Ask HN: Who among the current lot is in the league of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs? - deepaksurti
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godelmachine
Very few people actually know about Robert Pera. He's the founder of Ubiquiti
Networks, and former Hardware Engineer @ Apple. Currently valued at $4Bn, he
achieved his first billion within 8 years of starting his company.

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jamesmishra
Here are some guesses, based on the success of the companies they founded. My
list has some overlap with the one from @kevindeasis:

Satoshi Nakamoto (Bitcoin)

Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum)

Jack Ma (Alibaba)

Robin Li (Baidu)

Ma Huateng (Tencent)

Lei Jun (Xiaomi)

Evan Spiegal (Snapchat)

Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)

Travis Kalanick (Uber)*

Brian Chesky (Airbnb)

Peter Thiel (Palantir)

Jeff Bezos (Amazon)

Elon Musk (SpaceX)

Drew Houston (Dropbox)

Frank Wang (DJI)

Marc Benioff (Salesforce)

Sachin Binsal and/or Binny Bansal (Flipkart)

David Duffield (Workday)

(*Disclosure: I am a former Uber employee.)

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FahadUddin92
In below link you can find self made billionaires (if thats what you mean by
the league). [https://www.inc.com/business-insider/worlds-youngest-self-
ma...](https://www.inc.com/business-insider/worlds-youngest-self-made-
billionaires.html)

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godelmachine
I'm afraid this list is outdated coz it values Elizabeth Holmes at $4.3Bn.
Forbes downgraded her value to zero dollars last year.

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muzani
Jack Ma would probably be the next fit for that category. Visionary, and head
of a conglomerate.

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kevindeasis
Some of them that kinda fits in your category are Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos,
Vitalik Buterin, Satoshi Nakamoto, Larry Page & Sergey Brin, Ma Huateng, Jack
Ma, Robin Li, Andreessen Horowitz, Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel.

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eesmith
Please explain what "league" means, and why the obvious choices of Musk,
Zuckerberg, Bezos, Brin and Page - I assume that 'current lot' means 'new tech
billionaires' \- aren't in that league.

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muzani
Brin and Page are IMO the best benchmark. Gates and Jobs aren't necessarily
repeatable successes, as in VCs don't look for people like them to try to
replicate success.

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eesmith
"Repeatable successes"?

If that's your standard then why is Gates on the list? Hasn't he only had one
success?

By comparison, Jim Clark founded Silicon Graphics (max market cap of $7
billion dollars in 1995), Netscape (bought by AOL for a stock-swap of $10
billion), and Healtheon (Healtheon/WebMD had a market cap of more than $15
billion at its peak).

Markkula provided angel investment because the Valentine didn't want to
provide VC funding.

Don't VCs look exactly for someone like the early Gates? That is, 20-year-old
white males from rich, well-educated families, who go to prestigious colleges?

I don't think Microsoft ever needed external funding.

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segmondy
Only one success?

Are you ignorant? MSDOS, Windows, Word, Microsoft Programming Suite, Azure,
XBox, MSQL, Excel, Flight Simulator, Exchange Server, Surface, Explorer, C#

Microsoft has had many successes and keeps finding ways to reinvent itself.

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tobylane
By some measure Gates has none, as he bought a product and called it MS-DOS1,
with the profits of that hired other people to make everything else.
Zuckerberg at least personally made the thefacebook complete with algorithms a
friend drew on a window.

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eesmith
That is not a correct interpretation.

Microsoft started as a programming languages company in 1975, first with
Altair BASIC and then variants of Microsoft BASIC (Applesoft BASIC, Commodore
BASIC, IBM Cassette BASIC, etc.).

Gates was a co-author of Altair BASIC.

That provided the funding to help it spread into other fields. It entered the
OS field in 1980 with Xenix, which was the OS that Microsoft Word was
originally developed for. The MS-DOS work for IBM didn't start until 1981, six
years after the company was founded.

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deepaksurti
OP here: More context: When I say league, I mean in terms of having a vision,
articulating and executing it. All other things being equal, both BG and SJ
played a major role in making computers ubiquitous through their companies. So
financial success is not a huge parameter in here.

My 2$: I think next such impactful visionaries might be those who make AR and
VR mainstream. Only my personal opinion, MZ and JB are not in the same league
(with due respect to their hard work and intelligence) thus far.

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mindcrash
From a non-financial POV:

Elon Musk, John Carmack and Satya Nadella.

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phaus
What puts Satya Nadella in this category? Not challenging your opinion, I'm
just not familiar with his accomplishments aside from the fact that he's the
CEO of Microsoft and I think it would be interesting to learn more.

