DIRECTORY

The rapid growth of the internet over the last three decades has created challenges and opportunities that transcend national borders for entrepreneurs, as well as for social and business networks. The ubiquity of smartphones has made for a global platform that links consumers with products.

Welsh-born Laura Tenison founded British retail chain JoJo Maman Bébé in 1993, selling maternity wear and products for children. She initially sold via mail order, then launched a website four years later. By 1999, the company had grown so much that Tenison moved her head office to a warehouse in Wales. The first store opened in London in 2002; the company now has 90 outlets in the UK and Ireland and has recently expanded into the US. Tenison was awarded an MBE in 2003.

Born Sergey Arutyunyan in southern Russia, Galitsky adopted his wife’s surname after they married. In 1998, during a severe recession in Russia, he opened his first Magnit shop in the city of Krasnodar. Galitsky attracted customers with low prices and grew Magnit into a nationwide chain of supermarkets, convenience stores, and cosmetics retailers. He took the company public in 2006 and two years later founded his own soccer club, FC Krasnodar, building the club a stadium and state-of-the-art facilities. In 2018, he sold 29.1 percent of his Magnit shares to the state bank VTB for $2.4 billion and stepped down as CEO.

After working in advertising and as a music photographer, British-born Phil Hunt began his career as a film producer in the 1990s, focusing on small independent films. In 2002, he cofounded Head Gear, which provides production services and investment funding for a range of media, including film, television, and video games. Hunt cofounded Bankside Films in 2007, a media company that sells, finances, and internationally distributes independent films for production companies. With Hunt as comanaging director, it has invested in over 50 films since 2010.

In 1995, Londoner Sahar Hashemi left her career as a corporate solicitor to cofound the coffee bar chain Coffee Republic with her brother. After the first branch opened in London, Hashemi expanded the business to over 100 outlets across the UK. In 2001, she stepped down from Coffee Republic and in 2005 started a second major business, Skinny Candy, which makes low-fat confectionery. Hashemi was awarded an OBE in 2012 for services to the economy and charity work. She has advised the British government and written two business books.

Born in New York, media mogul Sean “Puffy” Combs left college after two years to pursue an internship at Uptown Records, which specialized in hip-hop and R&B. He became vice president, then founded his own label, Bad Boy Entertainment, in 1993. Combs discovered, signed, and produced major artists, including the Notorious B.I.G. In 1997, under the name “Puff Daddy,” Combs released the first of six studio albums and the next year launched his own clothing and lifestyle company, Sean John. In 2001, Combs assumed the stage name “P. Diddy” (then dropped the “P” in 2005). He is one of the most influential figures in US entertainment.

Swedish-born Martin Lorentzon studied economics and engineering while at college. He moved to California in 1995 to work for the search engine website AltaVista. He met fellow Swede Felix Hagnö, and in 1999 they founded online advertising company Netstrategy (later TradeDoubler). In 2006, Lorentzon met Daniel Ek, founder of an advertising website, and they cofounded the music streaming service Spotify, launching in 2008. Lorentzon served as chairman of its board of directors until 2016.

US writer and producer Shonda Rhimes grew up in suburban Chicago. Her first major writing project was a television movie that aired on HBO in 1998. Rhimes then wrote two feature films before returning to television, creating the highly popular medical drama Grey’s Anatomy, which debuted in 2005. It was produced by Rhimes’s own production company, Shondaland, which has since brought numerous successful series to air, including Scandal in 2012 and How to Get Away with Murder in 2014. In 2017, Rhimes signed a production deal to develop projects for online streaming.

British self-made businesswoman Tamara Hill-Norton worked as a buyer for retailer Knickerbox but was made redundant in 1997. She cofounded Sweaty Betty with her husband, making and selling women’s exercise clothing. The first Sweaty Betty store opened in London in 1998, launching a range of attractive activewear for women. It gained a huge following and, with Hill-Norton as creative director, has expanded its range of products, all of which are designed and made under its own label. There are now more than 60 Sweaty Betty outlets across the UK and, more recently, within the US.

