Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg was finally running a company that made money.
Zuckerberg had been hard at work on Facebook for five years by the time he hit age 25. In that year – 2009 – the company turned cash-positive for the first time and hit 300 million users.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk was running his first internet company.
Around 24, Musk dropped out of his Ph.D. program
at Stanford to join the dot-com boom and launch
at Stanford to join the dot-com boom and launch
his first internet company, Zip2, which provided
business directories and maps. Compaq bought the
company for $307 million four years later, and
Musk used the money to launch his next startup
Musk used the money to launch his next startup
venture, PayPal.
Eric Schmidt
Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt was building a deep background in computer science.
Schimdt spent six years as a graduate student at UC Berkeley, earning a master’s and Ph.D by age 27 for his early work in networking computers and managing distributed software development. He spent his summers at that time working at the famed Xerox PARC labs, which helped create the computer workstation as we know it.
Jeff Bezzos
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezzos had a cushy job in finance.
At 24, Bezzos went to work at Bankers Trust developing revolutionary software for banking institutions at that time. Two years later, he became the company’s youngest vice president.
Larry Ellison
Oracle’s Larry Ellison was working odd jobs as a programmer.
After moving to Berkeley, California, at 22, the self-taught computer programmer spent the next eight years going from one technical job to the next at place like Fireman’s Fund, Wells Fargo, and AMPEX until finally landing at Amdahl Corporation, where he worked on the first IBM-compatible mainframe system.
Marissa Mayer
Marissa Mayer was Google employee No.20.
At 24, Mayer became Google’s 20th employee and the company’s first female engineer. She remained with the company for 13 years before moving to her current role as CEO of Yahoo.
Mark Cuban
Mark Cuban was tending bar in Dallas.
By age 25, Cuban had graduated from Indiana University and moved to Dallas. He started out as a bartender and then a salesperson for a PC software retailer.
Richard Branson
The Virgin founder was already running a successful multi-faceted company.
At age 20, Branson opened his first record shop, then a studio at 22, and launched the label at 23. By 30, his company was international.
Sheryl Sandberg
Sheryl Sandberg was getting her master’s degree at Harvard Business School.
At age 25, Facebook’s COO had already graduated at the top of the economics department from Harvard, worked at the World Bank under her former professor, mentor, and future Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and gone back to Harvard to get her MBA, which she received in 1995.
Steve Jobs
Apple cofounder Steve Jobs took his company public and became a millionaire.
By the end of its first day of trading in December 1980, Apple Computer had a market value of $1.2 billion. Jobs told biographer Walter Isaacson that he made a pledge at that time to never let money ruin his life.
Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett was an investment salesman in Omaha.
In his early 20s, Buffett worked as an investment salesman for Buffett-Falk & Co. in Omaha before moving to New York to be a securities analyst at age 26. During that year, he started Buffett Partnership Ltd., an investment partnership in Omaha.
Donald Trump
The young real estate developer was given control of his father’s company, Elizabeth Trump & Son.
A Republican presidential nominee hopeful, billionaire real estate mogul, and television personality, Trump grew up wealthy, but learned the value of money from his father, who had him pick up empty soda bottles for cash at their construction sites.
