Jeff Bezo Founder, President, CEO and Chairman, Amazon.com (Since 1994)




“I knew if I have failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.”





Jeff Bezos the founder of the great company Amazon.com is a concise, energetic, inventive, cognitive, hi-tech computer legend, scientific thinker with an inbuilt chip of exploring new things from the world around. As he perceived that internet was growing at a very fast pace, he did enough analysis and came up with an idea of the .com company Amazon.com, now a multibillion company. He found and took up the reins of Amazon.com since 1994 handling different positions like president, chairperson and CEO. Amazon started out as a bookstore, but expanded rapidly to offer different and distinct products by acquiring several online retailers through years.  In addition to offering literally millions of retail items from all over the world, Amazon has also developed in-house products such as the Kindle (an e-book reader), Amazon Fresh (online grocery shopping) and Amazon Prime (free shipping).

Career Outlook

A decade ago, when Bezos was launching Amazon.com, people felt that 3, 00,000 titles would be plenty to start with. Nevertheless, Bezos took a bold step of stocking his shelves with a million titles, which turned around the company and brought about amazing change in his life. Today under the excellent direction of Bezos, the site sells 20 million products, including all 29 colors of the Kitchen Aid 5-quart mixer, with revenue of $6bn. Even the largest physical bookstores could not sell such huge obscure volumes. Today people around the world know the book company. It is all because of the focus laid by Bezos on the niche market and his obsession on high quality customer service and a customer-centric approach, Amazon.com went ahead in the right direction. As he expanded his company Jeff emphasized constantly on “Six Core Values: Customer obsession, Ownership, Bias for action, Frugality, High hiring bar and Innovation”. “Our vision”, Bezos said, “is the world’s most customer centric company”. Most of the analysts of the world praised the strategies Bezos took as “One of the smartest strategies in business history”.  On the contrary, as compared to other great leaders, Bezos is known for his attention to business details and his notorious micromanagement. He was an executive who wants to know about everything from contract minutiae to how he is quoted in all Amazon press releases. This sounds a negative quality, but this is what showed Bezos total involvement in the company as a whole. This was one quality, which worked miracles and was a key to realize his ideas and dreams of how the company should be and how the company is going to be. Bezos forayed into different new territories of innovation and transformed Amazon from a simple bookselling company to a company that is capable of tackling any new venture. He has already revolutionized the way the world buys books. Currently Jeff is busy transforming the way world reads the books. His enormous efforts in transforming his ideas, plans and executing them and upgrading them to be useful for the world, provides an initiation to learning the leadership traits for the new generation entrepreneurs.

After Jeff graduated, he found his first job on Wall Street; computer science was on towering demand and was useful to study market trends. He worked at Fitel, a start up company, which was in mode of building a network to carry on international trade. He worked at D.E Shaw; a finance firm specialized in the application of computer science to stock markets, where he was hired for his overall talent to carry on a particular assignment. In Shaw, Jeff increased his responsibility to senior vice president and looked forward for a bright career in financial realm.

In early 1994, defense department used the internet to keep computer networks connected during any emergency like enemy attacks or natural disasters. Over the years, government and academic researchers used the computer networking to exchange necessary data and messages. Jeff Bezos observed that internet usage is sky rocketing at the rate of 2,300 percent per annum and was the best opportunity to exploit business, and immediately began exploring and researching the possibilities. In this context, he reviewed 20 mail order businesses in a typical methodical fashion. Finally, he arrived at a point that books were the only business commodity for which no comprehensive mail order catalogue existed. This business could be conducted efficiently over the internet rather than by any other traditional means and a vast database could be shared with limitless number of people.

The following day Bezos flew to Los Angeles to attend American Bookseller’s convention and learn everything about the book business. There he came to know that all the major book wholesalers already had a compiled electronic list of their books inventory and all that has to be done was that single location for internet, where the book buying public could search the available stock and place orders directly. Bezos has no other option than grabbing the opportunity to do the business all by himself sacrificing a good and secured position at New York City, as his employers were not prepared to proceed with such venture. However, Bezos and his wife decided to take up the business opportunity.

Jeff had a clear business plan and the couple drove to Seattle in search of pool of computer talent for his new enterprise, where they could access the book wholesaler Ingram. The company was named Amazon, after the South American seeming endless river with its numerous branches. There a shop was set up in two-bedroom house. Jeff wrote a code and set up three Sun microstations on the tables purchased from home depot for less than $60 each and the extension cords run into the garage. The test site was fully prepared; and was run under the supervision of 300 friends and acquaintances of Jeff. The code developed by Bezos worked seamlessly across different computer platforms and on July 16, 1995, Jeff opened the site for the whole world and instructed all his 300 beta testers to spread the word. Within first 30 days, Amazon sold books in all 50 states of USA and 45 other countries. The sales reached $20,000 a week. Bezos and his team were involved in improving the site and adding new and unique features like one-click shopping, customer reviews, and e-mail order verification. In one way, this was a safe bet on Internet and Jeff.

The business grew unimaginably faster and the company went public in 1997. The start-up bookseller company maintained its position equally with the big traditional book companies like Barnes and Nobles, Borders etc. Two years later the market share of Amazon was greater than that of its two biggest retail competitors combined. Borders was trying to strike a deal with Amazon to handle the internet traffic. By the end of the decade, six percent of owners of Amazon were billionaires and after many years Bezos family held as many as a third of the shares of the company.

Bezos has a dream of making Amazon from “Earth’s biggest book store” to the “Earth’s biggest anything store”. Right from the beginning, Bezos worked on increase in market share as quickly as possible, at the expense of the profits. The company was expanded, and was recognized as the place where people come to find and discover anything they want to buy online. Amazon moved into music CD’s, videos, toys, electronics and more. Amazon re-structured and posted profits, when the internet stock market bubble burst and all the dot-com start-ups vanished.

In FY 2002 October, the firm added clothing sales to its line up, through partnerships with hundreds of retailers like Gap, Nordstrom, Land’s End etc. Amazon also shares its expertise in customer service and online order fulfillment with other vendors like Toys ‘R’ Us, Borders through its co-branded sites and Amazon service subsidiary. In 2003, Amazon unveiled formation of A9, a new venture aimed at developing commercial search engine that focuses on e-commerce web sites. At the same time, Amazon launched an online sporting goods store, offering 3,000 different brand names. The great success of Amazon made Bezos to explore his longtime interest in space travel, which made him find an aerospace company called “Blue origin” in 2004. The company is based on 26-acre research campus outside Seattle. The company maintains a private rocket launching facility in West Texas. The company receives funding from NASA and is indulged in testing Shepard, a multi-passenger rocket-propelled vehicle designed to travel to and from suborbital space at competitive prices. Blue Origin’s ultimate goal is enduring human presence in outer space. By the end of FY 2006 Amazon ended with annual sales of 10.7bn. As of today Amazon is the largest American online retailer with nearly 3 times the sales of its nearest competitors

With many innovative ideas in mind, Bezos of Amazon introduced a handheld electronics device called “Kindle” in 2007. The device operates with E-link technology to render print like appearance to the text, which considerably reduces eyestrain as compared to television and computer screens. The adjustable font size option enhances the ease in reading unlike other electronic reading devices. Kindle enables a reader to purchase, download and read the complete books and other documents at any place and any time, as it is incorporated with internet. Kindle is capable of storing hundreds of books and classics can be downloaded at a very small amount of $2.

Amazon captured almost 95% of U.S markets for the e-books, with the introduction of Kindle, the best purpose-built device for reading. Kindle achieved supremacy and gained competitive edge as compared to iPad, a reading device introduced in 2010 by Apple. The reason for this being, Bezos responded aggressively cutting retail price of Kindle, adding new features, with one model working with WiFi and the second model working with G-3 mobile technology. The gadget is thinner and lighter with faster page-turning capability and longer battery-life, easier to read in sunlight and the price is hundreds of dollars less than that of the iPad.

In 2010, Amazon signed a controversial deal with the Wylie Agency, in which Amazon was given digital rights to the works of many authors it represents, bypassing the original publishers all together. Amazon’s practice of selling e-books at a relatively low price far below the same title in hardcover, annoyed several publishers and authors as their royalty rates were threatened. However, this was complemented by the advent of reading device that resulted in overall sales growth of the books, which benefited readers and authors equally. By the mid of 2010, Kindle and e-book sales reached to $2.38bn, with e-book sales increasing by 200% a year. Bezos predicted that e-books will out beat the paperbacks and become company’s best selling format within a year. Thus, Jeff Bezos transformed Amazon with innovation and creativity.

