Yesterday I just did Video 0059 "Microsoft Part1: 4 Billionaires and the founding of Microsoft"

This is the URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1DwodVWcu0

Almost everyone knows the founders of Microsoft are  Bill Gates and Paul Allen

Less known is these two high school buddies bluffed their way into founding of Microsoft

It began in 1975, when Paul Allen spotted an add on the new Altair 8800 PC, which he immediately understood to be the dawn of the PC age.

This is the Ad

Gates and Allen then contacted Ed Morris, owner of the company MIS than manufactured the Altair 8800

Ed Morris asked Gates and Allen if they had the software.  They answered YES.

In reality, they never had the software.  So Gates and Allen were just bluffing.

Now, Gates and Allen would work feverishly on the software they promised Ed Morris in the dormitory of Harvard University.

In 1980, as employee Number 30,  Steve Balmer was hired as the first business manager of Microsoft by Bill Gates

Now we have the third famous billionaires of Microsoft:  Steve Balmer,

The fourth Microsoft billionaires is Charles Simoyni, the Hungary immigrant who earned his PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University while working for Parc Xerox (the famous lab that created the mouse, GUI and object oriented programming etc)

This is picture of Charles Simonyi and Bill Gates in 1981

Charles Simonyi would develop the 2 Cash Cows of Microsoft :  MS Excel and MS Words

 

Overall, Microsoft has been great for its employees, besides the 4 billionaires just mentioned, Microsoft also created 12,000 millionaires out of its employees. 

 

Award 001   Runaway Kids Self-made Billionaires (3 co-winners)

Here is the link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcKldy4id-k

We have here 3 co-winners
1.   Benjamin Franklin (1706 to 1793)
        Runway kid at age 17,  from Boston to Philadelphia
        Ben Franklin had very little formal education.  He had one year of schooling.

         Ben Franklin became First US Self-made Billionaire

2.  Jesse Livermore
          Runaway kid at age 14,  from Shrewsberry, Massachusetts to Boston, Massachusetts

          Jesse Livermore became the top trader in Wall Street for 30 years, from 1900 to 1929.
          He was a math wizard.  But his father forced him to grow potato instead.
          He ran away from home to escape a life of farming

3.  Chung Ju-Yung  (1915 to 2001)
          He tried to run away from home.  The first time he failed.  The second time he also failed.  The third time, he stole his father's cow, sold the cow, bought a train ticket to Seoul and he never returned.

          One of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time.  At one time, his net worth was 16% the GDP of South Korea.  In relative terms, he was easily 10 times richer than Bill Gates.

           He founded Hyundai, which became #1 in the world in shipbuilding and #6 in automobile.

Today I just completed a youtube video "Dilip Shanghvi, The Richest Healthcare Self-made Billionaires in the World from India"

Here is the URL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tuLoqolMyE

Shanghvi is most important for 5 reasons
1.  Healthcare is a sector of interest to anyone, we all need healthcare

2.  He is the world's richest Healthcare Self-made Billionaire

3.  At age 60, he is very young for a billionaire.  In 2016, he was already briefly India's Richest Month. 

4.  I hope more self-made billionaire would come from India, a most important country

5.  He built a global company Sun Pharma and most of its sale come from the US

So, how did he do it?

He started with
1.  2 Person (he and his only employee Pradeep Ghosh
2.  $10,000 Rs he borrowed
3.  One Product, a psychiatric drug called Lithosun

in the City of Vapi , Gujarat

He grew his company through a series of 16 acquisition

The last one was the acquisition of Ranbaxy Lab of India in 2013

Today Sun Pharam employs more than 14,000 and is a global brand

Today I posted Dhirubhai Ambani on youtube

Here is the link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDf1sQCSeFY

He was born in the fishing village of Chorvad, in Gujarat India

A high school dropout, he started work as a Gas Station Attendant in Aden, Yemen

Then he became the richest man in India, when he died in 2002.

