I bet you’ve made some pretty big mistakes. But have you ever made a billion-dollar mistake?

If not, then rest easy: the world’s smartest and most successful entrepreneurs have made mistakes far greater than yours. One even made a decision that cost him $45 million bucks.

Learn from their mistakes today so that you don’t repeat them tomorrow.

#1 Steve Jobs Giving Up Control of Apple

Today, we all know that Steve Jobs was one of the greatest CEO’s of all time. Between 1997 and 2011, Steve led Apple to soaring profits with unparalleled charisma, leadership, and eye for innovation. But in the beginning, even Steve didn’t know that he was destined to be CEO of the company that he founded.

That doubt led Jobs to give up executive control of Apple Inc. in 1977 – a decision that would result in Jobs being fired by the company he founded.

Slipping out of his Grasp

Apple was a partnership owned entirely by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak until Jobs lured Mike Markkula out of retirement in 1977. Markkula was a seasoned entrepreneur and angel investor who provided Apple with much needed capital and business expertise.

It was the beginning of Jobs losing control of his own company. By the time Markkula stepped down as CEO in 1983, Jobs wanted control back. He was ready to be CEO. The only problem was that it was no longer Steve’s decision – and the board at Apple Inc. wasn’t too keen on hiring a 28-year-old to run the fast-growing company.

Powerless, Jobs agreed to recruit John Sculley, who was currently the head of Pepsi-Cola. Sculley took the job, but a power struggle between the two strong-willed men ensued.

When the conflict reached a breaking point, Markkula sided with Sculley. Steve Jobs was fired from Apple Inc. in 1985. Sculley had this to say:

Without Steve’s unique vision, Apple soon began to falter. A string of failures in the early 90’s opened the door wide for the competition, specifically Bill Gates and Microsoft.

Lesson Learned:

Steve Jobs wasn’t the most experienced choice for CEO of Apple, but he loved and understood his company better than anyone on the planet.

If you want your startup company to grow, you have to give up some control. But be careful about how much control you give and who you give it to. You don’t want to be in Jobs position, betrayed by the very person who you put in power.

Note: If you want more on what Jobs has done right, check out this article I wrote called 21 Life Lessons from Steve Jobs.

Honorable Mention: Selling stock in Apple

When Apple went public in 1980, Steve Jobs was awarded 7.5 million in Apple shares. When he was fired from Apple, Jobs sold all but one share. (He would have sold all of his shares, but he didn’t want to stop receiving the company’s annual report.)

As of April 2012, with Apple stock trading for over $600, those 7.5 million shares would be worth over $45 billion dollars. That alone is almost as much as the April 2012 worth of the world’s richest man, Carlos Slim ($49 billion).

#2 Bill Gates Ignoring Search Engines

Gates has proved himself a visionary by founding a computer software company in 1975 (Microsoft), pioneering a graphical user interface in 1985 (Windows 1.0), and by introducing millions of Americans to the Internet in 1995 (Windows 95 came bundled with Internet Explorer).

But by 2005, it was clear that Bill had failed to predict a billion-dollar opportunity: the search engine.

Walking Past a Gold Mine

Microsoft introduced MSN Search in 1998, the same year that Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google. Google was fast, innovative, and good at delivering relevant results. MSN Search was none-of-the-above.

Microsoft hadn’t even bothered to develop a search engine of their own. They used results from Inktomi, an existing search engine. Search simply wasn’t a priority. Microsoft was more focused on defeating Netscape Navigator in a battle of the browsers.

Still Searching for Results

By 2002, it was painfully obvious to Gates that search had been a big missed opportunity. Google had earned $348 million in revenue that year. A year later, in 2003, Google almost tripled its revenue to $962 million. Finally, Microsoft started developing a search engine.

The company launched Windows Live Search in 2006 but it failed to compete with Google. In 2009, Microsoft rebranded once again and introduced Bing. Billed as the first “decision engine”, Bing has taken a small bite out of the search market, but it hasn’t been cheap. In the fiscal year ending June 2011, Bing cost Microsoft $2.5 billion more than it earned.

The Lesson:

In 1998, no company had more leverage online than Microsoft. Imagine if Gates had prioritized the development of a great search engine back then: Google would probably be the world’s second biggest search engine.

But since Gates owed all of his success to software, it isn’t surprising that he overestimated the importance of Internet Explorer. Bill said it best himself:

As long as the world is spinning, your industry will keep changing. Just because a strategy worked for your business in the past, don’t count on it being the best method today.

Note: If you want more on what Gates has done right, check out this article I wrote on 10 lessons from Bill Gates.

Honorable Mention: Playing Monopoly

Remember when I told you Bill Gates was determined to defeat Netscape Navigator? He may have been a little bit too determined: in 1998, Microsoft was slapped with a lawsuit alleging that it was in violation of anti-trust laws.

In the case of United States v. Microsoft, the plaintiffs alleged that Microsoft had unfairly restricted the market for competing web browsers by manipulating APIs and bundling Internet Explorer with Windows 95.

The judge initially ruled against Microsoft and ordered that the company be split into two divisions, but after years of litigation Microsoft won an appeal and reached a settlement that allowed the company to continue its operations.

#3 Larry Page Missing Out on Social Networking

Google has done so much right since Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded the search engine in 1998. They’ve monetized carefully, kept things simple, and expanded their services (e.g. Google Maps, YouTube, Gmail).

But just as Bill Gates failed to capitalize on an opportunity to dominate search, Page missed an equally massive opportunity to dominate a coming web revolution: social networking. The worst part is that Page saw the potential of social networks, but he simply didn’t act on it.

Friendster: The Google Network that Wasn’t

Google had offered $30,000,000 to buy the social networking site Friendster in 2003. But Friendster didn’t sell. Larry Page should have used his position as “president of products” to start developing a Google social network right then and there.

But he didn’t. Google didn’t roll out Google Buzz until February 2010. Buzz was discontinued in 2011 to make room for Google Plus, which has also struggled to make a dent in the market.

Looking back on the missed opportunity, Page has expressed regret:

Can you imagine if Google had used its team of developers, mountain of resources, and hundreds of millions of users to launch a social network back in 2004? Facebook wouldn’t have stood a chance. Instead, Google’s on the outside looking in.

Lesson Learned:

Page says that he “knew he had to do something” with social networking. But after Friendster declined to be bought out by Google, Page temporarily gave up on Google having a social network.

Don’t make the same mistake. Next time you absolutely know your business is missing out on a big opportunity, stop at nothing to capitalize on it.

Note: If you want more on what Page has done right, check out this article I wrote on the eight simple rules that Google followed on its way to being the world’s biggest website.

Honorable Mention: Google Wave

Page oversaw the development and release of this real-time collaborative editing application. Wave stumbled out of the gate because it was released before it’s time (the software was buggy).

#4 Mark Zuckerberg Deciding to be the Face of Facebook

Nobody can call Mark Zuckerberg stupid. It took great vision for Mark to imagine Facebook in 2004; it took analytical genius to program it into reality.

But nobody can call Mark charismatic either. Mark is a strong-minded individual. He tends to be very blunt and a little bit arrogant. That’s why it’s surprising Zuckerberg chose to be the public face of his company.

Missteps, Miscues, and Misunderstandings

The above sentence stirred up a small controversy when Zuckerberg posted it on his personal Facebook page in May 2011. Animal lovers found it offensive – even though Zuckerberg was only killing animals because he wanted to reinforce that “a living being has to die for you to eat meat.”

These types of misunderstandings have marred Zuckerberg’s PR career.

In interviews and presentations, Mark has been underwhelming and uninspiring. The worst example may be this interview at the D8 conference in 2010. When facing scrutiny over Facebook’s privacy policy, Zuckerberg stumbled over his words and began sweating so profusely that Forbes wrote a story about it called ‘Great Perspirations’.

Of course, Zuckerberg’s most memorable (and perhaps most damaging) portrayal in the media was in the 2010 film The Social Network. The fictionalized account of Facebook’s rise to online dominance characterized Zuckerberg as ruthless, callous, and cocky – not exactly qualities you want associated with the face of your company.

Lesson Learned:

Zuckerberg is getting better at PR. Lately, he’s been almost charismatic.

And obviously, Facebook is doing just fine with him as the face of the company. People will continue loving Facebook as long as it’s the best way for them to connect with their friends online.

But had Zuckerberg stayed in the shadows and allowed a silver-tongued “Steve Jobs type” in the spotlight, Facebook would have a clearer message and a better brand. The world’s biggest social networks would be more trusted, more loved, and – simply – cooler.

So, as your company grows, remember that you may not always be the best person for the job. Play to your strengths and, in the words of Warren Buffett, stick to your “circle of confidence.”

Note: If you want more on what Zuckerberg has done right, check out this article I wrote on nine ways Zuckerberg has been essential to Facebook’s success.

Honorable Mention: Facebook Beacon

Under Mark’s direction, Facebook has gotten into a lot of hot water for privacy issues. Their strategy seems to be invading their users’ privacy first, asking questions later, and apologizing if necessary.

Facebook Beacon is the most egregious example. Launched in November 2007, Beacon was an aggressive advertisement system that sent information from certain websites back to Facebook.

When users started seeing their online activity automatically posted on their Facebook page, they were surprised and displeased. After a storm of controversy and a class action lawsuit, Facebook shut down the service in September of 2009.

What’s the Common Thread?

Steve Job’s mistake left room for Bill Gates to dominate the personal computer industry. Gates’ mistake left room for Larry Page to dominate the search engine industry. Page’s mistake left room for Zuckerberg to dominate the social networking industry.

Before long, we’ll be talking about the entrepreneur who capitalized on Zuckerberg’s mistakes.

That entrepreneur could be you. Start keeping a close watch on the leaders in your industry with an eye for the opportunities they’re letting slip through the cracks.

If you don’t, then you’re making a big mistake.

Post image courtesy of Opensourceway (http://www.flickr.com/photos/opensourceway/)

They’re just nice enough to let us live in it.

When Larry Page and Sergey Brin launched Google out of a dorm room in 1998, they had no idea that it would one day employ 32,000 people, process one billion searches a day, and earn over US$30 billion a year.

What they had, instead, were some very non-traditional thoughts on how to run a business.

Rule #1: Stay Simple

Google’s home page is a perfect example of the company’s commitment to simplicity.

For Google, simple means faster, easier to use, and higher quality.

That’s why software developers who work at Google are taught that the best products “include only the features that people need to accomplish their goals.” When they’re creating a new product, they don’t try to stuff it full of as many features as possible.

“Simplicity is powerful.”

Google Company Philosophy

What a Tangled Web We Weave…

For some reason, it’s human nature to make things more complex than they need to be. As a writer, I’m always resisting the temptation to use long words and complex sentences.

But simple writing is usually more effective – and the same goes for business models. 

Rule #2: Collaborate

The first day Larry Page met Sergey Brin, they got into a long argument. According to Page, they “both really disliked each other.”

But their studies at Stanford soon led them to respect one another as intellectual peers. It was this mutual respect that brought them together in 1995 to collaborate on Page’s doctoral thesis: an algorithm that could rank websites based on their shared hyperlinks.

Even though it was Page’s idea (hence the name PageRank), he couldn’t have created the algorithm without the mathematical wizardry of Sergey Brin. Without a math prodigy like Brin on board, Google might have been just another thesis.