More about Jeff Bezos

Born               : Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen
                       January 12, 1964 (age 47)
                       Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.
Alma mater     :Princeton University (BS)
Occupation     :Chairman and CEO of Amazon.com
Marital Status  :Married
Children           :Four

Jeffrey. P. Bezos, the founder of a great and well-known company like Amazon.com, was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on January12, 1964. When Jeff was born, his mother was in teens and her marriage did not last more than a year. Later when Jeff was four years old, she remarried Mike Bezos, Jeff’s stepfather. Mike Bezos was born in Cuba, but escaped to United States all alone at a very tender age of 15 years, but could manage to attend University of Albuquerque. Post marriage the family moved to Houston, where Mike worked as an engineer at Exxon. Jeff’s maternal relations had roots in Texas over generations and acquired a land of 25,000 acre ranch at Cotulla. Jeff’s grandfather worked as a regional director of the Atomic Energy Commission in Albuquerque. In his youth Jeff spent most of his summers working with his grandfather at the family ranch. There he worked on multiple and varied tasks like fixing windmills, castrating cattle, laying pipes and repairing pumps which helped him in his future operations. Jeff’s grandfather was the big figure in influencing Jeff, who sparked and indulged Jeff’s fascination with educational games and toys, assisting him with the Heath kits and the other paraphernalia that Jeff constantly hauled home to the family garage.

Young Jeff at his grandfather’s Ranch

Right from his very early age Jeff was a baby mechanic with high engineering skills. One such skill he displayed while he was a toddler was; he dismantled his crib with a screwdriver, this is unbelievable but true. He depicted all the qualities of a scientist with immense interest of trying different new things. He always kept his younger siblings away from his room rigging an electric alarm. The garage of his parents was converted into a full-fledged science laboratory to carry on his projects. When Jeff was in teens, his family moved to Miami, Florida where Jeff fell in deep love with computers while he was at Miami Palmetto Senior High School.
He was a scholarly student with an outstanding performance in his academics. Besides securing the valedictorian's title, Bezos was also, one of three members of his graduating class awarded a Silver Knight Award, a prestigious academic honor in south Florida high schools, sponsored by Knight Ridder's Miami Herald. He planned to graduate in physics. However, his immense love towards computers made him to earn a degree in computer science and electrical engineering at Princeton University. Jeff met his wife Mackenzie who was also a Princeton graduate, got married in 1993, while working at Shaw, a company specialized in application of computer science to the stock market. Mackenzie and Jeff, who have lived until now in a one-bedroom rental in downtown Seattle, recently bought a $10mn rustic mansion alongside Lake Washington in a neighborhood with Microsoft millionaires. Today, Jeff Bezos and Mackenzie live north of Seattle and are increasingly concerned with philanthropic activities. "Giving away money takes as much attention as building a successful company," Jeff Bezos has said. Jeff Bezos has four children adopted from China.

Is Jeff Bezos the New Steve Jobs?

This is the recently titled article which was under debate, but most of the techies agree Jeff Bezos= Steve Jobs. However, it is very tough to compare. But, why people compared Jeff with Jobs? The key reason would be Bezos also demonstrates a Jobs-like demanding, micro-managing style of command. To pave Amazon's path into cloud computing, he issued a ruthless edict: Every department head had to redesign all software interfaces in a way to allow outsiders access to them in a secure way, or they would be fired. One more thing that strikes common in Bezos and Steve Jobs is Bezos paced the stage and showed commercials to publicize their products-just like Steve Jobs. Moreover, the attire with blue jeans and black necked tee looked the same. Whether or not Bezos comes to be as regarded, feared and admired, as the former Apple CEO is immaterial. What matters is whether Amazon is poised to become the next Apple. The comparisons go this way:

Steve Jobs was passionate about creating amazing new computer products right from the beginning of his career. At the beginning of his career, Bezos wanted to be an extraordinarily successful entrepreneur. He found his path in 1994 when he began researching the Internet and discovered that its phenomenal growth was like nothing he had seen before Bezos settled as book retailer, as it was a huge business, which could be done easily online. All the people are aware of books and there is no need to worry on product quality. There are comprehensive electronic lists of virtually every book available and distributors who can deliver them. They all work as promised.

His success was an extraordinary feat, accomplished with an unwavering focus on how to best serve his customers, from the design of the site to discount pricing and even a willingness to let people write bad reviews of books. He then leveraged that success to sell other products, navigated through the dot-com crash and thrived where almost all others failed.

Jobs created Ferraris, top-performing and expensive products that set a gold standard. Bezos is more utilitarian. His devices, like everything, are designed for the masses: cheap, high-volume products created more for their ability to act as receptacles for other Amazon products, such as its e-books and the streaming videos that Bezos now offers as an alternative to Netflix.

Bezos had wide knowledge of computer networks; he might have come up with Kindle much earlier than he did. However, the Kindle was unveiled six years after Steve Jobs pioneered a similar download service for music, with iTunes and the iPod. Jeff Bezos is no Steve Jobs-but Amazon could be next apple.

Managerial Style of Jeff Bezos

Jeff is great at both providing strategic vision and talking through execution. He listens carefully to your ideas and zeros in incredibly rapidly on what's important. He encourages innovation and experimentation, anchored in concrete measurement. He may take a while to make a decision, but moves quickly and aggressively once it's made. On a personal level, he’s down to earth, straightforward and approachable.

Recognition for Bezos

Bezos outstanding efforts to bring up his company and connect with people, making them buy and read books they wanted at a click from home through Amazon.com brought him recognition worldwide. Few are mentioned below:

  • He was recognized as Time magazine's Person of the Year in 1999.
  • U.S. News & World Report elected Bezos as one of America's best leaders in 2008.
  • Bezos was awarded an honorary doctorate in Science and Technology from Carnegie Mellon University in 2008.
  • He is also a member of the Bilderberg Group and attended the Swiss 2011 Bilderberg conference in St. Moritz, Switzerland.

Inspiring quotes by Jeff Bezos
  • "If there’s one reason we have done better than of our peers in the Internet space over the last six years, it is because we have focused like a laser on customer experience and that really does matter, I think, in any business. It certainly matters online, where word of mouth is so very, very powerful."
  • "If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful."
  • "We have so many customers who treat us so well, and we have the right kind of culture that obsesses over the customer."
  • "We see our customers as invited guests to a party and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better."
  • "We watch our competitors, learn from them, see the things that they were doing for customers and copy those things as much as we can."
  • "You have to use your judgment. In cases like that, we say, let’s be simple minded. We know this is a feature that’s good for customers. Let’s do it.’"
  • "You can do the math 15 different ways, and every time the math tells you that you shouldn’t lower prices because you’re going to make less money. That’s undoubtedly true in the current quarter, in the current year. But it’s probably not true over a 10-year period, when the benefit is going to increase the frequency with which your customers shop with you, the fraction of their purchases they do with you as opposed to other places. Their overall satisfaction is going to go up."
  • "You know, if you make a customer unhappy they won't tell five friends, they'll tell 5,000 friends. So we are at a point now where we have all of the things we need to build an important and lasting company, and if we don't, it will be shame on us."
  • "If you think about the long term then you can really make good life decisions that you won’t regret later."
  • “There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less”
  • “If you invent frequently and are willing to fail, then you never get to that point where you really need to bet the whole company”.
  • “I think one thing I find very motivating -- and I think this is probably a very common form of motivation or cause of motivation is, I love people counting on me, and so, you know, today it's so easy to be motivated, because we have millions of customers counting on us at Amazon.com. We've got thousands of investors counting on us. Moreover, we're a team of thousands of employees all counting on each other. That's fun”.
  • “I remember, just to show you how stupid I can be -- my only defense is that it was late. We were packing these things, everybody in the company and I had this brainstorm as I said to the person next to me, "This packing is killing me! My back hurts, this is killing my knees on this hard cement floor" and this person said, "Yeah, I know what you mean." And I said, "You know what we need?" my brilliant insight, "We need knee pads!" I was very serious, and this person looked at me like I was the stupidest person they'd ever seen. I'm working for this person. This is great. "What we need is packing tables." I looked this person and I thought that was the smartest idea I had ever heard. The next day we got packing tables and I think we doubled our productivity. That early stage, by the way of amazon.com, when we were so unprepared is probably one of the luckiest things that ever happened to us because it formed a culture of customer service in every department of the company”.
  • “I'm not saying that advertising is going away. However, the balance is shifting. If today, the successful recipe is to put 70 percent of your energy into shouting about your service and 30 percent into making it great, over the next 20 years I think that's going to invert”.
  • “If you're not stubborn, you'll give up on experiments too soon. And if you're not flexible, you'll pound your head against the wall and you won't see a different solution to a problem you're trying to solve”.