In 1966, he founded Reliance with a few hundred Ruples

He founded Reliance, the first Indian company to join Global 500.

On the way, he also made millionaires out of thousands of Indian Middle Class Investors.  Here is a picture of Dhirubhai Ambani speaking in front of his shareholders.

I learned many things, one of the most important was in the 1980s, Import License were worth their weight in gold.   Here is an import license

With the Import License, you could make profit as high as 300% to 700%.
It really amount to a monopoly.


 Nevertheless, Dhirubhai Ambani is an Upfront and Honest Man.    He said what he meant and he built one of the world's largest oil refinery in Jamnagar India.  The complex is about 11 square miles.  A dream he hold as a gas station attendant while in Aden as a teenager.

His dream was India becoming a great economic superpower.  He proved it can be done.

Dhirubhai Ambani is a Nation Building Self-made Billionaires (others are Benjamin Franklin, Chung Ju-Yung of South Korea)

Two Women Self-made Billionaire from State of Wisconsin

Next is Diane Hendricks, The Richest Woman Self-made Billionaires in the US

Here is the link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukABWEPnzcQ


She is a Wonder Woman.  She co-founded ABC Supply with husband Ken Hendricks in 1982.

Here are my 4 Surprises
1.   She is from Beloit , Wisconsin
She is a Small Town, Big Billionaire.  This is a paradox which I encounter again and again.  I cannot explain it.  How can an entrepeneur make a huge amount of money in a small town?

2.   She is not the only Woman Self-made Billionaires from Wisonsin.  There is Judy Faulkner, who founded Epic Systems,

3.   Diane Hendricks made her fortune in Roofing, a field traditionally dominated by men.

Yes, ABC Supply is the company she co-founded in 1982 (in the depth of the recession) with her husband Ken Hendricks.  Here is ABC Supply's headquarter in Beloit, Wisconsin

4.  Wisconsin has out-produced Woman Self-made Billionaires (two , Diane Hendricks and Judy Faulkner) than  Tokyo (zero woman self-made billionaire), Paris and London

4.  The Hendricks have very little formal education
      Ken Hendricks is a high school dropout.
      Diane Hendricks just finished high school

I just completed another youtube video on Y Combinator's Superstars
Patrick Collison and John Collison

Here is the link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2ixh173Fuc

3 reasons I chose the Collison Brothers
1.   They are the world's youngest self-made billionaires at age 26 and age 27

2.    They fit my paradox of Small Country, Big Billionaires.  Ireland is a small country with less than 5 million population.  That makes Ireland smaller than Hong Kong and Israel.

3.    The global drive to easier on-line payment is just beginning

The Collison Brothers were born and raised in Limerick Ireland.  At age 16, Patrick won the Young Scientist and Exhibition Award 2004 and went on to study at MIT

Here is Patrick Collison with Prime Minister of Ireland in 2004

The Collison Borthers became Teenage Millionaires when they sold the company they co-founded with 2 Oxford University graudate for $5 Million in 2008.

 

The they founded Stripe in 2009 

Stripe is an online payment infrastructure company

Along the same tradition as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg,  Patrick Collison dropped out of MIT and John Collison dropped out of Harvard University to start STRIPE.

This is a Great Story.

I have been working on STARTUP self-made billionaires.

And I found Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator

Here is the latest video I did on youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX-zo2ht7tM

Paul Graham's advice is not to be a lame animals

Join Y Combinator,  same day interview, same day decision

Y Combinator is like a Self-made Billionaire factory.  In the past decade, it has produced 7 self-made billionaires, including Paul Graham

Here are the pictures of the other self-made billionaires
First, it is Brian Chesky
Joe Gebbia and
Nathan Blecharczyk

 

Next are the Collison Brothers (Patrick Collison and John Collison). 

The Irish Brothers founded Stripe and they are still in their 20s. 

And Drew Houston, founder of Dropbox and a graduate of MIT, also became a self-made billionaire

 

No wonder Y Combinator is a most popular place for startups.