Get Inspiration From These 4 Internet Entrepreneurs
The following is a guest post.
Web entrepreneurs face an uphill battle from the start. Some start off with a business administration degree, others with an idea and determination. With millions of websites on the internet today, the competition for viewers is incredibly stiff. Many web start-ups fold within a year of launching. Despite the odds, some young entrepreneurs over the last decade have managed to take nothing and turn it into some of the biggest websites in the world.
Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg, at the age of 27, is one of the youngest web billionaires in the world thanks to his social networking site, Facebook. Zuckerberg started Facebook when he was still in college, with some of his classmates. Zuckerberg first launched what would become Facebook on Harvard’s network over the course of a weekend, but the website overloaded the school’s servers. He continued to work on the site and spread it to other schools, including Yale and Cornell.
Zuckerberg got his first investor, opened Facebook’s first office and launched the public website in 2004. In 2011, his fortune was estimated at $17.5 billion.
Simon Nixon
Simon Nixon, with Duncan Cameron, established the Moneysupermarket Group in 1993 while Nixon was a student at Nottingham University. The group’s website, launched in 1999, specializes in financial services, giving consumers access to information about a wide array of financial products, including loans and credit cards.
Nixon dropped out of school but managed to build the group into a leading online financial information provider. As of 2011, his estimated worth was $570 million.
Ariana Huffington
Ariana Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, is a web news and blogging pioneer. The website was launched in May 2005 as a place for liberal commentary and an alternative news source.
The constant aggregate of news stories from around the world and the commentary flow drew millions of users and Huffington sold the Post to AOL Inc. for $315 million in 2011. Prior to the sale, Huffington’s net worth was already estimated at $115 million dollars.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin
You may not be familiar with the names, but you know the product. Larry Page is one of the co-founders of search giant, Google. While at Stanford in 1995, Page met fellow student, Sergey Brin and the two would form Google Inc. just a year later in 1996.
Page and Brin’s first investor, Andy Bechtolshei, gave them $100,000 and the pair used the money to lay the groundwork for Google as it is today. In 1999, the two entrepreneurs found themselves flooded with investor offers and finally took a $25 million investment from the Kliener, Perkins, Caufield and Sequoia Capital firm.
As of 2010, Page and Brin’s net worth was estimated at $15 billion each. Google has been valued at over $175 billion in recent years, with annual profits exceeding $800 million.