Facebook:Mark Elliot Zuckerberg CEO and President



“The thing I really care about is the mission, making the world open” “It’s OK to break things” “to make them better”





Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is born American computer programming genius, young and energetic ideologist, envisioned entrepreneur and scientific brain behind the path breaking revolution in social networking systems; found and took up reins as President and CEO of Facebook in 2004. The way he transformed the social networking systems made communication, networking, knowledge sharing and connectivity jet fast and just a matter of a click.

The “Facebook”, which spread like magic from the dorm room of Harvard, founded by Mark Elliot Zukerberg in 2004, when he was just 19-year-old, with his fellow students and roommates, has become popular worldwide, with an extremely broad base of about 800million viewers, as of September 2011. Currently the Facebook is growing at tremendous pace with about 700,000 people using it per day. Today, one out of every 12 people is known to have Facebook account. These viewers communicate in 75 languages and use 700 billion minutes every month on facebook. As of 2011, Zuckerberg is a billionaire, with approximate personal wealth of around $17.5 billion.

Zuckerberg is named as the Person of the Year for 2010 by the Time’s Magazine for connecting more than half a billion people and mapping the social relations among them; for creating a new system of exchanging information and for changing how we live our lives. Amidst many controversies about the origin of the company and law suits filed against Facebook, in a very short spec of time, Mark was able to string up humans into a huge single social entity through Facebook network, which made a historical paradigm shift in human relations. Facebook has become a part –and- parcel of human lives through out the globe, with 50% of the people utilizing the network in the U.S and from countries outside the U.S, 70% of people have changed their lives with Facebook usage. Under the great leadership and guidance of Mark, total registrations to the site quadrupled over the previous year. The number of employees has tripled, as has revenue. This shows his determination, strong willpower and relentless hard work to execute his mission of connecting people around the world. He stood as a role model for all young upcoming businessmen with great ideas, which could transform the world.

Mark Zuckerberg thinks that lot comes from going to good schools, as he did. He believed that every child deserves good education, which is not happening right now. He just wants to do what he could do to lend everyone an opportunity to get educated. He wants to spread his wealth, so he announced that he would be giving $100 million to the Newark school system in charity, to help reform schools in U.S, in Sept 2011. Zuckerberg stated "With a generation of younger folks who have thrived on the success of their companies, there is a big opportunity for many of us to give back earlier in our lifetime and see the impact of our philanthropic efforts”. By this he joins Bill Gates and Warren Buffet in “giving away pledge”.

Rise of Facebook and Zuckerberg

The foundation and groundwork before starting the actual Facebook, took its birth in the Harvard. Zuckerberg developed an image of go-to software developer on the Harvard campus, in 2002. At that time, he built a CourseMatch program, which helped students to choose their classes based on course selection of other users.

In 2003, when Zuckerberg was in his sophomore year at Harvard, started a program called “Facemash”, with the help of his friends and roommates Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz, just to divert himself from the pressure he felt. Facemash placed photos of two undergraduates side by side, and asked the viewers to vote for one that is “hotter”. The site actually originated only for Harvard, but quickly grew to other colleges, then high schools and finally for anyone over age 13. However, the Harvard’s school administration quickly shut down the program, as Zuckerberg was charged for breach of privacy. Later on, the Harvard dropped the charges.

Based on the popularity gained by the previous projects, Zuck was sought to work on an idea of social networking site by three of his fellow students, Divya Narendra, and twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, which they called “Harvard connection”. This site was designed to use information from Harvard's student networks in order to create a dating site for the Harvard elite. Zuckerberg agreed to help with the project, but soon dropped out to pursue his dreams. The controversy surrounding Facebook began quickly. A week after he launched the site in 2004, Mark was accused by three Harvard seniors of having stolen the idea from them. This allegation soon became a lawsuit, as a competing company founded by the Harvard seniors, sued Mark and Facebook for theft and fraud, starting a legal fight, which continues to this day. The case was dismissed due to a technicality in March 2007, but without a ruling and Zuck ended up paying a huge penalty.

In the year 2004 February, the same trio Zuck, Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz dropped out of Harvard to pursue their dreams and run Facebook full time, they diverted their efforts to recreate Facemash and opened Facebook, the most popular social networking site. This site allowed users to create their own profiles, upload photos, and communicate with other users. The group ran the site first called “The Facebook”, from the dorm room at Harvard, until June 2004. In 2004, an angel investor, Sean Parker (founder of Napster) became the company's president. The company was moved to Palo Alto, California and had 1 million users by the end of 2004. In August 2005, “the facebook” was officially called “Facebook”, and the domain facebook.com was purchased for a reported $200,000.

The network quickly expanded to other Boston universities, the Ivy League, and eventually all US universities. US high schools could sign up from September 2005, and then it began to spread through out the world and reached UK universities the following month. The network reached beyond educational institutions to anyone with a registered email address, as of September 2006. The site remains free to join, and makes a profit through advertising revenue. That's why you'll see banner ads on Facebook, and this is how they can manage to create such a great service to you for free.

The features of the site have shown a continuous development, during the year 2007. Users can now give gifts to friends, post free classified advertisements, and even develop their own applications (graffiti and Scrabble are particularly popular). Over time, Facebook has added many new features to their website. You'll now find a news feed, more privacy features, Facebook notes, the ability to add images to your blog and comments, importing other blogs into Facebook, instant messaging, and much more. In addition, new apps are born on Facebook every day. This month the company announced that the number of registered users had reached 30 million, making it the largest social-networking site with an education focus. Facebook has count worthy investors including PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Accel Partners, and Greylock Partners. In 2007, Microsoft came forward and invested $246 million for a 1.6% share in Facebook. The next month Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing made a large investment too. Yahoo! and Google both offered to buy Facebook, but Mark Zuckerberg showed no interest in selling. Today Facebook is the second largest social networking site and stands behind Myspace, with approximately 150mn viewers a month.

More about Mark Elliot Zuckerberg
Born                                         :Mark Elliot Zukerberg
                                                  May 14, 1984 (age 27)
                                                  White Plains, New York, U.S.

Residence                                 :Palo Alto, California, U.S.

Country of citizenship                :United States

Ethnicity                                   :Jewish

Alma mater                              :Phillips Exeter Academy
                                                 Harvard University (drop out)

Occupation                              :CEO and President of Face book

Marital Status                         :Single

The top wig of social networking, Zukerberg of Facebook; was born in a Jewish family in White Plains, New York, in the year 1984, May14.He was brought up in Dobbs Ferry, New York, in a well to do, closely-knit family, with his three sisters Randi, Donna, and Arielle. Right from his childhood, Zukerberg was raised totally in a Jewish style and culture and by the time he turned 13, he named himself as an atheist. Zukerberg’s parents were well educated. His father, Edward Zukerberg was a dentist and he ran his practice attached to his home. His mother worked as a psychiatrist, until she gave birth to four children.


