft was
developing its own GUI-based operating system called Windows. Gates then took
Microsoft public in 1986 to generate capital. The IPO was a roaring success,
making Gates one of the wealthiest people in the country overnight.
When Windows was finally released in 1985, it wasn't exactly the breakthrough Gates
had predicted.They saw Windows as a rip-off of the Macintosh operating system
and sued. The case would drag on until the mid-1990s, when the courts finally
decided that Apple's suit had no merit.
Meanwhile, Gates worked on improving Windows. Subsequent versions of the
program ran faster and froze less frequently. Third-party programmers began
developing Windows-based programs, and Microsoft's own applications became hot
sellers. By 1993, Windows was selling at a rate of 1 million copies per month
and was estimated to be running on nearly 85 percent of the world's computers.
Microsoft solidified its industry dominance in the mid-1990s by combining
Windows with its other applications into "suites" and persuading
leading computer makers to preload their software on every computer they sold.
The strategy worked so well that by 1999 Microsoft was posting sales of $19.7
billion, and Gates' personal wealth had grown to a phenomenal $90 billion.
But with success has come scrutiny. Microsoft's competitors have complained
that the company uses its operating system monopoly to retard the development
of new technology-a claim Gates soundly refutes. Nevertheless, the U.S. Justice
Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against the company in 1998 over its
practice of bundling software with Windows.
Regardless of the problems he faced, He
is consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people and was the
wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2009, excluding 2008, when he was ranked third
in 2011 he was the wealthiest American and the second wealthiest person. During
his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software
architect, and remains the largest individual shareholder, with 6.4 percent of
the common stock .He has also authored or co-authored several books
Mark Zuckerberg
is another famous entrepreneur in the IT world. He is an American computer
programmer and the internet entrepreneur. He is said to be concurring the
internet database through his famous social network called Facebook. His
interest in the computers and software began as a hobby. He started writing on
them in his middle school. His father was a dental practitioner but he did not
choose to follow his father’s footsteps.
He co-joined his friends to create computer games as his friends were
artists. He developed his interest very soon before his college days and he
went on further in this field gaining more knowledge and interests.
Soon he
developed Facebook along with his other five friends and this social webpage
has become very famous among teenagers and now everyone regardless of age is
using this network for communication purposes.
Mark made a lot
of profit via this social network and he donated almost half of it to the
charity. He started on a foundation for education purpose to help the public
schools in New Jersey. Zuckerberg, Bill Gates,
and investor Warren Buffett signed a promise they called the
"Giving Pledge",
in which they promised to donate to charity at least half of their wealth over
the course of time, and invited others among the wealthy to donate 50% or more
of their wealth to charity. He set an example to other entrepreneurs on being a
philanthropist and being generous especially to the needy. He keeps “openness,
making things that help people connect and share what's important to them,
revolutions, information flow, minimalism" as his philosophy which makes
him a successful person in the world of entrepreneurship. He is definitely a
good example to the young entrepreneurs for his tremendous success at a
relatively young age and also how to channel earnings in a good way to the
needy ones in a proper way.
Oprah Winfrey is
one of the famous entrepreneurs known by millions of people all around the
world. She could be popular due to various reasons but I would say that her
main reason of success would be her genuine approach and sincere care which
touched many people’s hearts. Her impactful talk in the TV shows made her to be
named as one of the most influential woman in the world. She is definitely a
woman of respect.
But looking back
into her early life, she was definitely not born with a silver spoon in her mouth.
She was an ordinary girl from a moderate family. However, she was challenged to
live her life when she was sexually abused at an early age. Despite being
sexually harassed, she did not give up on her entire life. She was confident
enough to face the community and all the talks of the town. She also did not
abort the baby but delivered the baby successfully. Unfortunately the baby died
after a few days due to some health issues. Having lost her dignity for some
unfair and unfortunate reasons, she did not choose to end her live but she
chose to prove to the community that she is able to live her life. Her
confidence and will power should be highly appreciated because it takes a lot
of courage to face the community in this case. The will power and confidence
that she had has made her a successful entrepreneur today.
Not only that,
the later part of her life, she did a lot of community service. She is a good
speaker and a confident preacher. She made a lot of difference in the lives of
many people. She encourages people to move on with live and gives good
solutions to every problem that people are suffering with. Her famous
television broadcast, “The Oprah Winfrey Show” presented her to the world and
she was able to reach many people all over the world. This talk-of-the-town
show is mainly revolving on topics on social issues like heart disease,
geopolitics, spirituality and meditation, interviewing celebrities on social
issues they were directly involved with, such as cancer, charity work, or
substance abuse and hosting televised giveaways. She interviewed Michael
Jackson and it became the fourth most watched event in American television
history.
Oprah is also a
writer. She co-authored five books and publishes magazines on some related
issues of her show. She is successful on the every corner of the entertainment
industry and a well-established entrepreneur. She is also rated as the ninth
greatest American in the history. In a nutshell, Oprah Winfrey is definitely a
good example of entrepreneur that we should take as an example. She is a good
role model to everyone, be it man or women for she helped us look at the world
in a different way.
Lakshmi Mittal, the London-based,
Rajasthan born steel baron is the Chairman and CEO of Mittal Steel Company and
the world’s 3rd richest man.Lakshmi Narayan Mittal also known as Lakshmi Niwas
Mittal is a billionaire industrialist, born in Rajasthan, India in 1950.
