Hardware/Software Development

3 Wealthiest Global CEOs Come From Tech Industry

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It is for the first time when the ‘top three’ slots of the ‘wealthiest persons in the world’ have been occupied by global technology giants. Jeff Bezos, founder, chairman and CEO of the world’s largest online retailer, Amazon, has been declared the world’s richest person. With USD 142 billion net worth, Bezos tops the ranking of richest persons, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index

According to a CNBC report, Amazon’s customer base has remained loyal through the latest Prime price hike in exchange for a slew of services and perks, and the company’s stock has continued to increase in value. Since June 1, the tech titan’s net worth has grown over $5 billion and now totals $141.9 billion, according to the Forbes World’s Billionaires list. That makes Bezos worth roughly $49 billion more than Bill Gates and about $60 billion more than Warren Buffett.

Earlier this year, Bezos officially became the richest person in the world and also helped make Amazon the second most valuable company in the world, behind Apple. His success can arguably be traced back to a risk he took when he was 30 years old, when Bezos was a high school student and the class valedictorian, and he got accepted via early admission to Princeton, according to Brad Stone’s biography “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon.” He majored in computer science and electrical engineering, and then went on to work various finance and tech jobs after college.

It was while serving as a vice president at the hedge fund D. E. Shaw in the 1990s that Bezos came up with the idea to sell books over the Internet. Doing so, though, would mean taking a significant risk and perhaps sacrificing his stable job. Experts believe the Amazon CEO is here to play to long game, and it is here for everyone to see as Bezos is remaking the world with its business acumen and operational prowess.

There are a number of things Amazon has taken in its strides, where his rivals falter. The 2017 Walker Sands Future of Retail study found 84% of US consumers have made a purchase on Amazon in the past year, and 55% are Prime subscribers. Consumers are increasingly using other Amazon offerings too, like voice devices (16%), grocery (14% – Pantry, 10% – Fresh) and Dash buttons (5%).

Also Millennials love Amazon. According to Yes Lifecycle Marketing’s report “A Marketer’s Guide to Reaching Each Consumer Generation,” nearly four in five (79%) millennials have purchased from Amazon in the past month, and 55% shop at Amazon for the Prime benefits — more than any other generation.

The next in line is Bill Gates with USD 94.2 billion. Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, the world’s biggest software maker, owns about 1 per cent of the Redmond, Washington-based company. Gates, the man who made Microsoft is more of an executor than a visionary. Rather than merely innovating or dreaming, Gates took a disciplined approach toward software as a potential source of business opportunities.

“As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others, said Gates.

As a leader his leadership style has a mixture of autocratic, visionary and participative approaches. He is actively involved in technology development for new products and in making various strategic decisions. He spends most of his time for staying touch with customers and employees around the world. He expects his managers to have their own personal influence and to take decisions assuming they are the CEO of the organization which showed the participative leadership style.  

Bill Gates sees and thinks differently than most people do.  David Aston, who worked with Gates mentions in his blog that gates has an amazing ability to find the flaws, or see opportunities, or connect the dots.  He can zoom in to details with precision or zoom out to the big picture.  He can flip back in time or fast forward to the future.  He also has the ability to focus on the merits of the idea or innovation before worrying about the business case.  Chances are, you could benefit from Bill’s thinking skills, even if it simply means getting a new perspective on your problems. 

Like a true entrepreneur, Gates saw the “structural holes” in the personal computing marketplace and moved in to occupy them, always in a subordinate spot to the big players. His method was: ‘Act strategically, partner powerfully’, which made him different from most others.

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg with USD 81.6 billion net worth has become the third richest person on the globe. He has overtaken Warren Buffett to sit at the third position in the global ranking of richest persons. Buffett is the chairman and largest shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway. He has given away massive wealth to charity. Once the wealthiest person, Buffett is sliding in rank thanks to his charity work. Since 2006, Buffett has donated 290 million Berkshire Hathaway Class B shares to charity, most of them to Gates’ foundation. Those shares are worth more than $50bn now.

As per Bloomberg estimates, Zuckerberg now trail only Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Microsoft Corp co-founder Bill Gates. According to a Fortune report, investors love Facebook more than ever. Investors are also happy at the news that Facebook has grabbed its biggest sports streaming deal yet with the Premier League.

The Times reported that Facebook has won exclusive rights to show all 380 live matches in parts of S.E Asia from 2019 until 2022, in a deal worth about $264 million. Since going public in 2012, Facebook has seen its stock rise more than 400 per cent. Nonetheless, Facebook has already been grappling with privacy issues like the Cambridge Analytica data scandal involving 87 million users and another bug that changed 14 million users’ privacy setting defaults to public. In the latest privacy controversy, Facebook admitted that over 800,000 users were affected by a bug on its platform and Messenger that unblocked some people the users had blocked.

Meanwhile, Mukesh Ambani, Managing Director of Reliance Industries is at the 18th spot with a net worth of USD 39.6 billion. When we talk about telecom sector, we definitely think of Reliance Jio who has changed the phase of this industry. With its unlimited data, calls, cashback offers, heavy SMS services and many other freebies, RJio continued to be on the nerves of rivals like Airtel, Idea and Vodafone who have no other option but to also follow the game to survive, either by offering cheapest services or by entering into consolidation in just one year. 

Mukesh Ambani owns the world’s largest oil refining complex as well as a 27-story mansion that’s been called the world’s most expensive private residence, according to the Bloomberg.

Of course, tech CEOs have always been dominating other global indexes – being the thought leaders in the digital era. As Gartner projects the worldwide IT spending to total $3.7 trillion in 2018, an increase of 6.2 percent from 2017s and will continue capitalizing on the evolution of digital business, it is small wonder that more and more tech leaders will get wealthier and rise to prominence.

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