Zuckerberg and current girlfriend Priscilla Chan



Zuckerberg did his schooling at Ardsley High School. He was an excellent; award winning student, bagged many prizes in Science, Math, Astronomy and Physics. He had a profound interest in computer programming, when he was in the middle school at a very young age of 12. He always enjoyed developing computer programs, communication tools, and games. He worked along with his friends on the computer and said that “computer games just for fun“. He had a bunch of friends who were artists. He said, they’d come over, draw stuff, and he'd build a game out of it. He created a computer-messaging program called “Zuckernet” by using “Atari BASIC”, which was used by his father at his dental office; the program helped the receptionist to inform his father about the new patient without calling aloud across the room. “Zuckernet” was also used within the family to communicate with each other. In response to Zucker’s interest in computers, his parents encouraged him by providing him with private computer tutor named David Newman, to work with Mark at home. Newman later told reporters “it was hard to stay ahead of the prodigy, who began taking graduate courses at nearby Mercy College around this same time”.
After his excelling junior days at Ardsley High School, Mark went to Phillips Exeter Academy, where he came up with a new computer program to help the workers in his father's office communicate. He also succeeded in building a new computer version called “Synapse” a game Risk and a music player, which used artificial intelligence to learn the user's listening habits. “Microsoft and AOL” raced to purchase “Synapse” and recruit Zuckerberg, but were unsuccessful. He rejected the deal as he wanted to attend Harvard University. Based on the popularity of his previous projects, three of his fellow students gave him an opportunity to work on a social networking site called “Harvard Connection”, which used information from Harvard's student networks in order to create a dating site for the Harvard elite. However, he could not work on it, as he dropped out from Harvard after his sophomore year, to concentrate on the social-networking website “Facebook”, which originated from his college dorm room. He also excelled in classical studies; and it was named that the non-English languages that Zukerberg could read and write were as many as French, Hebrew, Latin and Ancient Greek, on his college application. He was very good at fencing and starred as captain of the fencing team. He was well known in his college, in reciting lines from the epic poems.

The Facebook page of Zuckerberg shows his personal interests as openness, making things that help people connect and share what's important to them, revolutions, information flow, and minimalism. Zuckerberg’s favorite color is blue, so is the dominant color of Facebook. Moreover, blue is an exception for colorblindness, where as red and green show red-green colorblindness.

Zukerberg has a pathological indifference for money. He greatly followed the Buddhist philosophy of “Eliminating desire on materialistic things that really do not matter”. Although he is a young billionaire who overtook his Palo Alto neighbor, the late Steve Jobs of Apple, he led a simple and humble lifestyle. He stayed in a rental house nearby his office. He drove black Acura TSX, which is a live example of his simplicity.

Zuckerberg met Priscilla Chan, his girlfriend, a Chinese- American medical student at the University of California, San Francisco, originally from suburbs of Boston; at a party put on by his fraternity during his sophomore year. He has been dating with Chan since 2003. Right now he is busy learning Chinese as a part of his plan to visit China. In March 2011, news was out that soon their friendship is going to turn into a relationship. Recent reports also say that, Zuckerberg has purchased a five-bedroom house in Palo Alto for $7 million, in May 2011. The birth of Facebook was recently portrayed in the film “The Social Network”.


Five Business Lessons from Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook

The world famous youngest billionaire entrepreneur of the decade, with an unwavering obsession to socialize people around the world, with advent of Facebook with its unique features like ever changing layout and questionable privacy practices, striving through debates, controversies and lawsuits, is none other than Mark Zuckerberg. Even though you are against Facebook or Zuckerberg, there is no point in argument because the site is consistently growing unstoppably, and has 700 million users worldwide. Here are five must learn lessons from Mark Zuckerberg, for every IT executive, to attain a spectacular success in their career.

Love What You Do

“Zuck” as called by his friends and colleagues is a workaholic, he is often found writing code even on holidays and weekends. In this competitive and ever-changing tech world, putting up long hours of hard work is a norm for success for everyone. If you don’t love the work you do, you will end up struggling and torturing yourself to reach your target.

"I'd never met anyone who would walk away from a billion dollars," said Terry Semel, who, as CEO of Yahoo!, offered Zuckerberg that sum for the company he had built. Zuckerberg refused, explaining it wasn't about the money.

Stay Focused

Through multiple lawsuits, angry accusations that he disregards users' privacy, even a hugely unflattering movie, Zuckerberg has remained relentlessly focused on managing and improving Facebook, as demonstrated by the company's continuous and growing success. His perseverance shows how important it is to keep your head in the game.

Be Willing to Change

"Every time Zuck looks at a product, it's as if he does so with fresh eyes. He isn't burdened by what other products are like or what the existing product is like," wrote Facebook engineer Andrew Bosworth in a primer for new employees that Facebook later posted for the public at large. "He doesn't care what he said yesterday, even if he was presented with the same product". This willingness to be flexible has likely come into play when Facebook was forced to make changes after encountering controversy over its privacy policies.

Simpler Is Better

MySpace is facing its second round of dramatic layoffs in less than a year and will wind up reducing its staff by much more than half. Therefore, it seems like a good moment to consider what Facebook did right and MySpace did wrong.

"MySpace, as the No. 1 social network site, was not very easy to use," notes Brandon Wade, founder of the websites SeekingArrangement.com and WhatsYourPrice.com. "Facebook is simpler, which makes it easier to use and faster to load. It has a simpler, better design."

By the way, if you've ever wondered why Facebook uses blue for nearly everything, the reason is that Zuckerberg has red-green color blindness and blue is one of the colors he sees best.

Be Media-savvy

During the privacy controversies, Zuckerberg broke out in a bad case of "flop sweat" while being video-recorded at a technology conference, an embarrassing moment that has been viewed more than a million times on You Tube. He has gotten much better in front of the cameras after that incident, notes Mark Scott, senior vice president of MSL Atlanta, a public relations and marketing agency.

"He likely brought some great communicators in to coach him on his messaging," says Scott. "For such a high-profile company, a put-together, confident CEO who can get his messages across in the media, in board rooms, at investor conferences, etc., is crucial to success, and Zuckerberg obviously understood that and has made some terrific improvements."

In fact, Zuckerberg has gotten so relaxed and image-aware that, far from suing or even protesting over his portrayal in The Social Network, he joined its star, Jesse Eisenberg, onstage at "Saturday Night Live." Eisenberg asked Zuckerberg if he'd seen the film, and what he thought of it.


"It was … interesting," Zuck responded.


Leadership lessons from Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg shares three most important lessons for aspiring leaders which were a great deal behind his meteoric success; here are the three:

Unyielding belief in a vision.

Mark Zuckerberg epitomized this leadership quality. He never gave up. Unyielding belief in a vision demands passionately defending your vision to naysayers and cynics. When you plan to do something that has not been done before, the critics are going to come out of every crack, cranny, and crevice. Welcome them because their resistance and opposition will generate feedback and data to enable you to sharpen and refine your vision. Use their agitation to feed and fuel your determination to succeed.

Where’s my millennial?

All leaders should ask this question. Mark Zuckerberg is a millennial and every company that is serious about competing and growing should have a few or an army of them. Every leader who is serious about influencing significant change should have a 17-29 year old out-of-the box, brilliant and curious thinker at the table. Millennial possesses critical thinking genius to create new trends, tension and templates. Invite, support, and celebrate them.

Keep trying something new.

If there is anything that is predictable about Facebook, it is the certainty that they are going to upgrade, tweak, adjust, or add a feature. With each feature enhancement, there is value added. In this post recessionary period, to remain relevant and competitive, you have to keep trying something new. This does not mean you metaphorically throw spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks. This does not necessarily mean that you depart from your mission, but it does mean that you may need to broaden the application of your mission.
Facebook CEO/Co-Founder Mark Zuckerberg & COO Sheryl Sandberg

Recognition


Zuckerberg won the 2007 Crunchie Award for “Best Startup CEO”.


He was the Time Magazine 2010 Person of the Year.


Inspiring Quotes by Mark Zuckerberg

“There is lots of stuff none of us have ever seen before. That’s good in some ways, but limiting in other ways.”


“It's not because of the amount of money. For my colleagues and me the most important thing is that we create an open information flow for people. Having media corporations owned by conglomerates is just not an attractive idea to me.”


“I think there's confusion around what the point of social networks is. A lot of different companies characterized as social networks have different goals - some serve the function of business networking, some are media portals. What we're trying to do is just make it really efficient for people to communicate, get information, and share information.”


“When you give everyone a voice and give people power, the system usually ends up in a really good place. So, what we view our role as, is giving people that power.”


“People are learning how to use the site and what’s OK to share. As time goes on people will learn what’s appropriate, what is safe for them and share the information accordingly.”


“We encourage you to participate and make your voice heard.”


“Our strategy is very horizontal. We're trying to build a social layer for everything. Basically we're trying to make it so that every app everywhere can be social whether it's on the web, or mobile, or other devices.”


“Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.”


“If you do the things that are easier first, you can actually make a lot of progress.” “Understanding people, is not a waste of time”.






Yahoo Inc:Carol Bartz President, Director and Chief Executive Officer



"Most people assume that because I’m a woman, I’m someone who’s standing behind a leader, a man." But she adds, "The fact that they’re unenlightened is their problem, not mine."