It was the joining of two very strong brains and personalities that made the algorithm what it was: a search engine so effective that it put Lycos and Excite to shame.

Google’s PageRank system rocket-propelled Page and Brin to the top of the upper echelons of Silicon Valley. Suddenly, their little search algorithm was duking it out with industry titans like Yahoo! and Microsoft… and winning.

Part of the reason for Google’s success was the collaboration they encouraged among their employees. Since the beginning, they’ve implemented something called open source software development, “where innovation takes place through the collective effort of many programmers.”

But as the company grew even larger, Page and Brin realized that they had to bring another brain into the trust: this time, someone who could lead Google as a corporation and offer the boys “adult supervision.” In 2001, they hired Eric Schmidt as CEO and began running Google as a triumvirate. Schmidt started running Google like a business – and acquired YouTube in the process.

Even though Schmidt has since stepped down as CEO, he still serves as Google’s executive chairman, and Google continues to emphasize a spirit of collaboration in all they do.

Going it alone?

Having a partner to collaborate with isn’t a requirement. Many very successful businesses are founded, owned, and operated by one person.

With that said, two complementary business partners will motivate one another, brainstorm innovative ideas together, and each allow the other to do what they’re best at.

I can speak from personal experience on this subject. My business partner has been absolutely essential to our company’s success and I feel thankful for him daily.

Rule #3: Great Just isn’t Good Enough

“We see being great at something as a starting point, not an endpoint.”

Google Company Philosophy

When Google launched its search engine in 1998, it was already great. The PageRank algorithm was simply better than the competition, which focused too much on words and often returned irrelevant results.

It was this greatness that allowed Google to grow without spending millions on a marketing campaign like Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves. Google was so great that it spread almost entirely by word of mouth.

But great wasn’t good enough. Google believes, “It’s best to do one thing really, really well.” So, instead of spreading out into different industries, the company kept perfecting their search engine.

“The ultimate search engine would basically understand everything in the world, and it would always give you the right thing. And we’re a long, long ways from that.”

Larry Page

The above quote is from 2004, by which point Google had cemented their position as market leader. Not only were they the world’s top search engine, they were about to unleash their IPO to a market capitalization of a cool US$23 Billion.

But even at that point, Larry Page was not ready to rest on his laurels. As he said, they were a “long, long ways” from where they wanted to be.

Thanks to this attitude, Google has been churning out big improvements to its search engine year after year. Innovations (i.e. the spelling suggestions Google gives you when you misspell a word) are a big part of the reason they’re still the world’s top search engine.

How Can You Improve?

I don’t care how good you are at what you do, you can always get better. That’s why I’ve suggested that you spend 20 minutes actively learning every day. 

Rule #4: Give Value for Free

“Our goal is to develop services that significantly improve the lives of as many people as possible.”

Larry Page and Sergey Brin

People don’t expect to have to pay for much of anything online. But that’s not a problem for Google, which offers more free value to their users than any other online company.

Just think of all of their free software and services: Gmail, Google Docs, Google Analytics, Google Website Optimizer, Google Earth, Google Chrome… the list goes on and on.

Collectively, these products have cost Google millions and millions of dollars to develop. Some, like Gmail, generate revenue through advertising, but many do not make Google any money at all.

What they do is more important: build brand loyalty. Thanks to all they’ve given away, Google has an army of devotees eager to use their latest services, share them with their friends, and shell out cash when Google releases something that actually costs money (like a Chromebook).

Count me among the converts: I’ve been so impressed with Gmail and Google Chrome that I just assume everything Google does meets a high standard of quality.

Giving / Receiving

When people receive something of great value for free, it instills in them a sense of gratitude to the giver. It’s human nature to want to return the favor.

Start being more giving with your business and you will find that you’re getting more referrals, making more sales, and getting a warmer response on social networks.

Rule #5: Protect Your Market

Nikola Tesla was one of the greatest inventors of his time. He laid the foundation for radio communication, wireless technology, and electric power. Without his advances, Google couldn’t exist.

Yet Tesla died with hardly a penny to his name.

When Larry Page read a biography of Tesla as a kid, he learned an invaluable lesson: protect what makes you valuable. This is an especially difficult task if your value comes from easy-to-steal ideas.

As CEO of Google, Page has been sure not to follow in Tesla’s footsteps. Google has kept a close guard on their big competitive advantage: the PageRank algorithm that Page and Brin had labored over as graduate students at Stanford University.

While Stanford actually owns the PageRank patent, Google bought the exclusive rights to use it for 1.8 million shares of stock (later sold by Stanford for $336 million).

No other company is able to use their patented method for ranking pages. That’s a big reason Google still sits at the top of the heap.

In recent years, Google has been more active working with the government to protect their interests. They spent about US$10 million on lobbying the US government in 2011 and took part in a successful campaign to deter the SOPA/PIPA legislation in January 2012.

How to Protect Your Big Idea

Every idea is different and there’s a good chance that yours won’t require a patent.

But that doesn’t mean you need to be telling your competition your secret formula:

“There are two rules for success. 1) Never tell everything you know.”

Roger H. Lincoln

Rule #6: No Hype Necessary

“Part of our brand is that we’re pretty understated in what we do. If you look at other technology companies, they might preannounce things, and it will be a couple years before they really happen, and they don’t happen in the way they said they would.

Google tends to release things without announcing them in beta, or whatever. We wait until they get really big and really good, then we start talking about them. And so that’s a really different way of doing business.”

Larry Page

Google doesn’t do hype. They let their innovative products and services speak for themselves.

I’ve met a lot of entrepreneurs who talk a big game. They’d have you believe that they’ve got all of the most important connections and that their next project is the next big thing. Talk to those same entrepreneurs in six months and chances are that last project fizzled out and they’re already onto talking up the next one.

Talk is cheap. It’s always better to let your accomplishments speak for themselves.

Three Good Reasons Not to Hype Yourself Up:

You Make a Stronger First Impression

Everybody knows how important first impressions are. When somebody’s first impression of your project is you talking about it before it’s ready, then you wasted that first impression on mere talk.

It’s tempting to tell all of your friends, relatives, and colleagues about your brilliant idea. But think about how much more powerful it will be if you wait until your project is completed, successful, and has a few mentions in the media.

Be patient – and wait until the time is just right to share your business with the world.

You Don’t Box Yourself In

Until a project is set in stone, it should always be evolving. Keeping quiet also allows you to be more versatile with your business.

If you realize that it would be better to evolve in a slightly different direction than you had initially planned, you don’t want to be constrained by the expectations of the people who already know your original plan.

You Increase Your Commitment

At a more personal level, talking up your plans too much can actually make you less likely to follow through with them.

When we tell someone what we hope to achieve, we feel some of the satisfaction of actually accomplishing that goal – and it actually makes us less hungry to pursue them.

Rule #7: Don’t Take Yourself Too Seriously

“You can be serious without a suit”

Google Company Philosophy

Google may be the world’s most powerful website, but that doesn’t mean they can’t have a little bit of fun. Since 2000, Google has been playing April Fool’s Day jokes on the world.

Their first prank was a new search feature called Google MentalPlex – which claimed to scan your “personal aura and brainwave activity” and then determine which website you were trying to reach.

In 2002, they “revealed” that their search results were determined by “data coops” full of trained pigeons. They’ve since announced job openings on the moon and unveiled a sports drink called Google Gulp. Sounds tasty.

Google’s actually ramping up their pranks. In 2011, they pulled a whopping 17 of them on April 1^st.

Why does Google spend so much time joking around? The pranks earn Google plenty of press and a small bump in traffic. But more importantly, it brings a sense of fun and real personality to their brand – both for their users and for their employees.

Nobody Likes a Robot

When you interact with somebody online, they could be all the way on the other side of the globe. Just because you’re distant from one another, that doesn’t mean you have to act distantly.

Every website visitor, every Facebook sharer, and every email subscriber is a flesh-and-blood person, just like you. A personal touch goes a long way.

#8: Don’t Be Evil

“We have a mantra: don’t be evil, which is to do the best things we know how for our users, for our customers, for everyone. So I think if we were known for that, it would be a wonderful thing.”

Larry Page

In a 2004 meeting, Google employees were brainstorming an unofficial company motto. Suggestion after suggestion was met with little enthusiasm. Then one finally stuck: “Don’t Be Evil.”

Big companies like Google can often make more money in the short-term by taking advantage of their customers and employees, damaging the environment, or ignoring human rights. Google’s adoption of the “Don’t Be Evil” motto meant that they were committed to being a different type of company – one guided by a strong moral compass.

This philosophy has had a big impact on Google’s ad policy. Their search results only turn up relevant ads, clearly marked as “sponsored.” They also refuse to use pop-up ads or any other flashy ads that would interfere with “your ability to see the content you’ve requested.”

Google also does good through philanthropy. In 2004, they launched Google.org, a not-for-profit organization that looks to solve the problems of global health, poverty, and climate change.

“We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served – as shareholders and in all other ways – by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains.”

Larry Page and Sergey Brin

Still Not Evil?

Absolute power corrupts absolutely – and Google has become very, very powerful in the last few years. In 2009, Google quietly dropped “Don’t Be Evil” as their official motto.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that Google’s gone to the dark side. The slogan was simply attracting too much negative attention.

The company has drawn criticism for allowing their search results to be censored in China and for making a deal with Verizon that some journalists considered damaging to net neutrality.

Today, in 2012, Google is getting a ton of heat for their new privacy policy, which will allow the company to more easily merge personal information it has collected from across its many platforms. This means more powerful, targeted advertisements and more money for Google, but it also represents a new low in online privacy.

Do Good, Make Money

“You can make money without doing evil.”

Google Company Philosophy

We could argue all day about whether Google’s doing a good job of practicing what it preaches. It’s a worthwhile conversation to have, especially given than an immense amount of our personal data sits on Google’s servers.

But here’s something where, in my opinion, there’s no room for debate: doing good is good business.

It’s not just about being a better person or getting that warm, fuzzy feeling; businesses that do good are simply more likely to be successful in the long haul.

Do You Follow Google’s 8 Simple Rules?

Google’s principles are pretty idealistic. I think this explains why they’ve become so popular but also why they sometimes have trouble living up to their own values.

Take a moment to reflect on our own businesses. Are there any of the rules above that you think your business does a great job of embodying? Are there any areas where you think you could improve by being a little bit more like Google?

Personally, I see a lot of Google in my own business (an emphasis on collaboration and a daily desire to improve the service), but there’s still a lot for me to learn (keeping things simple and protecting my share of the market).

This article has left me more energized than ever to apply Google’s principles to my company and my website.

I hope it does the same for you. The more people who follow Google’s lead and create simple, collaborative, value-packed websites, the better off we’ll be.

Searching – Larry Page & Sergey Brin – Google

I couldn’t even count the amount of times I use Google in a day, it’s become so accurate and intuitive that it’s the only search engine that I need, but of course that’s not all it does. It makes me money with AdSense, helps people to find my website, search for my own images on the internet, powers people’s phones, hosts a social network, and so much more. Google keeps growing and buying other companies to add to their portfolio and improve their service; on the internet, Google is king.

