Build a better mousetrap ..

 

 

 On October 9, 2006, Google bought YouTube Inc for $1.65 billion. 

YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, less than two years earlier.

The founders of YouTube were Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim.

When they started the company, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim were 26 years old, and Chad Hurley was 29.

Steve Chen was born in Taiwan, Chad Hunley was born in Pennsylvania, and Jawed Karim was born in Germany.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube

Google itself is a fairly young company.

It was founded on September 4, 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. At the time of the founding, Page was 25, and Serge Brin was 25. Page was born in Lansing, Michigan, but has been a citizen of New Zealand since 2021, Sergey Brin was born in Moscow,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google

 With a market capitalization of $1.43 trillion, Alphabet (the parent company of Google) is the 4^th most valuable company in the world. (Apple is #1, Microsoft is #2, and Saudi Aramco is #3.)

https://companiesmarketcap.com/

Apple was founded by the late Steve Jobs in 1976 when he was 21.

His family history is very complicated.

Steven Paul Jobs was born in San Francisco, California, on February 24, 1955, to Joanne Carole Schieble and Abdulfattah "John" Jandali.

 Abdulfattah Jandali was born in a Muslim household to wealthy Syrian parents, the youngest of nine siblings. After obtaining his undergraduate degree at the American University of Beirut, Jandali pursued a PhD in political science at the University of Wisconsin. There, he met Joanne Schieble, an American Catholic of German descent whose parents owned a mink farm and real estate. The two fell in love but faced opposition from Schieble's father due to Jandali's Muslim faith. When Schieble became pregnant, she arranged for a closed adoption, and travelled to San Francisco to give birth.

Schieble requested that her son be adopted by college graduates. A lawyer and his wife were selected, but they withdrew after discovering that the baby was a boy, so Jobs was instead adopted by Paul Reinhold Jobs and Clara (née Hagopian) Jobs.

Paul Jobs was the son of a dairy farmer; after dropping out of high school, he worked as a mechanic, then joined the U.S. Coast Guard.

When his ship was decommissioned, he met Clara Hagopian, an American of Armenian descent, and the two were engaged ten days later, in March 1946, and married that same year. The couple moved to Wisconsin, then Indiana, where Paul Jobs worked as a machinist and later as a car salesman. Since Clara missed San Francisco, she convinced Paul to move back. There, Paul worked as a repossession agent, and Clara became a bookkeeper. In 1955, after having an ectopic pregnancy, the couple looked to adopt a child. Since they lacked a college education, Schieble initially refused to sign the adoption papers, and went to court to request that her son be removed from the Jobs household and placed with a different family, but changed her mind after Paul and Clara promised to pay for their son's college tuition.

The rest of the opening sentence reads, “and the world will beat a path to your door”.

 

What you may have noticed is that some of the world’s most successful company were started by very young people. Facebook (Meta Platforms) was started by Mark Zuckerberg when he was in college.

You also may have noticed that foreign-born people have had a strong influence.

Serge Brina was born in Russia, Steve Chen was born in Taiwan, Jawed Karim was born in Germany, and the natural father of Steve Jobs was a Muslim born in Syria. His mother was an American of Armenian descent.

If you need one more example, consider the case of Zoom.

 Zoom Video Communications was founded in 2011 by Eric Yuan, who was 41 at the time. He was born in Shandong, China in 1970, but moved to Silicon Valley in   1997 to join the tech boom.  At the time, Yuan spoke very little English, and applied nine times before being granted a visa to the United States.

 Although the worldwide pandemic of 2020 hurt a lot of companies, it was very beneficial to Zoom.

 In 2019, Zoom became a public company via an initial public offering,^[ at which time Yuan became a billionaire^[ His wealth has increased during COVID-19 pandemic, as Zoom benefited from the shift to online work and teaching. On 1 September 2020, Yuan's net worth was estimated to be US$16.4 billion, a figure 360% higher than his net worth at the beginning of the year. In March 2021, Yuan transferred $6 billion worth of Zoom shares to a grantor retained annuity trust, for which Yuan is a trustee. By 2023, his net worth had increased to $25 billion,

Zoom has a market capitalization of $19.43 billion,

https://companiesmarketcap.com/zoom/marketcap/

 I find it interesting to read “the news of the day” on the History Channel. In addition to the fact that this was the day that Google bought YouTube and made three young guys billionaires overnight, it’s also the day (in 2009) the president Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.

 By the way, the winner of tonight’s Powerball drawing will get $1,55 billion. Even though the odds of winning are extremely small, you too could be an overnight billionaire, even if the world does not beat a path to your door.