Carol Bartz is an aggressive, outspoken, bold, self-made and self -confident visionary woman entrepreneur with straightforward approach for problem solving and high experience of reshaping sinking companies and getting them on track using a combination of different strategies. Carol Bartz took up the reins as CEO of Yahoo Inc replacing Jerry Yang, a co-founder of the company, on January 13, 2009 and continued her tough fight to reshape the company until September 11, 2011; for nearly two and half years till she was fired by the board. Yahoo faced multiple challenges long before Mrs. Bartz arrived in January 2009 as the third CEO in three years. Investors became dissatisfied with the stagnant growth and indirection under its previous chief, Jerry Yang. Mrs. Bartz rendered her services to Yahoo at a very critical time of transition in the company’s history and a very challenging macro-economic downturn.

Mrs. Bartz took few tough calls during her tenure to create revenue for the company including tedious restructuring of the company by overhauling some credit, massive layoffs etc. and Yahoo! had a huge problem of all kinds of internal documents getting out to the press. So, Bartz was just explaining that it was a bad thing to do in her own way, and she supports her approach by saying “If I found out who was leaking this, I had just drop kick you to Mars. You have to have some passion. What am I going to say? "Oh, please do not ... ” You think my employees would remember it? No. Did I do it because of that? No. I did it because at the moment I got myself all riled up.“

Bartz always led with consumer-based vision, in this context she said: "Who wants innovation for innovation’s sake if it doesn’t make your life easier, more efficient, and more productive? So, expect us to hear you better and take better care of you." Bartz continued her turnaround progress amidst of investors’ scrutiny. She managed to double the operating income, operating margins, and earnings per share, because of which the revenues of $1bn were reported in 2010. However, she could not boost up the revenues of the company, which remained constant at $6.3billion. The stock price of Yahoo was almost flat, even though the stock index reported a growth of 60%. Bartz built Yahoo into a digital media company in top twelve ranked firms in U.S and eighth in the world with approximately 700mn audience. She planned to focus primarily on online display advertising business to grow its revenues. Under the leadership of Bartz Yahoo was also interested in acquiring television video site named Hulu (currently owned by Walt Disney, News Corp and Comcast). Revenue has been largely flat in recent years, and a 10-year search-advertising partnership Bartz struck with Microsoft Corp. has not been successful so far. Mrs. Bartz’s relationship with Alibaba, in which Yahoo owns a 40% stake worth billions of dollars, has been strained. Some outsiders have viewed Yahoo as a potential takeover target. High-level executives have left.

At her departure from Yahoo one year prior to her contract, Carol underscores that the reason for unsuccessful war of turnaround of Yahoo is due to the Internet industry that has tremendously reorganized itself and how difficult it has been for a first-generation Web company to repel younger competitors. Yahoo was a product of late 1990’s dot-com boom. It was also a top gun search engine of early last decade. In recent years, Yahoo lost ground to Google Inc. and social-network firm Face book Inc. Both are taking away market share in selling online graphical and video ads, a market in which Yahoo previously shone. The number of minutes that U.S. website visitors spend on Yahoo sites per month has dropped 33% since Mrs. Bartz’s arrival 2 1/2 years ago.

Bartz was shown the exit door from Yahoo on September 11, 2011, as she compounded long-term issues and frustrated fellow board members through wrong moves that included mismanaging Yahoo’s U.S. ad-sales arm and failing to introduce innovative Web services, and at times did not appear to have a solid grasp of parts of Yahoo’s business. Yahoo’s board concluded that it had given Mrs. Bartz enough time and that a change in leadership was needed and Tim Morse was made an interim CEO of the company.
This is the note Bartz just sent out to Yahoo employees and confirmed her own firing by a message from her iPad.
To all,
“I am very sad to tell you that Yahoo’s Chairman of the Board has just fired me over the phone. It has been my pleasure to work with all of you and I wish you only the best going forward”.
This shows her openness and fair play. Even though she left the company for good, she still wanted the growth of the company and its employees. This concern of her takes her to level 5 leadership and is always exemplary for upcoming entrepreneurs.

Carol Bartz- the world’s most overpaid CEO
When Yahoo hired Bartz in early 2009, she was paid an annual base salary of $1 million. She was eligible for an annual 400% bonus and received 5,000,000 shares in addition to an equity grant of $18 million of stock.

Despite having been unceremoniously shown the door with a curt phone call, Carol Bartz enjoyed what can only be described as a golden goodbye from Yahoo. Bartz walked away from Yahoo with $3 mn in cash, plus a partial bonus for 2011 that will be valued between $1 mn to $2 mn.

Even before she was fired, public filings show that for 2009 alone, Bartz was rewarded with a not inconsequential $47.2 m in compensation. Bartz had been Yahoo’s CEO since 2009, making her tenure a brief one, and was named in 2010 as the world’s most overpaid CEO.

Career Outlook
After finishing her Bachelors in computer science, Bartz joined in 3M in 1972, as the only women employee in a division of 300 men. After facing repeated acts of discrimination and denial of the company to approve her transfer request to the head quarters, she resigned and quit the company in 1976. She left not because of her defeat to face the situations, but she was confident that she was capable of accomplishing bigger and better things and if 3M was not offering her growth opportunities there was no point in staying there, instead she would find them elsewhere.

From 1983 to April 1992, Bartz held a number of key positions at Sun Microsystems, Inc., a provider of computer systems, software and services (now a subsidiary of Oracle Corporation), including as Vice President of Worldwide Field Operations and as an executive officer.

In 1992, at age 43, Bartz took the position of CEO for Autodesk, Inc., a moderate-sized computer-aided software design company with average earnings of $285 million. In 1993, Bartz purchased Autodesk from founder Carl Bass, whom she fired shortly thereafter. Later she realized that Bass was an integral part of the business and she quickly rehired him. Carol Bartz was executive chairperson of the board of Autodesk, Inc and she served various positions as Chairman, President, and CEO of Autodesk for a long impressive tenure of 14 years and stepped down in April 2006. During her tenure, the company diversified its product line and grew revenues from $285 million to $1.523 billion in FY06. When Bartz joined Autodesk 1992, the company had an excellent brand, but 99 percent of its revenue came from just one product, AutoCAD. Now, sixty percent of Autodesk’s business comes from products other than AutoCAD. The company’s products are offered in 19 languages and are sold in 170 countries around the globe. On January 13, 2009, Carol Bartz was named CEO of Yahoo, succeeding outgoing CEO & Founder Jerry Yang, and she held this position until September 6, 2011.

More about Carol Bartz
Born                                :August 29, 1948 (age 68)
                                         Winona, Minnesota, U.S.
Residence                       :Atherton, CA
Country of Citizenship    : United States
Alma mater                    : Bachelors in Computer Science
                                        University of Wisconsin, Madison
Occupation                     :Former CEO of Yahoo, Inc
Marital Status                :Married
Children                        : Three

Carol Bartz, a self-made leader, was born on August 29, 1948 in Winona, Minnesota. Bartz had a very tough childhood as her mother passed away with some chronic disease, when she was only eight years old. For the consecutive four years, she was overburdened with the responsibility of taking care of her younger brother Jim, at a very tender age. Every day she used to drop him at the Day care on her way to elementary school and pick him on her way back to home. Her father was so ill equipped, that he was not able to raise his family alone. Moreover, he acted very harsh and often used a belt to maintain discipline in children.

At the age of 12yrs, Bartz was free from responsibility of her brother, as her grandmother, Alice Schwartz ,who is 92 and still alive, and most influential person for Bartz, raised both of them with loving care and good guidance, which they were longing for, since the death of their mother.

Bartz was a very outgoing child from her high school days. Right from the high school days, she broke the barriers of genders and was one of the two girls who took physics and advanced algebra classes in her school. During her high school, she was made homecoming queen and was a majorette. Bartz worked at a bank as a secretary to support herself, while she was still in high school. She made her way up until Bank teller, earning 75cents per hour. She was an outstanding worker who earned the favor and respect of her managers. Later these people identified her potential and helped her to get a scholarship to attend William Woods, an elite all-girls college in Fulton, Missouri. In addition to the scholarship, she also worked in college cafeteria, which was a very humble experience as most of her classmates were from affluent families. She continued her education at the University of Wisconsin, while working as a cocktail waitress. She programmed her first computer in 1968, while majoring in computer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and earned a Bachelors degree in Computer Science in 1971. All her childhood and teens taught her lessons of hard work and rising through tough situations by strong will power and commitment. Bartz married Bill Marr and together they later had three children. She was a survivor of breast cancer. A few days before Bartz began as CEO of Autodesk, when she was 43, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She delayed treatment for one month and only took only one month off to undergo and recovery from a mastectomy and Trans flap surgery. She worked through the entire seven months of her brutal chemotherapy. The small-town girl from Minnesota says her go-to stress relievers are gardening and golf, and confides that she is currently addicted to video game Angry Birds.