By the looks of things, these two are the richest, and most successful internet entrepreneurs in history, and that doesn’t look like it’s going to be changing anytime soon. They were introduced by their professor at Stanford and started working on Google, went live in 1997 as part of Standford University’s website at google.stanford.edu and the rest, as they say, is history.

Social Networking – Tom Anderson – Myspace

I can see the comments coming already ‘what about Facebook?’, ‘what about Friendster’, but Tom is on the list because he made social networking what it it today – he brought it to the masses. It may not be the best social networking platform on the internet, but there was a time when we were all using it, because everyone else was using it as well. You could add bands as friends, and browse through music, way before Facebook allowed you to listen on their site, but best of all, it laid out the blueprint of how we network with friends on the internet.

Myspace isn’t really what it used to be, with a large number of users having switched to Facebook for good, many of whom (myself included), have closed their accounts. It was at one time the largest social network on the planet though, and for that Tom deserves a mention. Tom sold Myspace in early 2008 and left in 2009, not liking the direction the website had taken, he’s even got a Facebook page now.

“People seem very confused why I’m on Facebook. I’ve had a profile since 2005 and a “fan page” since 2009…Why am I not on MySpace? Because, I left the company in early 2009, and like most of you, I don’t like using it anymore.. not a fan of what the new folks have done with MySpace.”

Music Sharing – Shawn Fanning – Napster

Before Kazza and Limewire, there was the original, and largely illegal peer to peer network – Napster. Napster set the president for online music downloading, as well as a lot of the legal troubles back in the day before there were so many competitors. For the first time on the internet, it was possible for the masses to be able to share their music with each other and download music and videos for free.

As many of you probably know, Napster learnt their lesson the hard way and got slammed with masses of legal problems, and eventually had to be shut down. Nevertheless, it lead the way for similar services, and gave us all a taste of what it’s like to download music for free. It now runs a service similar to Spotify in that you pay a subscription and you can stream music from a library online. What’s interesting about this is that Sean Parker, who was one of the co founders, now owns a stake in Spotify, which is Napster’s biggest rival (now owned by Best Buy).

Learning – Jimmy Wales – Wikipedia

Many people have a love/hate relationship with Wikipedia, because of it’s ability to provide you with excellent and well referenced information, as well some complete nonsense. Jimmy Wales founded Wikipedia, which is a user generated internet encyclopedia, back in 2001. It currently indexes over 20 million articles and has helped hundreds of thousands of students world wide find ‘inspiration’ for essays and reports. If I’m looking for something on Wikipedia, I more often not just Google it, because the wiki I’m looking for is usually in the top 3 results.

Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site, and it has about 90,000 regularly active contributors. Wikipedia can be seen in 282 languages and is currently the largest encyclopedia on the internet… no surprises there. It’s currently ranking sixth globally among all websites on Alexa and having an estimated 365 million readers worldwide. It is estimated that Wikipedia receives 2.7 billion monthly pageviews from the United States alone. Just to keep in the spirit of things, this whole paragraph was made up from information on Wikipedia.

Jimmy Wales really had changed the way in which we learn on the internet, because even though there’s some bad information on there, a lot of it is well referenced and full of the facts we’re looking for.

Shopping – Jeff Bezos – Amazon

Amazon.com is the internet’s most popular and trusted online retailer, and has completely changed the way we shop. The death of the high street is all down to online shopping and there’s no better retailer than Amazon for finding the best deals with service you can trust. The website was one of the first of it’s kind and went live way back in 1995, when most of us were still trying to get to grips with a keyboard. It started as a bookstore to rival chains such as Barnes & Noble, but it soon diversified and spread to many more countries around the world in an effort to turn a profit. It survived the burst of the dot.com bubble and finally made a profit in 2001 on the sale of over 1 billion dollars worth of goods.

The growth was initially quite slow, and it took me a while to get into it too, but with free shipping, a huge selection of products and some of the best prices on the internet, it’s hard not to love them. Now as the world’s largest online retailers and Jeff Bezos being worth more than $19Billion, Amazon.com has made a permanent mark on how we use the internet.

Watching – Chad Hurley & Steve Chen – YouTube

The world of online video watching took a lot longer to get off the ground, due to internet speeds and hosting fees, but it’s well and truly here to stay now, with no website more popular than YouTube. Started by two former PayPal employees Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, YouTube was launched in 2005, and was sold less than 2 years later in November 2006 to Google for $1.65 billion – not bad for a couple years work. YouTube offer the ability to upload an unlimited amount of videos for people over the 18, so long as it didn’t include adult content.

The site made huge changes to viral media, with fun and short videos becoming much more easily accessible with YouTube’s fast loading time and unintrusive website. It also created the ‘YouTube Star’ where people could make their own regular videos and earn money through Google AdSense, which has provided full time careers to some users. YouTube seems to have gone downhill a bit recently, with their annoying adverts, but they’re still the market leader and name we think of when we think about online videos.

Blogging – Matt Mullenweg – WordPress

Again, I’m hearing cries of ‘what about David Bohnett, the creator of GeoCities’ and ‘what about blogger.com or Tumblr’, and the answer is simple, Matt Mullenweg did it right. GeoCities was a massively popular site back in the day, but the customizations made it look childish and usage went so far down that they’ve closed it all together. WordPress on the other hand is the most popular blogging platform on the internet because of its usability and easy to install plugins that can make every site look unique. No doubt that the majority of people reading this are using WordPress for their own site, and we recommend it as we use it for IncomeDiary and ExpertPhotography.

It’s not just changed the way we blog, because the capabilities of WordPress go far beyond that now, and they’re so easy to use, that just about anyone can do it. To say that the reach of WordPress is substantial would be an understatement, as it’s used by over 14.7% of Alexa Internet’s “top 1 million” websites and as of August 2011 powers 22% of all new websites. Matt has made a big change to the way we use the internet, because we’re not just spectators anymore, we’re now a part of it.

Gaming – Mike Morhaime – Blizzard

Mike is currently worth nearly $2billion because of the way that he managed to revolutionize the way that online gaming is done, with one of the most popular games of all time – World of Warcraft. WoW alone has over 10 million online gamers, all of which have to pay a monthly subscription to play. I’m not trying to say that he changed the internet because he managed to make so much money out of it, I’m saying that he’s created a game so popular, that 10 million people happily pay for it and spend their time on the internet, using it. There are of course other games on the internet, such as Runescape, or simple games you may find on sites such as Miniclip, but no game seems to rank higher with gamers than WoW.

Matt has helped online gamers realize that there are some things that are just worth paying for, and that’s set a president for other online gaming sites too. His community is vast and virtual world, huge.

Communicating – Niklas Zennström & Janus Friis – Skype

Niklas and Janus have had a pretty interesting career so far, with their part in the online music peer to peer network Kazaa (which was the most downloaded program in 2003), and more famously, Skype, an online telephone based on the same principals. Within just five years of it’s launch, it already had over 300 million users, proving itself to have a place in business and pleasure. I personally use it to talk to friends who live abroad, as well as Skyping in when I work from home.

Zennström and Friis have had a bit of an on again, off again relationship with Skype, selling it to eBay for €2.1 billion in 2005, as well as being a part of the investment team that bought it back in 2009, where they re-joined the Skype board, before selling it to Microsoft for $8.5 billion, in May of 2011, netting them approximately $1 billion. International calling is almost a thing of the past these days, and even if you did want to make a phone call, it’s cheaper to use Skype credit. With mobile phone apps, you can now take it with you anywhere, it’s truly become a part of the way we use the internet, and it seems to be here to stay.

File Sharing – Bram Cohen – BitTorrent

Yes, there are of course plenty of legal uses for torrenting, but that’s not typically what we think of when we hear the name BitTorrent. The BitTorrent network revolutionized the peer to peer network by breaking up much bigger files into parts and sharing them with multiple users to download from, which was a distinct advantage over the traditional p2p network. The BitTorrent network has many illegal implications, where you can download and share files such as music, movies, software and TV shows in just a couple hours, although Cohen himself claims to have never violated copyright law.

The program launched in the 2004, and now there’s thousands of websites and programs dedicated to the sharing of files, for whatever the use may be. Whether you’re using it for legal or illegal purposes, you can’t deny the fact that torrenting has changed the way we share large files on the internet and Bram Cohen has been a huge part of that.

At some point, most entrepreneurs have said to themselves they want to be like one of people in this list, “I want to be the next Richard Branson”. We define them as success and role models for who we want to be, this post is to give credit to these amazing entrepreneurs. One thing that most of these people have in common is the fact that they all worked really hard and in the end, they were really well rewarded for that. The list is in no particular order, we all have our own opinions on who should be top dog, such as Richard Brandson who inspired me the most to start my business.

#1 Matthew Boulton

Age: 80yrs (Died: 17^th August 1809)

Birth Place: Birmingham, West Midlands UK

Industry: Entrepreneurial Manufacturer

Influence: Pioneered many manufacturing processes.

Net Worth: Unknown

Website:www.matthewboulton2009.org

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Why they made the list…

Matthew Boulton was a pioneer in manufacturing, he was far from wealthy; his father was a toy maker at the time of his birth. Matthew attended a  local school and upon leaving; he  joined his father’s business. At the age of 21yrs Matthew married Mary Robinson the daughter of a wealthy Mercer (Mercer; a silk, linen and fustian textile merchant). Eventually he took charge of his fathers business  (1757) When his father died, he later gained interest in  precious metals; leaving behind the toy trade altogether. With a new trade under his belt Matthew then travelled throughout the United Kingdom, selling his goods wherever he could. After a short period of time he negotiated with a highly regarded friend to present a sword to Prince Edward as a gift, however it was Prince Edward’s older brother; Prince George III, the heir to the throne of England and later the King of England; that was truly interested in the gift.

In 1761 after using the majority of his wealth which had accumulated from his two marriages, and the inheritance he received from his father, he bought a larger property for his growing business. He purchased Soho House a very large premises in Staffordshire, West Midlands. He began production at Soho and introduced modern production methods as well as a “pioneering insurance scheme” for his workers. He soon became widely known for his perfectionist characteristics as well as his many technological advancements within manufacturing processes. Soho House soon became a must see to the rich and powerful and he regularly had people of royal stature coming to stay with him so they could see and learn more about his work and techniques. Later in life Matthew became infatuated with science and and astronomy, and became well known for his work. He was also named as the Sheriff of Staffordshire before his death in 1809. By the time he died Matthew had become one of the wealthiest and most pioneering manufacturers and entrepreneurs in the UK.

#2 Andrew Carnegie

Age: 83yrs (Died: 11^th August 1919)

Birth Place: Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland, UK

Industry: Steel Tycoon

Influence: Pioneered many manufacturing processes.

Net Worth: £298.3 billion

Website: www.carnegiescience.edu

Why they made the list…

Andrew Carnegie was born into a typical lower-class family in Scotland, and lived in a weavers cottage; a very small house. The main room served not only as the living quarters but also the dining room as well as the bedroom for the family. His family were suffering from near starvation and poverty when William; his father, emigrated the family to Allegheny, Pennsylvania in the USA. The area in which they lived was very poor but better than their previous community in Fife. The first job he had was that of a bobbin boy where he helped change spools for 12hrs each day. Feeling this wasn’t the career for him he went on to become a telegraph messenger for $2.50 per week; his job came with a couple of perks too, such as gaining free entry to the local theatre. He soon progressed to $4.00 per week at the age of 18yrs and through hard work and rapid development Andrew climbed swiftly the ranks. Eventually he became an investor, investing the money he had saved over the years into Adams Express Company a messenger service.