Lakshmi graduated from St. Xavier’s College in Calcutta where he received a
Bachelor of Commerce degree. He later married Usha Mittal, and had a son and
daughter.
Mittal
began his career working in the family’s steelmaking business in India, and has
over 30 years of experience working in steel and related industries. Mittal
founded the company Mittal Steel (formerly the LNM Group) in 1976 and has been
responsible for the development of its businesses ever since. Mittal Steel is a
global steel producer with operations in 14 countries.
Mittal pioneered the development of integrated mini-mills and the use of
Direct Reduced Iron or “DRI” as a scrap substitute for steelmaking and led the
consolidation process of the global steel industry. Mittal Steel is the largest
steelmaker in the world, with shipments of 42.1 million tons of steel and
profits of over $22 billion in 2004.
Mittal was awarded Fortune magazines “European Businessman of the Year
2004” and also “Steelmaker of the Year” in 1996 by New Steel, and the “Willy
Korf Steel Vision Award” in 1998, for outstanding vision, entrepreneurship,
leadership and success in global steel development from American Metal Market
and PaineWeber’s World Steel Dynamics.
Mittal is an active philanthropist
and a member of a few trusts. Mittal is a member of the Foreign Investment
Council in Kazakhstan, the International Investment Council in South Africa,
the World Economic Forum’s International Business Council and the International
Iron and Steel Institute’s Executive Committee. He is a Director of ICICI Bank
Limited and is on the Advisory Board of the Kellogg School of Management in the
U.S. In March 2005, Forbes Magazine named him the 3rd richest man in the world
and the richest non-American, with an estimated wealth of US$25 billion.
He is the wealthiest person in Britain. His house in Kensington, bought
in 2003 for $128 million is the most expensive house ever purchased.
In my view, Lakshmi Mittal is a
very determined and courageous man. Despite sleeping in thin mattress, he
learned that he should wake up and see his future. He planned and makes
strategies so that he can enhance his business. He is also has great patience
and brave enough to take risk in his life. He might have just carried out his
family’s steelmaking business, but he did not. He takes risk to expand the business
rather keeping him in a comfort zone. His secret of success merely lays on his
positive characteristics and his enthusiasm in business line.
Warren Buffett was born in 1930
in Omaha,
Nebraska, the second of three children and only son of U.S.
Representative Howard Buffett and
his wife Leila (née Stahl). Buffett began his education at Rose Hill Elementary
School in Omaha. After moving with his family to Washington, D.C., Warren
finished elementary school, attended Alice Deal Junior High School, and
graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in
1947
Even
as a child, Buffett displayed an interest in making and saving money. He went
door to door selling chewing gum, Coca-Cola,
or weekly magazines. While still in high school he was successful in making
money by delivering newspapers, selling golf balls and stamps, and detailing
cars, among other means. In 1945, in his sophomore year of high school, Buffett
and a friend spent $25 to purchase a used pinball machine,
which they placed in the local barber shop. Within months,
they owned several machines in different barber shops.
Buffett's interest in the stock market
and investing also dated to his childhood. At the age of 11, he bought three
shares of Cities Service Preferred
for himself, and three for his sister. By the time he finished college, Buffett
had accumulated more than $90,000 in savings measured in 2009 dollars.
Warren Buffett was employed from 1951–54
at Buffett-Falk & Co., Omaha as
an investment salesman, from 1954–1956 at Graham-Newman Corp., New
York as a securities analyst, from 1956–1969 at Buffett Partnership,
Ltd., Omaha as a general partner and from 1970 – Present at Berkshire Hathaway
Inc, Omaha as its Chairman,
CEO.
In 1954, Buffett accepted a job at Benjamin Graham's
partnership. His starting salary was $12,000 a year. In 1956, Benjamin Graham
retired and closed his partnership. At this time Buffett's personal savings
were over $174,000 and he started Buffett Partnership Ltd., an investment
partnership in Omaha.
By 1960, Buffett had seven partnerships
operating: Buffett Associates, Buffett Fund, Dacee, Emdee, Glenoff, Mo-Buff and
Underwood. In 1962, Buffett became a millionaire because of his partnerships,
which in January 1962 had an excess of $7,178,500, of which over $1,025,000
belonged to Buffet. He became a billionaire on paper when Berkshire Hathaway
began selling class A shares on May 29, 1990, when the market closed at $7,175
a share.
In my opinion, he is successful because of numerous traits. Warren
Buffett's fundamental needs, values, and orientation towards life are
symbolized by the four astrological elements. He has own unique balance of
these four basic energies: fire (warmth, inspiration, enthusiasm), earth
(practicality, realism, material interests), air (social and intellectual
qualities), and water (emotional needs and feelings). I believe itsCharlie Mungerwho says that Buffett is a learning
machine. He reads a tremendous amount and absorbs it. He has greatanalytical
skills, understands people, and has great patience plus discipline which
has been demonstrated by his avoidance of bubble markets.
Moreover, Warren Buffett has a very strong need for security and
he places safety first. He is unlikely to make sudden changes or to take new
directions that involve risk and unpredictability. His strengths include depth
of feeling, patience, and generosity. The qualities that Warren Buffett needs
to cultivate include initiative, openness to change and new experience, and a
stronger sense of self.