Throughout her life, she has faced multiple personal and professional challenges including blatant gender discrimination. But, she refuses to play the role of victim and give in to circumstances. By sheer will and determination, Bartz began shaping her life’s path from an early age. She has taken the business world by surprise and force. A self-made woman entrepreneur, Bartz is still breaking barriers today even as she enters into her 60s.

The Former Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz’s views on work–life balance for women
Mrs. Bartz 60 yrs old, mother of a college-age daughter, speaks about her personal sacrifices and tradeoff’s she made to pursue a high-powered career and family juggle. She says that daily work/life “balance” is a myth that can only lead to counterproductive guilt for working moms.

Women put a lot of pressure on themselves, she said. “They think, I am going to cook a great breakfast, wash up the dishes before I leave, take the kids to school, call my college roommate on my way in to work, be a CEO all day, volunteer on the way home, do a little exercising, cook a wonderful dinner, help with homework, have sex. I don’t think so,” she said in the interview with “More.” Working parents should take a longer-term view, focusing on doing one thing well at a time, instead of seeking the perfection of a daily balance. Although she tried to make Autodesk supportive of working families by shutting the company down for a week in winter and taking off five weeks of vacation herself. According to the “More” profile, her larger goal is to get women to change their thinking- to try not to feel guilty for not being able to do everything 100%. Women “beat themselves up for not doing it all, and they get mad at everyone around them. That’s nuts,” she said in the “More” profile.

She definitely sacrificed family time: When her daughter was an infant, she would spend four days of the week working in California, while her family was back in Dallas. “For four days, I got to use my mind, I got to sleep, and I got to have a real career. I had the best of both worlds,” she told “More.” “It was awesome for me, and I don’t think my daughter is any the worse for it.”

When her daughter got older, mother and daughter would gather around a calendar at the beginning of each school year, and Ms. Bartz would mark a handful of commitments, such as a Halloween party and a Christmas pageant that she wouldn’t miss, according to the “More” profile.

“I’d tell her, ‘These are the times Mommy will be here. Anything else will be a surprise,’” she said to “More.” “So she was surprised when I showed up, instead of depressed that I wasn’t at everything. She learned about schedules, she learned about commitments, and I did get to enjoy some of the school times.”

Memberships and Honoraries
Appointed to President Bush’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, Bartz is one of a select group of industry leaders expected to play a key role in shaping and setting the government’s high tech agenda ranging from R&D funding to new broadband incentives. She also serves on the Board of Directors of Intel Corporation, Cisco Systems, NetApp and the Foundation for the National Medals of Science and Technology.

Bartz holds an honors degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin. She was granted an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from William Woods University.

Inspiring Interview responses by Carol Bartz

Q.     Did you ever have problems with self-esteem? How do you deal with it?
      Sure. I still do. I would consider it more as self-confidence than as self-esteem. I think a bit of low self-confidence is healthy because it keeps you on your toes; it keeps you trying to do better; it keeps you trying to improve yourself and in many ways. I think where a lack of self-confidence or low self-esteem gets debilitating is when people start thinking that they cannot be good at anything. And that everybody is somehow better, everybody is talking about him or her. I don’t recall that part personally.

Moreover, perhaps it was because I came from a small environment where I do not recall that much of that going on. “I think a bit of low self-confidence is healthy because it keeps you on your toes; it keeps you trying to do better; it keeps you trying to improve yourself and in a lot of ways”.

Q.     Is it OK to fail?
      Oh! You must fail! You must fail. If you don’t fail, you don’t know the degrees of success. It’s like, say, skiing. You have to fall down to learn how to be a better skier. I happen to be a big gardener, and if you do not kill a lot of plants along the way, you don’t know how to garden. (It’s the same) if you don’t have failures in school, in business. I’ll give you an example.

I graduated with an A+ average in high school, so I thought I was pretty big stuff. And I went to college, and my first exam in Honors History, I got a D. I had never gotten a D. I think I had gotten one B in my life. And I had gotten a D on this first exam.

I could not believe it. I didn’t know what went wrong. It was one essay question. Obviously, I didn’t know how to do a one-essay question test, and I blew it. And it really made me sit back and say: ’Oh, my gosh. There’s always a possibility of not doing well here. So, I better concentrate a little bit more. ‘I think failure’s a very important part of life’. “Oh! You must fail! You must fail. If you don’t fail, you don’t know the degrees of success”.

Q.     In an article about you in 1983 in the paper, you talked about working and dealing with your family, and the headline said that you said you can’t do both. There were then letters to the editor in the paper that took you to task. Did you feel you were misinterpreted?
      Precisely. In fact, I didn’t say I can’t do both. I was extremely misinterpreted. What I said and I still believe and talk about frequently, is the subject of balance.

Where I disagree with the concept of balance is, balance in itself connotes perfection, which means that every day, I have to be a very great CEO, a great mom, a great public citizen. I should do some volunteer work, and I should call all my friends and should call my grandmother. Maybe I should bake some cookies. So, everyday I should be perfect at all of these things. That doesn’t work.

That puts too much strain on all of us. There are days when I have to be fully attentive to my business . . . and my family gets maybe 20 percent of me; if I’m traveling, it gets none of me. And there are other times, when it is all family.

“The whole concept of balance is, as I say, catching things before they hit the floor. If I’m working on a big project at work, (there comes a time when) it’s time to go home and not think about work for a while”.

Q.     Do you think that’s equally true for men?
      I think it should be. But, having said that, I think women have more of a burden on them to manage the houses, and manage the children, and manage the school interface. And so they take, they end up having more responsibility. And I think, feeling as though, therefore, they must handle all these things simultaneously.

While I will not deny that daily pressure exists -- I mean, I want to see my daughter every day, just as much as the next person does -- but it’s important to set the right expectations for her, and the right expectations, by the way, on the business side. There are events at her school I wouldn’t dream of missing. I don’t care if the largest customer and the Pope came to visit AutoDesk; I’d be with my daughter.

“There are events at her school I wouldn’t dream of missing. I don’t care if the largest customer and the Pope came to visit AutoDesk; I’d be with my daughter”.

Q.     What have you learned from working with people through your business life that no school could have taught you?
      You learn relationships and you learn process throughout your whole life. And I just happen now to have lived as much of my life beyond school as I did in school. So, I just have more experience. I think as much as anything that’s what it is.

You learn and you have to learn once you get through school that you have to take care of yourself. In school, you’re more nurtured. People, your parents, your teachers, are there to help you succeed. When you get out in the business life, frankly, you have to run your own safety net.

“I love people relationships. I love the fast pace. I love the high-tech process of having to make a lot of decisions and getting pretty quick feedback from the market”.

Q.     How do you think technology has changed education.
      Well, I think one of the important things it's done is the content side, what’s available for students to see. For instance, when my daughter was studying caterpillars to butterflies, they actually did it watching a CD and watching the technology evolve and they were actually doing some Hypertext indexing. It was just fun. So, they were using technology to visualize a process that would be much harder to understand if you just saw a series of pictures. But you could literally see the butterfly exploding from the cocoon, and that’s very powerful. And without the technology, it’s a flatter, deader concept. So, the content, I think, is the biggest play. I think that the wired world’s going to be the next biggest play for school. The fact that -- I’m less impressed that a student can actually do their term paper using a word processing format -- well, that’s great. But I don’t think that necessarily helped education. But, the content and the fact that they can be wired into the greater world, I think is going to have a big impact.

“We all will have available at our fingertips a lot more information and a lot more, easier ability to connect with people. The downside of that, of course, is it can be very overwhelming. And I think might cause continued confusion in life”.