Carnegie later received shares in a car business after helping to safeguard the shares of another business for a friend; he used this to his advantage and reinvested all his money into the railway industry. During the civil war Carnegie made a fortune through investments he had made; one of which had him investing $40,000 of his own money into Story Farm; a creek rich in oil. By the end of the year the investment had paid of in dividends to the tidy sum of $1 million, as well as more profits coming in from the petrol and oil goods. After the civil war had finished Carnegie gave $40,000 to help build a library in his native Dunfermline, he also gave $50,000 of his money to a hospital college to help teach more nurses and save more lives. Now an investor in both oil and steel Carnegie was becoming very wealthy, and decided to write his first book which sold over 40,000 copies. His writing style and intelligence helped Carnegie become known as a great author and journalist which helped him earn another hefty fortune in doing so. By 1898 Carnegie was worth more than $20 million and famously offered $20,000,000 to buy the Philippines from Spain in a bid to allow them independence. By the time of his death in 1919, Carnegie had become famous for his investments, his oil his writings and of course his entrepreneurial streak. With the money he made from all his investments he died a very wealthy man his net worth being $350,695,653, today that figure would be nearly $300 billion.

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#3 Henry Ford

Age: 83yrs (Died April 7^th 1947)

Birth Place: Greenfield Township, Dearborn, Michighan, USA

Industry: Auto-motive manufacturer

Influence: Pioneer of Transport

Net Worth: $1.1 billion

Website: www.thehenryford.org

Why they made the list…

Henry Ford,  One of the few men that made mainstream automobiles become a reality. He was born into a family of farmers who originated from England and Ireland. Not the wealthiest of families but certainly not poverty stricken. In his teenage years, his father had given him a timepiece, which he later took to pieces just to see if he could piece it together again successfully, which he did. He then started to do the same with other peoples timepieces and eventually he started to repair them too. Henry was also a sufferer of Dyslexia, and although this was a hurdle it was by no means a reason to give up.

He went on to complete an apprenticeship with James F. Flower & Bros, and also with the Detroit Dry Dock Company. In 1891 he met with Thomas Edison who liked his concept of an auto-mobile, so he allowed him to use his warehouses to manufacturer two vehicles. Ford was grateful but later went on to build his own company so he could build the cars on his own terms backed by William H. Murphy he founded the Detroit Automobile Company (1899). This was short lived however, as the vehicles produced lacked the quality and precision Ford wanted as well as being horribly expensive. The business went under but it didn’t stop him. Ford went on to build the Cadillac Automobile company. After almost failing a second time due to lack of sales and high debts more partners came into the business and the name was changed to the Ford Motor Company. Current sales for the Ford group are now a massive $190 billion.

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#4 Thomas Alva Edison

Age: 84yrs

Birth Place: Milan, Ohio, USA

Industry: Science

Influence: His Inventions Changed the World

Net worth: $12,000,000

Website: www.thomasedison.com

Why they made the list…

I felt obligated to add Thomas Edison to this list due to his motivation and persistence which makes him a true entrepreneur, even after thousands of failures. Now although Thomas didn’t have a terrible upbringing in terms of the money sense, he was a very poorly child. Ill a lot of his early life, he suffered from a severe ear infection that rendered him deaf in one of his ears although it has been said he was deaf in both. He also developed scarlet fever as a boy nearly dying because of it, but it didn’t stop him. After becoming a minor celebrity for saving a toddler from being hit by a train, Thomas was offered a job as telegraph operator.

Thomas went on to create thousands of inventions and patents, failing a lot more times than succeeding. However his first taste of glory came when he developed the tin foil phonograph, after working as a telegraph operator he wanted to create a way of making a telegraph transmitter to work in a more efficient way. He did this by realising that it sounded very similar to spoken words when the tape from the machine was played at a fast pace. Developing his idea further he went on to record a message through this means creating his first successful invention that lead the way for many more. Thomas Edison was a very patient and passionate man, motivated by success he went on to try and fail thousands of times before getting some of his inventions to work. Some of his inventions we still use today, and most of them are historical for changing the world.

#5 Oprah Gail Winfrey

Age: 56yrs

Birth Place: Kosciusko, Mississippi, USA

Industry: Media and Entertainment

Influence: Empowering People, Female Media Pioneer

Net Worth: $2.7 billion

Website: www.Oprah.com

Why they made the list…

Oprah Winfrey, this is not the first time I have spoken about her and it probably won’t be the last time either;  it seems she’s coming up in quite a few places. The reasons why Oprah is such an influential entrepreneurs is because of the fact that she’s been through so much and yet accomplished so much more. After being the subject of vicious sexual attack at the age of nine; she later became pregnant, losing the child at birth she was only 14 years of age at the time.In 1986 she famously revealed this to her shocked viewers on her live show. Her fame came to fruition in 1983, when her seductive character and genuine love of people gained her the job of her dreams; as a talk-show host.

The following exposure was explosive and she soon became one of the most famous, most well loved, and most professional people in the entertainment industry. However; she did not want to stop there as she felt there was another side to her, a side of which she wanted to pursue, her entrepreneurial side. In 1988 following her instincts she founded the company Harpo Studios, which for those of you not realised is simply Oprah spelt backwards. The business went on in leaps and bounds most likely due to her television career which gave her a massive amount of advertising is each and every day. The company now has over 250 employees and is currently growing every year. She also co-founded oxygen media which helps attract over 50 million viewers. Because of all of the skills she possesses, and her entrepreneurial side she’s managed to create a personal wealth $2.7 billion pretty tidy sum if you ask me.

#6 William “Bill” Gates

Age: 54yrs

Birth Place: Seattle, Washington, USA

Industry: Information Technology, Computer Science

Influence: Changed the Personal Computer Forever

Net Worth: $53 billion

Website: www.gatesfoundation.org

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Why they made the list…

Bill Gates; The second richest man on the planet, one of the most recognized names in the world, as much a celebrity as the pop stars and movie stars due to his highly public profile. Bill has always been in the lime-light since he began his career way back aged 13yrs the age of the personal computer was far from near and Bill, Paul Allen and some others from high-school started using the computers of the time, the DEC PDP-10 was one of them. Bill, Allen and their friends studied the inner workings and making notes of coding language and tried to decipher it to understand how a computer worked. They were eventually banned from the DEC PDP-10 after they were caught exploiting code “bugs” which allowed them to extend the amount of time they had been allocated on the machine. In 1973 after completing high-school with a 1600 (top score) in his SAT’s, he enrolled at the University of Harvard. While studying at Harvard Bill made a new friend in Steve Ballmer, they have continued to be friends to this day and Ballmer took over as CEO of Microsoft upon Gate’s early retirement. After spending much of his study time at the helm of the University’s computer systems Bill decided to leave Harvard in order to start his own business, this was partly due to the launch of the Altair 8800 which used Intel’s new cpu 8080 which had gotten bill excited by the prospects of what he could do with the technology.

Many people call Bill Gates a college drop-out, or that he failed college, this simply is not true at all; it was a decision he made himself, he did not fail or give in he saw an opportunity the same as many entrepreneurs and he took a huge leap of faith that eventually paid off. Having gained interest from MIT’s director Bill and Allen, created an emulator that ran on a microcomputer to simulate a computer they had no access to (but had said they had) to show to Ed Roberts (MIT). They received a deal from MIT and began working on their new business in 1975 with the company name “Micro-Soft” although in 1976 they changed it to Microsoft, dropping the hyphen. Throughout the years Bill and Allen made some amazing advancements in computer technology and partnered with some massive businesses in order to gain the capital they needed to start the manufacturing of their own products and software. IBM approached Microsoft in 1980 asking for them to develop code for their BASIC (computer language) computer the IBM PC, MS DOS was created and this made Microsoft a very big player in the industry over night. In 1985 a decade after beginning their business They launched the first ever copy of MS Windows. As we know Microsoft became the standard in computer technology and has now become the largest computer information and technology business in the world. Microsoft currently stands at $62.4 billion (2010) with Bill Gates have a personal fortune of around $53 million which he uses to help very worthy causes and charities; including his own, the Gates Foundation.

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#7 Larry Page

Age: 37yrs

Birth Place: East Lansing, Michigan, USA

Industry: I.T entrepreneur, Computer Science

Influence: Revolutionized Online Searching and Media

Net Worth: $15 billion

Website: www.google.com/larry_page

Why they made the list…

Co-Founder of one of the most recognized search engines in the world, Google. It’s no wonder why Larry became interested and later an entrepreneur within the computer science industry; his parents were both computer science professors at the University of Michigan. Being of quite a wealthy background Larry was a very lucky person. He attended the Montessori Radmoor School (formerly the Okemos Montessori School), and later completed a degree in the science of computer engineering (BA Honors Degree) as well as completing a Masters Degree in Computer Science from Stanford University. In 1995 Larry met Sergey Brin, who was also a fellow Stanford student. They became close friends and eventually went into business together in 1996, forming the company Google Incorporated. Larry alongside his partner Brin ran Google Inc. as co-presidents of the company, until hiring the CEO Eric Schmidt.

Larry and Brin got their first financial backing from Andy Bechtolsheim, one of the co-founders of Sun Microsystems, with the sum of $100,000. It was here that Page’s “Web Crawler” was soon to become the search engine we know today. Starting from his own Stanford University home page the web crawler began to search the internet for web pages, with the home page being the only starting point. To assess the importance of the information which the Web Crawler had found; Page and Brin created a complex algorithm which the late named PageRank. In 1999 just three years since they went into business, Larry and Brin found themselves becoming hounded by investors, and they finally accepted $25 million from Kliener Perkins Caufield and Sequoia Capital. By 2001 Google, now global; was producing profits of over $100 million, and by 2003 had raised those profits to $960 million a massive amount growth in just two years! Google as of today is now worth $172,399,800,300 or there about.

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#8 Sergey Brin

Age: 37yrs

Birth Place: Moscow, Russia

Industry: I.T , Computer Science

Influence: Revolutionized Online Searching and Media

Net Worth: $15 billion

Website:www.google.com/sergey_brin

Why they made the list…

As you’ll already know (at least if you read about Larry Page, above) Sergey Brin is one of the co-founders of Google Inc. Brin immigrated to the United States of America with his family aged just 6yrs old, and although he is both Russian in terms of ethnicity and background, he is a citizen of America, with his nationality set as American. His grandfather and his father both had studied mathematics in the past and Sergey was also keen on the topic, more than likely after seeing his father and grandfather work on various equations and projects as a child. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in mathematics and computer science, he then left and began studying at Stanford University, for a PH.D in computer science, a topic Sergey was keen to explore further, here at Stanford Sergey met Larry Page, another student of computer science.

Sergey and Larry decided to work together and with their mediocre computer systems they frantically worked at developing new search engine designs and algorithms. They started doing this basically because they wanted to cause disruption to the Stanford online website infrastructure, but in doing so, they had masterfully created a search engine with massive potential, and all completely by accident. They upped their game and the inner workings of the code further and further; perfecting the algorithms and creating the unique PageRank system. The pair suspended their studies and went on to co-found the company Google Inc. the very same Google which we love and hate today.

#9 Steve Jobs

Age: 55 yrs

birth Place: San Francisco, California, USA

Industry: computer technology, computer science

Influence: Advancement in Computers and Media Devices

Net Worth: $6.1 billion

Website: www.apple.com

Why they made the list…

Steve jobs, you either love him or hate him but there’s one thing that is certain; you will definitely know who is. One thing that you might not know him about him is that he’s actually adopted, but that hasn’t stopped him becoming one the most successful people in the world and why should it. Jobs graduated from high school in 1972, one of Steve jobs, first jobs was actually as a technician the computer company Atari. Which was possibly a big turning point for Steve at the time In 1974 the same year jobs first worked with Atari, jobs went into business with his old friend Steve Wozniak. Jobs had managed to convince Steve Wozniak that it would be a good idea to start assembling computers and selling them on for a profit. It seemed to quite decent idea as they soon started making a profit from the computers they were making, and on April 1, 1976 Apple Computer company was founded as a partnership with Steven jobs and Steve Wozniak as the co-founders.

Within just 4 years; the Apple Computer Company being founded Apple became a publicly traded corporation, and in 1983 jobs managed to lure John Scully away from the Pepsi-Cola company. Jobs went on in leaps and bounds and in 1984 on January 26th jobs introduced the first Apple Macintosh. It wasn’t all pleasantries though;  in May 1985, following an internal power struggle between the board of directors; jobs lost control of the Apple computer company and was forced out; although he did still have shares in the business. He then went on to form another company NeXT computers which did amazingly well sobering fact that in 1986 he bought “The Graphics Group” which was later named Pixar Animation, the $10 million. Some time later; in 1996 Apple computers company decided to buy the NeXT company for approximately $429 million, bringing Steve jobs back to Apple as the company’s interim CEO. In 2000 Apple announced publicly that Steve jobs was to become the permanent CEO of the company. In 2007 Apple changed its name to Apple Inc. On a side note In January 2006 jobs announced the Disney had purchased Pixar in an-all stock transaction;worth approximately $7.4 billion, so as you can see Steve jobs has done pretty well for himself.

#10 Sir Richard Branson

Age: 60 yrs

Birth Place: Blackheath, London, England, UK

Industry: British industrialist

Influence:

Net Worth: £2.97 billion ($474.6 billion)

Website: www.virgin.co.uk

Why they made the list…

Richard Branson is a well-known British industrialist probably best known for his company the Virgin Group, which holds in itself over 360 different companies. Branson started his education at scaitcliffe school, in 1963 continued by his attendance at Stowe School in 1965. In 1966 Branson started his first successful business venture Student Magazine. In 1967 Branson went on to opens first charity “The Student Advisory Centre”which was a great success. In 1970, Branson decided to create another company; which was a retail business based on mail-order deals. Its first success came when Mike Oldfield signed the virgin group and had a record which went platinum very quickly. Following the success of Mike Oldfield more bands began to sign with the virgin group The Sex Pistols being one of the biggest.

In 1984 Richard Branson formed the Virgin Atlantic Airways company, or as we know today, virgin Airways; which has been a great success just like many of his previous companies before it. Probably one of Branson’s most notorious business ventures to date, is his newest venture the Virgin Galactic, where is aiming to take passengers into space which he calls space tourism. The virgin Galactic company according to rumour will be licensing the technology behind the so-called spaceship one which is being funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen as well as Burt Rutan who is an American engineer well-known for his aeronautical work. Sir Richard Branson is without doubt one of the greatest entrepreneurs the UK has and possibly ever will have in its history, without him a lot of things wouldn’t be how they today, such as the music we listen to, the charities we support, and quite possibly in the near future space travel.

#11 Mark Zuckerberg

Age: 26yrs

Birth Place: White Plains, New York, USA

Industry: Social Media Mogul

Influence: Revolutionized Online Social Media and Networking

Net Worth: $6.9 billion

Website: www.Facebook.com

Why they made the list…

Mark Zuckerberg, is possibly one of the most spoken about individuals of the past year, not only is he one of the richest men on the planet, he’s just had a story portrayed by the Hollywood giants in a new movie entitled the Social Network. Zuckerberg first launched his website Facebook whilst attending Harvard University, the website was launched from his dormitory room, on 4 February 2004. It has been rumoured, but the inspiration for Facebook actually came from his former high school the Phillips Exeter Academy which had its own student directory known as”The Photo Address Book” which according to rumour, the students nicknamed the Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg was joined by fellow Harvard university students Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes as he wanted to evolve the Facebook website.

To begin with Facebook wasn’t available to everybody and due to this competitors such as; MySpace and Bebo seemed to be the clear winners, in terms of social networking. However that soon changed when Zuckerberg and the co-founders of Facebook dropped out of the Harvard University in a bid to make Facebook success, which they knew was possible, due to the amount of support it had received at the University. By then the 2004 Facebook had received over 1 million users for the website. Then in 2005 capital venture firm Accel partners, invested $12.7 million into the business to help them evolve its further. Soon Facebook was being approached by massive brands and companies who wants to buy out Zuckerberg and co-tutor is obvious trendsetting capabilities and the possible revenue to be made from it. However we know that Zuckerberg didn’t actually sell Facebook and he still is CEO of it although his partners have left now, and today according to Forbes magazine Zuckerberg is worth approximately $6.9 billion. Not bad for a college dropout.

# 12 Ariana Huffington

Age: 60yrs

Birth Place: Athens, Greece

Industry: Blogging Columnist and Author

Influence: A Pioneer in Blogging and Online News

Net Worth: $115million

Website: www.HuffingtonPost.com

Why they made the list…

Ariana Huffington, born in 1950 in Athens has got to be the most influential and professional as well as successful female within the blogging industry. Some of you may not know that she is also an author of the off-line variety, writing a biography of Maria Callas in 1981 she also wrote a biography on public Picasso eight years later in 1989. To became well known in the early 90s due to her relentless support for conservative causes during her ex-husband’s unsuccessful bid for the Senate in (1994). She later founded the Huffington is which is now liberal American news websites which he co-founded with Ken Lerer and Jonah Peretti.

The website itself of some mass of valuable information regarding politics, business, lifestyle, and environmental causes as well as media and entertainment news. They decided that the website could do with some localisation, so that loyal supporters of the Huffington Post could read detailed news for the area, due to this in 2000 they launched their very first local version of the Huffington post called HuffPost Chicago, very soon after came New York and Denver as well as Los Angeles. As well as writing articles for the blog herself she also has the help from many of her famous supporters such as Rosie O’Donnell and Harry Shearer. She has also won many awards through the Huffington post; such as winning the People’s Voice Award in the 2010 webby awards, she also won the 2006 and 2007 webby award for best politics blog and in 2009 the blog was named second in the best 25 blogs of 2009 in Time magazine.

#13 Peter Jones

Age: 44yrs

Birth Place: Maidenhead, Berks, United Kingdom

Industry: Telecommunications

Influence: Investing in young entrepreneurs

Net Worth: £220 million

Website: www.peterjones.tv

Why they made the list…

Peter (CBE) is probably best known by the public for his role on Dragon’s Den, a British television programme which is broadcast on the BBC network. He is a British entrepreneur whose main dealings are within the mobile telecommunication, media and leisure industries. He is also named America for his television programme the American Inventor, on which he judges businesses in an almost X-factor style show for business. His first business venture to earn him money was a tennis academy which he set up at the age of 16. His second and also successful business venture was completely different in that it was a technological company based on computers where he manufactured his own PCs however the business went bankrupt after failing to receive payment from his customers.

This led to him having to give up his three-bedroom house as well as his cars, forcing him to move back in with his parents. He then joined the company Siemens Nixdorf, and it 20 years of age he became the youngest ever head of the business unit in United Kingdom. After leaving Siemens Nixdorf he started to work within the telecommunications industry and after a year of hard saving he managed to set up his next business venture which was Phones International Group. Times were obviously hard in the beginning as he has stated he had to sleep on the office floor until his business grew enough for him to find somewhere suitable to live. His business became amazingly successful and is revenue totalled nearly £14 million by the end of his first year which more than doubled in his second year when it nearly reached £45 million. Peter James undoubtedly brought telecommunications to new heights and new levels within United Kingdom, and in doing so has made brave leaps of faith within business proving years true entrepreneur. Since starting his second business venture he has been part of many other investments through the Dragon’s Den programme on the BBC with most notable ones probably being; Reggae Reggae, Visual Talent, and more recently Worthenshaws.

#14 Michael Newton

Age: 50yrs

Birth Place: Cheshire, UK

Industry: CCTV, Retail

Influence: Brought Revolutionary CCTV to the UK

Net Worth: $504.25 million

Website: www.ad-group.co.uk

Why they made the list…

Michael Newton may not be someone most of you have heard of and you may even think he is not a historical figure, but he most definitely is in the UK. Michael changed the UK in big ways back in 1982 when he started with a CCTV system that basically monitored how long a person was at a table (in a bar). He soon introduced a line of multi-channel systems able to view across a broad range of areas all at once and not just in a singular location. He continued to add new systems to his arsenal and introduced them all to the UK. Today using Michael’s CCTV systems, over 7 million images are recorded a second!

If it wasn’t for his ingenuity and passion for what he did, it may not have been another few years until the introduction of a similar CCTV device, Not only did he make a fortune through his business; he also helped to make the UK a more secure and safe place to be. In 1994 due to his enthusiastic interest within aviation he began to learn how to fly; and soon passed his pilots license, not long after passing his pilots exam, he decided to go into the aviation industry to try his hand at a new sector. In 1998 he made the move into the commercial airline sector of the industry, which eventually led to the AD Aviation company he is now the CEO of.

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#15 Charles Kemmons Wilson

Age: 90yrs (Died debris talks 2003)

Birth Place: Osceola, Kansas, USA

Industry: Hotelier

Net Worth: $100 million

Website: www.holidayinn.com

Why they made the list…

Charles kemmons Wilson, is best known for his outstanding commitment and passion the hotelier business. Rumour has it that Charles came up for his idea of his business venture after a road trip brought to his attention the fact that many of the roadside motels, were definitely not up to scratch in both quality and consistency for that era. He decided to become a hotelier, he wanted to make hotels and motels; more friendly, consistent, of a higher quality, and be somewhere that people really enjoy coming back to again and again. He and his business partner Wallace E. Johnson named the business Holiday Inn of America, rumoured to have come from one of his architects as a joke referring to the Bing Crosby movie. They went on to create for Motorola’s in the Memphis area and it was a great success, in 1957 Wilson franchised chain and it grew dramatically. By 1958 Wilson and Johnson had managed to create 50 different Holiday Inns, all across the country, by the following year that had double to 100, and within five years the number of Holiday Inns, had reached a level of 500 (1964). Remarkably Wilson had managed to reach the magic number 1000 different Holiday Inn’s across the country by 1968, just over a decade from starting a business from scratch.