Google:Sergey Brin and Larry Page:Founders of Google,


“There’s nothing more fun than doing that work (Search engine designing)”





Larry Page and Sergey Brin found the dominant, efficient, unbeatable web search giant company on the earth, in 1998, with an intention of putting together world’s information and making it easily accessible. There evolved a new definition for web search, which created a history. Their web search criteria revolutionized and ruled the Web. The base idea by which they created the search technology for Google mostly pivoted on a key point “Their technology analyzed the number of times a given website was linked to by other sites; assuming that the more links, the more relevant the site is and ranked the sites accordingly”. Today Google stands with pride with a yearly revenue of $6 billion and both Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the world’s richest technocrats. Recently the verb “to Google” made its place into Oxford English Dictionary.

Google achieved a path breaking success and was the most loved site of the customers through out the world, because of the fact that Google has a highly user friendly and simple interface. Other things that added upon for the success of Google were; paid links were clearly demarcated and identified, pop-windows or banner ads were not used and the homepage offered a clear logo and a single search box, where as the other search engines of that era were unbelievably saturated with sponsor messages. The major criteria that account to the huge success of Google other than technology are its site design and the mode of advertising.
Brin and Page met in computer science Ph.D. program at Stanford in the mid 90’s. Google started as a research project at Stanford University, created by Ph.D. candidates Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were 24 years old and 23 years old respectively. Brin and Page first began with BackRub software and re-launched it under the name Google, chosen as a play on words of ‘googol’ a mathematical term meaning ‘one’ followed by 100 zeros. They used Stanford University website to host their program, with their website being google.stanford.edu.

Both friends together started working on the revolutionary search technology since 1996 and in 1998 they dropped out of Stanford and they started Google at a garage office, at Melano Park. Later in 2004, they took the company public.

Page ran Google as co-president along with Brin until 2001, while they hired Eric Schmidt as Chairman and CEO of Google. In January 2011, Google announced that Page would replace Schmidt as CEO in April the same year. Both Page and Brin earn an annual compensation of one dollar. On April 4, 2011, Page officially became the chief executive officer of Google, while Schmidt stepped down to become executive chairman.



                                                          Googleplex NYC, U.S.A


Tech journalists, Android journalists and Android enthusiasts thinking about moving to Mountainview California to be closer to the Googleplex, fuggedaboutit.  Google has closed a deal worth $1.8 billion dollars, purchasing an entire city block in New York City.

Although they are keeping their campus at 1600 Ampitheater Parkway in Mountainview California, Googlers on the east coast now have a new address, 111 8th Avenue New York, NY.  The collossal structure only fit for a king, or well Google, sits between 8th and 9th avenues and 15th and 16th strees, blockwide. It’s in the Chelsea neighborhood.

The Googleblock, as we’re going to call it, is 3 millon square feet. At the rate of Google’s growth they should have no problem filling the space.

Let us see how Google, started as a research project in a dorm room and then a cramped garage, has now become the largest internet company in the world.

On September 13, 1997, www.google.com was officially registered. One year later, Brin and Page incorporated Google as a private company, on September 7, 1998. It is an amazing fact that over 10,000 people viewed Google everyday at its very beginning stage, just by word of mouth advertising and continued to grow at the rate of 20% per month. In spite of many people using Google, Brin and Page did not have enough resources like computers to provide outstanding services to the customers. As they wanted everyone in the world to use Google search engine, they were desperately in need of capital, when the co-founder of Sun Andy Bechtolsheim wrote a check for $100,000 to an entity called Google Inc, which had not come into existence yet, in August 1998. In September, Google was incorporated in California, and Page and Brin opened a new bank account on the company’s name in which Andy’s cheque was deposited. They nearly bought 120 hard drives for a good deal, using all credit cards of their friends, and had a massive credit card debt. They felt some relief when private investments from Stanford came through.

The company later shifted from the dorm to a friend’s garage at 232 Santa Margarita, Menlo Park. In December 1998, Google was recognized as top 100 web sites of choice, as a search engine providing extremely relevant results, by Times magazine. Brin and Page soon came to know that they had hit something big. As some potential partners like Yahoo! showed little or no interest to license their technology, they decided to grow the company by themselves.

Soon they began approaching angel investors, venture capitalists and tried hard to raise money and had been successful, because most of them were convinced to invest for the great and worthy product they had in hand and everyone were using it. They managed to raise nearly $1million in all.

In 1999, Google finally moved into an office at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto, California, with just eight employees. By this time, Google was answering over 500,000 searches each day. The same year, Google got its first commercial search customer, Red Hat, and managed to secure $25 million from two leading venture capital firms, Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins, in Silicon Valley. As Google started hiring more number of people, Google’s headquarters was shifted to its current location 2400 E. Bayshore, Mountain View, California. Companies such as AOL/Netscape selected Google as its search engine, pushing Google’s users into millions.

In the year 2000, as many as 15 language versions of google.com were released (French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Chinese, Japanese and Korean). Google forged a partnership with Yahoo! and announced first billion-URL index to become world’s largest search engine.

In the year 2001, Google had a partnership with Universo Online (UOL), making Google the major search service for millions of Latin Americans and its index size increased to 3billion web documents. In 2002 the first Google’s hardware was released, Ad words were released on new cost-per-click basis, A set of API’s were released enabling developers to query more than 2 billion documents and program them in their favorite environment including Java, Perl and Visual Studio. A major partnership with AOL was announced to offer Google search, for more than 34mn customers using CompuServe, Netscape, and AOL.com. Google’s R&D team released Google labs a place to try beta technologies.

In the year 2003, Google acquired Pyra Labs, the creators of Blogger. Google launched, content-targeted advertising service, enabling publishers large and small to access Google‘s vast network of advertisers. Google Print was also launched. In 2004, the company moved to “Googleplex” at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, with a big campus to accommodate 800 plus employees. Orkut was launched to enter sphere of social networking. Google search index hit 6bn items, including 880 million images and 4.28 billion web pages. The company went public offering 19,605,052 shares on Wall Street, at $85 per share, on August 18, 2004. Google index reached nearly 8bn.

Likewise, over the consequent six years, Google continued to grow and expand its services. It introduced innovative advertising programs, improved its own benefits,went international and partnered with other corporate giants. Today, Google became the only website, available in more than 35 languages and is used by over 380 million people worldwide. There is no surprise to say that people of all age groups cannot live without Google.

More about Sergey Brin



Born                     :Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin
                               August 21, 1973 (age 38)
                               Moscow, Soviet Union
Alma mater          :University of Maryland (B.S. 1993)
                                Stanford University (M.S. 1995)
Occupation           :Computer scientist, internet entrepreneur
Residence            : Los Altos, California, U.S.
Nationality           : American
Marital Status      :Married
Children               :  One

The founder of the great company Google, Sergey Mikhailovich Brin was born on August 21, 1973, in Moscow, Russia, to Jewish parents, Michael and Eugenia. Brin immigrated to U.S.A, when he was just six years old along with his parents and younger brother, Samuel, due to increasing discrimination in the U.S.S.R, at that point of time. Sergey Brin’s father, Michael Brin, is a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland. Brin’s mother was also a mathematician and civil engineer, who worked at NASA as a specialist.

Knowing Brin’s growing interest in Mathematics and Computers, Brin’s father provided him with his first computer, a Commodore 64, when he was nine years old. He attended Paint Branch Montessori School in Adelphi, Maryland, followed by Eleanor Roosevelt High School. Brin graduated from the University of Maryland with an honors degree in Computer Science and Mathematics, in the year 1993. As Brin received a graduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation, he got a chance to pursue his Master’s degree in Computer Science at Stanford University, which was completed in 1995. Brin had intent to pursue Ph.D., but a project, with fellow Stanford student Larry Page, distracted his attention.

Brin married Anne Wojcicki in May 2007 in The Bahamas, a biotech analyst and a graduate of B.S in Biology, at Yale University. She had a profound interest in health information and co-founded the firm “23andMe" which lets people analyze and compare their own genetic makeup. Brin and his wife run The Brin Wojcicki Foundation.

Although Brin dropped from Stanford, he is officially still on leave from Stanford. Brin is quite active on Google Plus and posts many updates every few days. Brin is also known as a person who likes adventures, it is not surprising that he posts a lot of travel related photographs in his Google Plus updates. 164,126 Google+ users have him in their circles as of now.
Awards and Accolades

Brin had many honors and accolades in his account, for his best entrepreneurship with scientific, creative, and innovative use of technology. Some of them are mentioned below

  • In 2002, Brin was named to the MIT Technology Review TR100, as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.
  •  In 2003, Brin received an honorary MBA from IE Business School for embodying the entrepreneurial spirit and lending momentum to the creation of new businesses.
  • In 2004, Brin received the Marconi Foundation Prize, the "Highest Award in Engineering", and was elected Fellows of the Marconi Foundation at Columbia University.
  • In 2004, Brin received the Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award, in Chicago.
  • In 2004, Brin was named "Person of the Week" by ABC World News Tonight.
  • In November 2009, Forbes magazine declared Brin as fifth most powerful person in the world. Earlier that same year, in February, Brin was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, which is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer.
  • According to Forbes, Brin is currently named as the 24th richest person in the world with a personal wealth of US$19.8 billion in 2011.

More about Larry Page


Born                         :Lawrence Larry Page
                                  March 26, 1973 (age 38)
                                  East Lansing, Michigan, U.S.
Alma mater             : University of Michigan (B.S.) Stanford University (M.S.)
Occupation             :C.E.O of Google
Residence               : Palo Alto, California, U.S.
Nationality              :American
Marital Status         :Married
Children                   :One

he co-founder of Google, Lawrence Edward Page was born in Lansing, Michigan, on March 26, 1973. Page’s father, was a computer science professor at Michigan State University and his mother, Gloria, was also a computer-programming teacher. Page recalls that he fell in deep love with computers, at a very tender age of seven and Page was always the first student at his elementary school to turn in a word-processed homework assignment. Before Page earned his Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan, he attended East Lansing High School. After his bachelor’s degree he went to Stanford University to earn his Master’s degree.

Page is very fair minded and he admits that the doctoral program was scary. Page met Brin while he was pursuing his Ph.D. in Computer Science at Stanford, they soon explored a common interest in data-mining and retrieving relevant information from large data sets and together, they wrote a paper entitled, “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” which has today become the tenth most accessed scholarly paper at Stanford.

Page married Lucinda Southworth, a research scientist and sister of actress and model Carrie Southworth, in the year 2007, at Richard Branson's Caribbean island, Necker Island. He has one child. Larry is not that active as his friend Brin on Google Plus and he has publicly posted only twice in the last month. 239,349 Google Plus users have him in their circles as of now.

Awards and Accolades

Larry Page has won many awards and accolades for his highly knowledgeable engineering brain which has invented a great technology for use of millions of people around the globe. Here are few of them
  • In 2002, Page, was named to the MIT Technology Review TR100, as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.
  • In 2002, the World Economic Forum named Page a Global Leader for Tomorrow.
  • In 2003, Page received an honorary MBA from IE Business School for embodying the entrepreneurial spirit and lending momentum to the creation of new businesses.
  • In 2004, Page received the Marconi Foundation Prize, the "Highest Award in Engineering," and got elected as Fellow of the Marconi Foundation at Columbia University.
  • In 2004, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering .
  • In 2004, the X PRIZE chose Page as a trustee for their board.
  • In 2004, Page was named "Person of the Week" by ABC World News Tonight.
  • In 2005, Page was elected as Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
  • Page received an honorary doctorate from the Michigan University in 2009 during graduation commencement ceremonies.
  • In 2011, he was ranked 24th on the Forbes list of the world’s billionaires and as the 11th richest person in the United States
Inspiring quotes by Larry Page and Sergey Brin

Larry Page:


“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”.

“Basically, our goal is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful”.

“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”.

“If you have a product that's really gaining a lot of usage, then it's probably a good idea”.

“If you can run the company a bit more collaboratively, you get a better result, because you have more bandwidth and checking and balancing going on”.

“The dream as conceived 25 years ago has not been achieved. Until software becomes the ultimate tool for collaboration, productivity and efficiency, the work is not done. And there's nothing more fun than doing that work”.

“The ultimate search engine... would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want”.

“Our company relies on having the trust of our users and using that information for that benefit. That's a very strong motivation for us. We're committed to that. If you start to mandate how products are designed, I think that's a really bad path to follow. I think instead we should have laws that protect the privacy of data, for example, from government requests and other kinds of requests”.

Sergey Brin:

“As we go forward, I hope we're going to continue to use technology to make really big differences in how people live and work”.

“Obviously everyone wants to be successful, but I want to be looked back on as being very innovative, very trusted, and ethical and ultimately making a big difference in the world”.

“We believed we could build a better search. We had a simple idea, that not all pages are created equal. Some are more important”.

“To me, this is about preserving history and making it available to everyone”.

“It's clear there's a lot of room for improvement, there's no inherent ceiling we're hitting up on”.

“We deal with all varieties of information. Somebody’s always upset no matter what we do. We have to make a decision; otherwise, there is a never-ending debate. Some issues are crystal clear. When they’re less clear and opinions differ, sometimes we have to break a tie. For example, we don’t accept ads for hard liquor, but we accept ads for wine. It’s just a personal preference. We don’t allow gun ads, and the gun lobby got upset about that. We don’t try to put our sense of ethics into the search results, but we do when it comes to advertising”.

“We collect input. I think we do a good job of deciding. As I said, we believe that “Don’t be evil” is only half of it. There’s a “Be good” rule also”.

“Your mind is tremendously efficient at weighing an enormous amount of information. We want to make smarter search engines that do a lot of the work for us. The smarter we can make the search engine, the better. Where will it lead? Who knows? But it’s credible to imagine a leap as great as that from hunting through library stacks to a Google session, when we leap from today’s search engines to having the entirety of the world’s information as just one of our thoughts”.

Great Lessons by Google Guys Page and Brin to Lead an Organization

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 every one.“says Page. “Therefore, I think if we were known for that, it would be a wonderful thing". From its search technology to its advertising to its own charitable foundation, Page and Brin have striven to create Google after the fashion of their own morals. The company refuses to place advertisements for hard liquor and donates 1% of its profits to charitable causes all in an effort to not “be evil”.

Overall, Page and Brin want Google to continue to be a company that can be proud of, not only because of its financial success but also because of its positive contribution to the society. “We believe that ‘Don’t be evil is only half of it,” says Brin. “There’s a ‘Be good’ rule also."

Look To the Future

“We are targeting innovation,” says Page. “The dream as conceived 25 years ago has not been achieved. Until software becomes the ultimate tool for collaboration, productivity, and efficiency, the work is not done. And there's nothing more fun than doing that work.”

Despite their lofty goals and their seemingly unstoppable ambition, Brin admits that there are limits to the achievements of Google. “We are currently not planning on conquering the world,” he jokes. With four out of five Internet searches taking place on Google, Brin and Page have however undoubtedly conquered their industry.


Establish a Strong Vision

“Basically, our goal is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful,” says Page. “That's our mission.”

“When you grow, you continually have to invent new processes,” says Page. “We’ve done a pretty good job keeping up, but it’s an ongoing challenge.” By establishing a clear and single vision and staying committed to this throughout the course of the company’s life, Page and Brin have allowed Google to become a leader in its field. Many Internet companies do many other things well, but none can do precisely what Google does as well as Google does it.


Take Care of Your Team

“Our employees, who have named themselves Googlers, are everything,” Page explains to his company’s investors. “Google is organized around the ability to attract and leverage the talent of exceptional technologists and business people. We have been lucky to recruit many creative, principled and hard working stars. We hope to recruit many more in the future. We will reward and treat them well.”

Page believes that it is the significant employee ownership of the company that has made Google what it is today. “Because of our employee talent, Google is doing exciting work in nearly every area of computer science,” he says. “Our main benefit is a workplace with important projects, where employees can contribute and grow.”


Focus on the User

“Serving our end users is at the heart of what we do and remains our number one priority,” says Page. Despite being perhaps, the only company in the world whose stated goal is to have its customers leave its website as quickly as possible, Google is no doubt committed to making those customers as satisfied as possible.

“From its inception, Google has focused on providing the best user experience possible,” says Page. “While many companies claim to put their customers first, few are able to resist the temptation to make small sacrifices to increase shareholder value. Google has steadfastly refused to make any change that does not offer a benefit to the users who come to the site.”

But, perhaps the most significant evidence that Google’s priority is on the user lies in the fact that it is the users themselves who determine the search results. In contrast to its predecessors, Google’s revolutionary technology prioritized websites based on the number of links that linked back to a website. Thus, internet users were, in effect, able to lend their vote to Google search results. “In general we’re trying to use the web’s self-organizing properties to decide which things to present,” says Page. “We don’t want to be in the position of having to decide these things. We take the responsibility seriously. People depend on us.”