Wilson created some innovative ways to leveraged the market, which puts a lot of pressure financially, on traditional hotels as well as its bigger competitors such as Howard Johnson’s, Best Western, and even the Ramada Inn Company. There were 1400 holiday Inn hotels across the world by 1972, which funnily enough was the same year that Charles Wilson was on the cover of Time magazine. In 1979 Charles Wilson decided to retire from the hotelier business, and in doing so retire from the Holiday Inn, although this broke his heart he knew it was the right thing to do. The Holiday Inn Corporation (Holiday Corporation), was taken over by the UK-based company Bass PLC. However it wasn’t until 1990 when Charles Wilson sold the remainder of his shares to Bass PLC that the company gained full control, the company that was known worldwide. As a side note about also out that Charles Wilson also created many different businesses related to the Holiday Inn.

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#16 Simon Nixon

Age: 42yrs

Birth Place: Chester, Wales, UK

Industry: Financial

Influence: Revolutionized Online Financial Systems

Net Worth: $570 million

Website: www.moneysupermarket.com

Why they made the list…

Simon Nixon is one of those entrepreneurs that likes to keep his cards close to his chest, and his personal life private because of this up until 2008 there really wasn’t much information on Simon Nixon. If you don’t already know who he is Simon Nixon is best known as the man who founded Money Supermarket He establish the business in 1993 while still a student at the Nottingham University in the United Kingdom. Everytime he was backed by Duncan Cameron he was an off-line mortgage adviser and decided to invest a little in Simon Nixon’s idea. In 1999 Nixon took the business online providing online mortgage information as well as expanding to provide services within the credit card and personal loans sector.

With his usual excess, and his brilliant and refreshing customer service his business grew beyond his wildest dreams and in 2003 he opened up another website under the money supermarket brand called insuresupermarket.com, he also opened up travelsupermarket.com in 2004 to expand his business futher. The business was growing and Nixon wanted more of the pie, which was great seeing as in 2007 Duncan Cameron had decided to sell his share of 47% under the presumption that there was soon to be a very sharp downturn in business for them. Duncan Cameron couldn’t have been more wrong, Simon Nixon bought Duncan’s shares from approximate figure of £162 million. The company became listed on the London stock exchange in the same year, and in late 2009 Nixon managed to get the comedian Omid Djalili to star in some of his commercials.

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#17 Anita Roddick

Age: 64 yrs (Died September 10, 2007)

Birth Place: Littlehampton, UK

Industry: cosmetics

Influence: Green Product Pioneer.

Net Worth: $1.03 billion

Website: www.AnitaRoddick.com

Why they made the list…

Dame Anita Roddick created The Body Shop in 1976 with just 15 products that she had sourced herself from around the world. Anita had traveled extensively before opening up her business and with her husband and two girls in tow she set off to create something special.Faced with a massive task of getting the shoppers in the UK to part with their money for “Greener” products, but with a motivation, a dollop of passion and a pinch of luck Anita managed to succeed. Luckily for Anita just as she was halfway through her first year the UK shoppers had a change of heart and started shopping for these “Green” products she was selling.

She opened another store and another, and another, they just seemed to grow and grow. Anita had managed to build her empire to a whopping 1,980 The Body Shop stores, totaling in more than 75 million customers worldwide in 50 different countries by 2003 and was then bought out in a very controversial deal with L’Oreal it was controversial due to The Body Shop not using ANY products tested on animals, as opposed to L’Oreals company that did. The deal made her £652.3 million ($1.03 billion) better off which was more than well deserved for her fierce years of service. I hope Dame Anita managed to enjoy that money for the remainder of her life.

#18 Donald Trump

Age: 64yrs

Birth Place: New York City, New York, USA

Industry: Real Estate

Influence: Pioneer in Real Estate, Empowering Entrepreneur

Net Worth: $2 billion

Website: www.trump.com

Why they made the list…

We all know Donald Trump, and I have spoken about him in previous posts, not just because of his amount of success but also because of his amount of failure in which he overcame again and again. Donald began working for his father in the late 1960s, it was here that he truly shined and began to show the world just where was headed in the future. He started his career by successfully revamping a failing complex than appalling occupancy percentage, turning it into a fantastic complex with a 100% occupancy percentage. Succeeded again when a few years later he took on a massive project which the city of New York had failed to complete, he was given a very small budget, but most complete set and used less than a third of the remaining budget.

Donald Trump as we know has not been just a successful businessman, he’s had his ups and downs, and he’s been to a point where most entrepreneurs would have given up. In 1992 Trump was forced to sign a bankruptcy plan due to the fact that he could not make payments towards his debts which were accumulating at quite a speed. The most that his personal debt, note I said personal and not just business debt, was an incredible $900 million! Can you seriously imagine being in debt by that much money? However not want to disappoint; trump managed to not only get out of his debt and get his business out of debt, but he also managed to climb straight back up that ladder and become a multi-billionaire. It has been estimated that Donald Trump is worth approximately $2 billion.

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#19 Jeff Bezos

Age: 46yrs

Birth Place: Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

Industry: online retail

Influence: Revolutionized E-Commerce

Net Worth: $8.7 billion

Website: www.Amazon.com

Why they made the list…

Jeff Bezos was born in 1964 and is the founder of the president and the chief executive officer as well as the Chairman of the board for one of the most popular and well-known websites/e-commerce sites in the world, Amazon.com. Jeff Bezos mother was just a teenage girl when he was born in Albuquerque New Mexico, she married his father which lasted only one year in total, and when Jeff was just five years old she remarried the man he recalls his father Miguel Bezos. They moved to Texas and Miguel became an engineer for Exxon. Jeff Bezos was very interested in scientific projects at an early age and got into a lot of trouble by reading up small electric alarms to keep his siblings out of his bedroom. He managed to persuade his parents to convert their garage into his own personal laboratory, which suited him just fine.

He went on to be very highly awarded through his school and college years and he was awarded an honorary doctorate in science and technology from Carnegie Mellon University in 2008. After finally graduating from Princeton University, Jeff Bezos decided he wanted to work in computer science field and began working on Wall Street. In 1994 after a bright idea whilst on a cross-country trip from New York to Seattle Jeff Bezos came up with a business plan for what he called, is on. He managed to get some backing and started Internet business that very year and as we know it is now one of the most successful e-commerce sites in the world. Amazon.com currently has a revenue of around $25 billion not bad the saying he came up with the idea in the back of a car on a road trip.

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#20 Steve Case

Age: 52yrs

Birth Place: Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

Industry: Internet Services

Influence: Helped Pioneer Online Services

Net Worth: $1.0 billion

Website: www.aol.com

Why they made the list…

you may or you may not know Steve Case, he’s one of those rich and successful entrepreneurs, with a gigantic company who likes his privacy, kept private. He was born and he grew up in Honolulu in Hawaii and graduated in 1976 from a private school. In 1980 he left the Williams College in Williamstown Massachusetts, with a degree in political science. In 1982 after having worked as an assistant brand manager at Procter and Gamble, he joined the Pizza Hut incorporation in Kansas, and served as one of the pizza marketing managers. In 1983 he met Bill Von Meister, who was a contact of his older brother. His company was creating a marketing service to the Atari game console which basically allowed the users to download certain games using only a phone line and a modem. This was seen as an amazing advancement in technology. Later in the same year Von Meister hired case to become a marketing consultant for a business, which at the time was almost going bankrupt.

1985 case co-founded business called Quantum Computer Services, case was soon promoted to vice president of marketing and due to his good work, entrepreneurial character, and his passion for the company he was soon promoted yet again becoming the Chairman and CEO of the company in 1991 and 1995 respectively. In 1988 his business began working with Apple as well as PC link, helping create online services for both. Later in 1991 case changed the company’s name to America online, and later that same year decided to integrate the Apple and PC services under the name AOL. Over the following years case personally made many innovative online games with his team most of them being very successful. After 10 years with amazing growth throughout the business AOL and Time Warner decided to do a merger. The mergers was worth approximately $164 billion and it was completed in year 2000. Over the course of the next five years the business seemed to take a very sudden downturn due to the recession of the dot-com boom. In 2005 case decided to leave AOL and Time Warner so that he could spend more time on his own business Revolution LLC which is a company he created in 2005.

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#21 George Eastman

Age: 77yrs (Died March 14, 1932)

Birth Place: Waterville, New York, USA

Industry: photographic

Influence: A Pioneer inPhotography

Net Worth: $100 million

Website: www.Kodak.com

Why they made the list…

Many of you will know the company Kodak, and many of you have probably used some of their products whether it be a digital camera, 35mm film, or even their processing services. What you may not know or rather who you may not know is the man he made it all happen. George Eastman was a self educated man born in Waterville, New York, and is most notable legacy alongside his massive generosity, donating literally millions of dollars of his own personal wealth to charities and hospitals, is that of the roll film. He played a massively leading role in transforming photography as a form bringing it from a very expensive hobby into the public domain so that anybody could take photographs and keep their memories forever.

The Kodak company was founded in 1884, and although Eastman had founded the business he was more intrigued with the inventions within the photography industry rather than actually running the business. Due to this he hired Henry Strong as the president of Eastman Kodak. In 1885 Eastman invented the roll film which was used worldwide for over 100 years it was also the basis for the motion picture camera film which early filmmakers such as Thomas Ava Edison used. In 1888 Eastman decided to register Kodak as an official trademark he also came up with the “phrase You Press the Button and We Do the Rest”. Easement died in 1932 but not before donating masses of his personal fortune to numerous causes, such as the University of Rochester and the Royal Free Hospital.*

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#22 Simon Fuller

Age: 50yrs

Birth Place: Dhekelia, Cyprus

Industry: Music

Influence: Television and Music Pioneer

Net Worth: $2.7 billion $4.1 million

Website: www.19entertainment.com

Why they made the list…

Simon Fuller, although born in Cyprus, is a British artist manager, he’s also the television producer and the founding creator of the pop Idol franchise. Pop Idol as you may know first appeared in the UK and has continued over 100 different versions including American Idol and Australian Idol to name just a few. Is also being a manager of many very great performers his most notable ones being Annie Lennox, the Spice Girls, and S club 7. He was the chief executive in 19 Entertainment, which is based in the three major cities of London, LA, and New York. He founded the business in 1985 after leaving the company Chrysalis Ltd and working with some of the most profound names in the music industry such as Madonna. In 1985 aged only 25 years old, he signed the musician Paul Hardcastle his first song went to number one in both the UK and the US charts with his Vietnam song,”19”.

In 1999 he got his first taste of working in television after he had auditioned over 10,000 different people to form a new band, the band was called S club 7. The band later became one of the most popular pop bands of the era taking many number one places in the UK and the US charts. Fuller later came up with the idea of Pop Idol after taking his time and thinking about how S club 7, was such a success and how the process was such a fun way to decide which musicians and singers to have within a band. As many of you will know, and as stated above, pop Idol went on to become huge success and later went over the waters to America where it was just as successful. Fuller had managed to get some of the best presenters and judges in the entertainment industry to appear on a show. This only created more of a hype and just made the program or that more successful.

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# 23 Carlos Slim Helu

Age: 70yrs

Birth Place: Mexico City, Mexico

Industry: Telecommunication

Influence: Investments and Telecommunications

Net Worth: $53.5 billion

Website: www.carlosslim.com

Why they made the list…

Carlos Slim Helu, best known as slim, is a well-known entrepreneur who is currently the richest man alive.  Carlos started in business at the age of eight when his father asked him to help with the family store. He graduated with a degree in civil engineering from the University of Mexico, however his personal wealth began when he inherited a large amount of real estate from his parents. Using his capital from the real estate to make some very explosive acquisitions. In the 1970s some of his assets became part of a group called Grupo Galas S. A, which was later renamed Grupo, Carso. This business had many different departments such as restaurants, real estate, mining, tobacco, railways, and also department stores. Later in the 1980s after more than 30 different companies joined his group some of them very well known and well respected, slim took control of the majority of shares of Cigtam, a tobacco business.

Cigatam, for those of you that don’t know the manufacturers of Marlboro cigarettes as well as many other brands of cigarettes. Still within the 80s Slim decides to sell a massive 50% of his shares just as the market was at its peak, making him a massive fortune overnight. He used the money to purchase a business chain called Sanborns, which again included restaurants music stores and bookshops to name a few. In the 1990s he managed to get Sears one of the country’s largest department stores to join his group, however it wasn’t until his monopolisation of the telecommunication industry in Mexico when he won a bid for the privatisation of Teléfonos de México, also known as Telmex. With Telmex he incorporated a partnership with France Telecom as well as Bella Canada which brought him great success. His business now controls 90% of all landlines within Mexico. With his fortune he has been an amazing example of what an investor should be, investing in companies such as Apple Computer Inc, MSN, as well as red Uno and Coca-Cola. It is here with his investments as well as his large share of the telecommunication business where he is made the majority of his fortune.

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# 24 Penny Streeter

Age: 43yrs

Birth Place: Zimbabwe

Industry: Recruitment

Influence: Creating Employment Opportunities

Net Worth: $117.80 million

Website: www.a24group.com

Why they made the list…

Penny Streeter is somewhat of an unknown to most of you over in the USA, and quite possibly to a lot of us here in the UK too. She was born in 1967, in Zimbabwe, and later attended the Alberton High school in Johannesburg until she graduated in 1983. She decided to leave South Africa and set her sights upon the UK. In 1989 after launching her in recruitment business she was left penniless and homeless after the business failed and she went through a divorce leaving her with nothing. Six years later in 1995 after managing to get out of the terrible situation she was in previously, she decided to set up business again, confident that she could be successful. With her confidence and passion were in the right place and a she launched the new venture funded by working evenings as a party entertainer, the business Ambition 24hours was established.

Ambition 24Hours was a business which recruited temporary staff to fulfill the need in many different sectors such as nursing, social workers, teachers, lecturers and also carers. In 2004 the company expanded into South Africa which was located there is a kind of back-office the UK as well as the South African markets. In 2004 she launched an £11 million investment plan in South Africa to initialise a South African nursing agency. Just two years later in 2006 the company made its first noticeable acquisition; the nursing services of South Africa, this was the largest agency the temporary staffing of nursing personnel. She now has a multi-million dollar recruitment agency and is currently expanding in the UK as well as South Africa to this day

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# 25 Emma Harrison

Age: 41yrs

Birth Place: Clacton on Sea, UK

Industry: Business Services

Influence: Creating Schemes to Help Employment

Net Worth: $157 million

Website: www.mya4e.com

Why they made the list…

Emma Harrison is not only a British entrepreneur, she is also the chairman owner and also the co-founder of action for employment also known as A4e. She only has a degree in engineering, but she also has two honorary doctorates from the University of Derby and the University of Bradford respectively. Her company Action for Employment has grown massively since its founding in 1991. She currently has over 4000 members of staff across a total of 250 different business centres worldwide. Action for employment is one of the prime contractors to various governments helping with services such as the Flexible New Deal and social care.

Emma’s business expertise and confidence has brought her much success and she is also high demand as a mentor or from many different small businesses and groups throughout the world. She currently serves on a number of boards and is also the chairman of Andromeda which is an events company. She also works within the People’s health plc, as well as having a role in the Bank of England regional consultations on behalf the monetary policy committee. In layman’s terms Emma is one of the most successful entrepreneurs that the UK has ever seen she is chairman of many different companies and is many different boards for other businesses, departments and industry sectors worldwide. A mentor that we can all look up to.

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#26 Linda Bennett

Age: 46yrs

Birth Place: Somerset, UK

Industry: Clothing and Retail

Influence: Inspiring Fashion and Entrepreneurs

Net Worth: $235.6 million

Website: www.lkbennett.com

Why they made the list…

Linda Bennett is truly a remarkable entrepreneur not only has she made it in a very saturated industry but she has made it by working her way from the bottom to the top. Her passion is in the clothing industry. She founded the luxury womenswear brand LK Bennett in the United Kingdom in 1990. The reason she named LK Bennett was because her middle name is Kristin and she thought it would make for a more professional sounding business name. Bennett trained at Hackney’s cordwainer’s College as well as at Reading University where she studied land management also. To this day Bennett still likes to design many of her brand items and is constantly creating new shoes for her brand.

Aged 26 she opened an accessories shop in Wimbledon with just £13,000 worth of savings and a £15,000 bank loan. She managed to turn this into one of the most stylistic and high end brands within the clothing industry creating shoes for the likes of the Duchess of Cornwall, which she wore for her wedding in 2005 to Prince Charles. With an entrepreneurial streak Bennett has managed to place all of the stores in very prime locations, just in reach of her ideal customer base. In 2004 she decided to sell the business and asked for £75 million ($117.8 million) however the asking price was never met and she kept hold of the business. Just four years on she managed to sell the business to a private equity firm called Phoenix Equity partners and Sirius Equity, the deal was for a rumoured £70 million ($110 million). However that was on top of the wealth that she had already accumulated throughout the life of the business.

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# 27 Madame C. J. Walker

Age: 51yrs (Died May 25, 1919)

Birth Place: Delta, Louisiana, USA

Industry: Haircare

Influence: Hair Care Pioneer, Empowered Female Entrepreneurs

Net Worth: $600,000

Website: www.madamcjwalker.com

Why they made the list…

Madame CJ Walker is somebody that you may very well and not know that you’d be forgiven for not doing as well but she died over 90 years ago. Although her fortune of $600,000 may not seem much the reason why she such inspirational person to have on this list is because she made herself an empire, through hard work and determination, she was also an inspiration to all other female would-be entrepreneurs. Walker, born Sarah Breedlove, is known best for being America’s first African-American entrepreneur, as well as being one of the most wealthiest women of her era. A lot of the women in her era experienced hair loss for some reason. It’s thought that this was due to a lacking of indoor plumbing and electricity, making it hard for them to bathe each and every day. Walker had experienced this also (hair loss) and so she experimented with some of own home-made remedies. They work so well that she decided that it was worth investing in and creating a business out of so she did.

The products were an instant hit and soon stores all across the country were selling them, in 1908 she opened a College to train hair care trainees, and in 1910 she moved to Indianapolis and established a factory which he used as her main headquarters. Later in her life she went on to teach and lecture female entrepreneurs to help them build their own businesses and to gain their own freedom and independence. This in itself made quite a name for her and she later joined the National Association of the advancement of coloured people also known as the NAACP. She joined them in an effort to stop hate crimes and to ban lynching, making it a federal crime. She died in 1919 because of apparent kidney failure leaving behind her fortune and the manufacturing business to her daughter A’Lelia Walker. Today the business continues although not as successful as in its heyday.

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# 28 Coco Chanel

Age: 87 yrs (Died January 10, 1971)

Birth Place: Samur, France

Industry: Fashion

Influence: Fashion and  Perfume Pioneer

Net Worth: $160 million

Website: www.Chanel.com

Why they made the list…

Coco Chanel, it kind of slips of the tongue doesn’t it, it’s one of those names that we all know and probably one of those names that we associate with the world of fashion and her perfumery. Known worldwide Coco Chanel was one of the most creative and successful entrepreneurs of her era. Her first chosen career was that of a singer, although she couldn’t get the work whether that was because she had a poor voice or because there was such excellent singers at the time I’m not quite sure. However it spurred her into becoming the entrepreneur that we know her are as today. In 1910 she became a hat maker and opened up her own beauty in the Paris, France. The business was a success and in 1913 she opened a boutique in Deauville, where she began introducing a luxury line of casual clothing which were apparently suitable for leisure or sport.

In 1921 after concocting a perfume for herself, she found other people enjoyed it so much that she decided to introduce it to her boutique she called it Chanel No. 5. It is thought that this perfume was the first of its kind, by that I mean that it was the first perfume that was ever sold worldwide and not just within a singular state or country. In 1939 at the beginning of World War II, Chanel decided to close her, now many, boutiques as she believed it to be the wrong time to sell fashion. However after four years without working she decided it was time to renew her passion. 1945 after moving back to Paris (she had previously moved to Switzerland), she continued with their collections of luxury clothing and perfumes, and although her new collections at first did not have much success with the Parisians at the time, she was very successful with the British and American customers. Today her legacy, Chanel, is worth an estimated $4.5 billion.

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# 29 Martha Stewart

Age: 69yrs

Birth Place: Jersey City, New Jersey, USA

Industry: Television, magazine publisher

Influence: Health, Entertainment, Advice

Net Worth: $913 million

Website: www.MarthaStewart.com

Why they made the list…

Martha Stewart may not be very well-known to our British readers; although you probably have heard her name before. Martha Stewart, is an American television host who also has published magazines in the past. She managed to create amazing success for herself through a plethora of business ventures such as publishing, merchandising, presenting and also broadcasting. Perhaps the most recognizable thing that many of you will think of when you think of Martha Stewart is prison, or rather her prison time. In 2004 she was convicted of lying to an investigator, regarding a stock sale and served only five months in prison. Just so the British readers understand, lying to an investigator in the US, is a federal offense which is punishable by up to 5 years in prison.

Many people thought that inside the prison she would deteriorate, and possibly have a mental breakdown however that did not happen and on her return from prison she bounced back massively and became even more successful than before. In 2005 she released a book which was highly publicized due to her comeback, this was received very well by her funds and became a very good seller. To them back into television with the Martha Stewart show and also appeared on The Apprentice: Martha Stewart. Today with all of her merchandise which is in many stores around the US, her lucrative television deals and her many books and magazines have earned her an accumulated total approximately $913 million.

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# 30 Walt Disney

Age: 65 yrs (Died December 15, 1966)

Birth Place: Samur, France

Industry: Entertainment

Influence: Pioneered Entertainment

Net Worth: $1.1 billion

Website: www.Disney.go.com

Why they made the list…

I’m 100% certain every reader today, reading this will know Walt Disney, and he is a great example of a successful entrepreneur. His first break in entertainment came when he was hired by the Kansas City film Ad Company, where he learned to make animations from cut-outs. He was then given a massive inspiration after reading the book by Edwin G. Lutz; Animated Cartoons: how they are made. Upon reading it and getting quite excited about the prospects of becoming a professional animator he left Kansas City Film Ad Company. Laugh-O-Grams his second business went bankrupt; which was mainly down to the studio costs, staff costs and and lack of business to bring in revenue to pay for them. Which meant he wasn’t a bad businessman, he was just bad with money.

Having really learned his lesson from failing so miserably, Walt and his brother Roy went to Hollywood where they managed to secure a distributor deal to help with the business. Things grew more and more successful and the business started to go from strength to strength. His unique characters and his ability to bring animation to life really brought the fans to the cinemas and theatres. Walt Disney received an Academy award in 1932 for his efforts in animation, thanks to his new found fans who were demanding more cartoons featuring Mickey Mouse. Walt Disney continues his success for another 34 years before his death they left behind a legacy which is now called the Walt Disney Co. Today the Walt Disney business is currently worth $35 million

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Back in March 2009 one of my earliest posts here on IncomeDiary.com was a list of the the top 30 earning websites in the world

Back then the Top Earning website was not surprisingly Google.com, but I have just done a new Top Earning Websites In The World list based on stats that are now available for 2009 and surprise, surprise, Amazon.com has overtaken Google.com!

Can this really be the case?

Let me be clear – this is a list of some of the Top Earning Websites in the world and as such I don’t claim to have covered every possible website. (but what I wanted to do was give us a comparison of some of the best known websites revenues based on the PER SECOND model)

I don’t know why but there is something amazing about comparing earnings on a per second basis – it almost gives me a shiver up my back (in a good way)

I remember not that long ago being excited about earning just $10 a day, then $50 a day and then the day I first earned $1000 in one day! ($1000 in a day is ONLY 1.157 cents per second by the way)

Imagine what it must be like to be Jeff Bezos, Larry Page or Sergey Brin.

Mind you — one thing I am excited about – my profit margins (net profit) as a percentage is significantly higher than either Amazon or Google

My Father and indeed many other entrepreneurs I know are always telling me:

Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity, but CASH is king

That is something to always be remembered in any business comparison

I look forward to your comments – what names on this list surprised you? Who should be on this list that isn’t?

There is 31536000 seconds in a Year — make all of them count — like Amazon.com

To all our successes

Michael

PS: Quote For Today:

Business without profit is not business any more than a pickle is a candy ~ Charles F Abbott

Today I decided to show everyone where 14 of  my favorite top internet businesses were started. Just goes to show you that you don’t have to start with an office etc.  A good number started from dorm rooms and their bedrooms with just a laptop so stop dreaming and start achieving!

When I started my first internet business I was still at school and was only 15 years old and would work from any where possible to make my dream of becoming a millionaire young a reality. I would work from school, my bed room, internet cafes and even at friends houses and I would make it fun – it’s 2010, we don’t have to be running a businesses about something we don’t enjoy anymore.

Some of the images are a little dodgy — but remember 12 years ago we did not have the highly sophisticated digital cameras we have today

Where Facebook Was Started

Today 1)    Website: Facebook
Founder: Mark Zuckerberg
Place started the business: At his Harvard Dorm Room
The birth of Facebook is related to Zuckerberg’s appetite for hacking.
He got into limelight when he refused $1 billion offer from Yahoo. Later on he settled with $240 million dollar deal, giving Microsoft 1.6% stake in Facebook raising the valuation to $15 billion.

Where Facebook.com Was Started

Where Google Was Started

2)    Website: Google
Founder: Larry Page and Sergey Brin
Place started the business: In a garage
Larry and Sergey started on a name BackRub. But Larry and Sergey decide that the BackRub search engine needs a new name. After some brainstorming, they go with Google — a play on the word “googol,” a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. The use of the term reflects their mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web.

The Garage Google Was Started In

Where Runescape Was Started

3)    Website: Runescape
Founder: Andrew Gower
Place started the business: From a bedroom in his parents’ house in Nottingham.
He has involved in coding for games since his childhood. He had a penchant for dungeon gaming. He initially started RunEscape as a hobby, and later monetized his website and turned out to be a successful business venture.

The Bedroom Where Runescape.com Was Started

Where PopCap Games Was Started

4)    Website: PopCap Games
Founders: John Vechey, along with Brien Fiete and Jason Kapalka
Place started the business: In his office
John Vechey, along with Brien Fiete and Jason Kapalka founded Popcap games in the year 2000. They earlier worked with internet gaming sites like flipside and pogo. Their first gaming product was Bejeweled, which became a big hit, and received numerous awards.

Where PopCapGames.com Was Started

Where Threadless Was Started

5)    Website: Threadless
Founder: Jack Nickell along with Jacob Dehart
Place started the business: From a studio apartment
Jack Nickell along with Jacob Dehart ( both college dropouts ), started threadless when they were still working on their regular job. Both the partners put a modest $500 as their initial investment. Now the company has annual revenue to the extent of $50 million.

Where Threadless.com Was Started

Where BizChair Was Started

6)    Website: Biz Chair
Founder: Sean Belnick
Place started the business: From his bedroom
He started with $500, with an initial inventory of 50 products. Now the company has 75 employees and sells more than 25000 products online. He sells office furniture, home furniture, school furniture and medical equipment in online shop. Microsoft, Google and American Idol are amongst some of his notable clients.

Where BizChair.com Was Started

Where Digg Was Started

7)    Website: Digg
Founder: Kevin Rose
Place started the business: In his apartment.
David Prager (The Screen Savers, This Week in Tech), originally wanted to call the site “Diggnation”, but Kevin Rose wanted a simpler name. He chose the name “Digg”, because users are able to “dig” stories, out of those submitted, up to the front page. The site was called “Digg” instead of “Dig” because the domain name “dig.com” had been previously registered by the Walt Disney Internet Group.

Where Digg.com Was Started

Where PlentyOfFish Was Started

8)    Website: PlentyOfFish
Founder: Markus Frind
Place started the business: In his office
Back in 2001 after his birthday someone in the office introduced him to online dating sites.  He went back to his desk and checked out udate.com and kiss.com and lavalife/web personals. He was bored and He wanted to chat with people.  He was really annoyed when he found out you had to pay for everything, he ended up telling the girl who introduced him to the sites that he could do better and make them for free, so he went and registered Plentyoffish.com.

Where PlentyOfFish.com Was Started

Where Voltage Was Started

9)    Website: Voltage
Founder: Rishi  Kacker and Matt Pauker
Place started the business: In a basement office in the engineering building
Rishi  Kacker and Matt Pauker worked on the technology as a summer research project while attending Stanford. They entered a business-plan competition they won the contest. With the help of some seasoned executives, the two have created a thriving security-software business with more than 130 big-business customers and 75 employees. “It’s still amazing to me,” says Pauker.

Where Voltage.com Was Started

Where YouTube Was Started

10)    Website: YouTube
Founder: Chad Hurley
Place started the business: In his office
After that fateful dinner party, where Hurley and Chen wanted to create a simpler way to share their videos of the night, they immediately went to work at the office creating the answer. “In February, we started developing the product,” says Hurley. “In May, we had our first public preview. And in December, we officially launched YouTube. By that time we were serving over three million videos a day.”

Where YouTube.com Was Started

Where FastHost Was Started

11)    Website: FastHost
Founder: Andrew Michael
Place started the business: From his bedroom
He became a multi-millionaire after selling an internet business he started as a teenager. He started up Fasthosts as an internet project for a sixth form project at the age of 17. With the sale of Fasthosts, Mr Michael’s wealth has rocketed to £47m.

Where FastHost.com Was Started

Where WhatEverLife Was Started

12)    Website: WhatEverLife
Founder: Ashley Qualls
Place started the business: started at her kitchen office.
Started her business in 2004 with an $8 domain name and an old computer,  at the age of just fourteen. She didn’t know she was starting a business at the time – she thought she was just creating an easy way to share her cool MySpace background designs with her friends.

Where WhatEverLife.com Was Started

Where eBay Was Started

13)    Website: eBay
Founder: Pierre Omidyar
Place started the business: In the home of Pierre Omidyar
There aren’t many sites on the Internet that can claim the success that eBay has enjoyed. The first name eBay used was Echo Bay Technology. When the company tried to register the domain name echobay.com, they found that it was already in use. They shortened the name to eBay.com and the Website was born.

Where eBay.com Was Started

Where LinkedIn Was Started

14)    Website: LinkedIn
Founder: Reid Hoffman
Place started the business: In the living room
LinkedIn was officially founded in 2003. The site was launched on May 5th (affectionately referred to by employees as “Cinco de LinkedIn”) when the five founders invited about 350 of their most important contacts to join. At the end of the first month in operation, LinkedIn had a total of 4,500 members in the network. LinkedIn’s first “real” office was on Shoreline Road in Mountain View.

Where Linkedin.com Was Started

I hope the list has inspired you and has made it clear you can start anywhere!

To Our Success in 2010,

Michael Dunlop

PS. Where did you start you first business?

Making money online has evolved a lot over the past few years, every day people become millionaires through the internet and they were just like you, searching through the internet for that piece of inspiration that would give them the kick they needed to make it happen. One of the easiest ways to make money and start an internet business today is by creating a blog. Check out my FREE 7 day eCourse on Blogging and give it a go yourself.

Making money is simple, you find a problem, offer the solution and then monetize it, this is exactly what the 30 people below did to make their billions/millions online. This is exactly what I did when I created this website, people were asking me how to create a blog, I offered them the solution with this website and then I monetized it with affiliate offers. To do it yourself, think about your passion or something you know a lot about, find a problem within it, create a blog and offer the solution then monetize it using any of the 100′s of methods I talk about on my blog.

Top Internet Entrepreneurs

Rank	Name	Website	Year Website Launched	Net Worth
1	Larry Page	Google	1998	$18.5 Billion
2	Sergey Brin	Google	1998	$18.5 Billion
3	Jeff Bezos	Amazon	1994	$8.7 Billlion
4	Pierre Omidyar	eBay	1995	$6.3 Billion
5	Eric Schmidt	Google	1998	$5.9 Billion
6	Ronald Burkle	Yahoo	1995	$3.5 Billion
7	Mark Cuban	Broadcast.com	1995	$2.6 Billion
8	Jerry Yang	Yahoo	1995	$2.3 Billion
9	Omid Kordestani	Google	1998	$1.9 Billion
10	David Filo	Yahoo	1995	$1.7 Billion
11	Kavitark Ram Shriram	Google	1998	$1.7 Billion
12	Todd Wagner	Broadcast.com	1995	$1.5 Billion
13	Peter Thiel	PayPal	1998	$1.3 Billion
14	Niklas Zennstrom	Skype	2003	$1.3 Billion
15	Janus Friis	Skype	2003	$1.3 Billion
16	Jack Ma	Alibaba	1999	$1.1 Billion
17	Mark Zuckerberg	Facebook	2004	$700 Million
18	Simon Nixon	MoneySuperMarket	1999	$680 Million
19	Andrew Gower	Runescape	2001	$650 Million
20	Reid Hoffman	LinkedIn	2003	$500 Million
21	Zhang Chaoyang	Sohu	1996	$425 Million
22	Steve Chen	YouTube	2005	$350 Million
23	Elon Musk	PayPal	1998	$328 Million
24	Chad Hurley	YouTube	2005	$300 Million
25	Duncan Cameron	MoneySuperMarket	1999	$280 Million
26	Marc Andreesen	Netscape	1994	$253 Million
27	Reed Hastings	NetFlix	1997	$150 Million
28	Blake Ross	Mozila	1998	$120 Million
29	Andrew Michael	Fasthost	1999	$110 Million
30	Max Levchin	PayPal	1998	$100 Million

To our success in 2009,

Michael Dunlop

PS. Expect me to be up there one day