Brought up on a commune in Canada, Dharma Jeremy Butterfield changed his name aged 12. Initially a website developer, he founded the photo-sharing website Flickr in 2004. It was bought by Yahoo! the following year, with Butterfield as general manager until 2008. He cofounded Tiny Speck in 2009, which focused on gaming but was renamed Slack in 2014, after the workplace messaging app it launched that year. Slack has been used by over 600,000 organizations to communicate.

After completing an MBA, Canadian Kelsey Ramsden became president of the contracting firm Belvedere Place Development. Under her leadership, it expanded into large civil construction and infrastructure projects across Canada and the Caribbean. She later started a property development and residential management company. After recovering from cervical cancer, Ramsden founded SparkPlay in 2012, a monthly subscription service that provides boxes of toys and educational items to encourage learning and interaction between children and parents. She mentors for the Branson School of Entrepreneurship, started a management consulting agency, and has written a book about her life and experiences in the business world.

American Travis Kalanick left college in 1998 to work on Scour, a searching and file-exchanging service he cofounded with classmates. Scour was sold in 2000, and the next year Kalanick cofounded another file-sharing company, RedSwoosh, which sold for $19 million in 2007. With this capital, in 2009 Kalanick co-launched the ride-hailing service Uber, with computer programmer Garrett Camp. It grew into a global operation, and Kalanick became CEO in 2010 but stepped down in 2017 amidst controversy. In 2019, he sold his remaining Uber shares for $2.5 billion and left the company board.

French businessman Pierre Andurand was an oil trader for Goldman Sachs in 2000 before working for the Bank of America from 2002. Andurand later cofounded BlueGold, a hedge fund that launched in 2008. At its peak, BlueGold managed $2.4 billion but closed in 2012 due to declining returns. Andurand then launched Andurand Capital, a hedge fund that specialized in oil and energy investments. He is cofounder of Glory World Series, a martial arts promotion company.

Born in Kenya, Juliana Rotich studied computer science in the US. She cofounded nonprofit company Ushahidi in 2008 in response to Kenya’s election crisis. Using web, mobile, and geolocation data, it crowdsourced data about violence and mapped it. Rotich founded BRCK in 2013 to help provide internet connections in areas where power was unreliable, and it is now the largest Wi-Fi provider in sub-Saharan Africa. Rotich continues to develop free open-source software.

Born in Mexico, Oscar Salazar earned a PhD in telecommunications at Canada’s University of Calgary, where he met computer programmer Garrett Camp. In 2008, Camp pitched Salazar an idea for a ride-sharing start-up, then called UberCab, that he was setting up with Travis Kalanick. Salazar helped develop the app’s prototype and was paid in equity. This proved very profitable when Uber, as it was renamed, launched in 2011 to become a successful global business. After leaving Uber, Salazar invested in and founded several tech companies.

In 2005, US computer programmer Matt Flannery cofounded Kiva, a nonprofit organization, with Jessica Jackley. Kiva crowdfunds small loans to people with low incomes, particularly women, business owners, and students. The first loans were repaid in 2005, and Flannery became Kiva’s CEO. Kiva is active in more than 80 countries, funding over 1.6 million loans to a value of over $1.3 billion. In 2015, Flannery stepped down at Kiva, and is now CEO of Branch, a bank using smartphone technology to lend money.

As a student in the US, Indian engineer Bhargav Sri Prakash set up his company CADcorporation, which researched automotive engine design. He sold it to General Motors in 2005, then founded Vmerse, which was a gaming platform for universities to recruit students and encourage donations. Sri Prakash sold Vmerse in 2009, and in 2011 set up FriendsLearn, using mobile devices to promote public health. It launched the app Fooya! in 2012, which uses gaming to encourage children to eat healthily and learn about nutrition.

Born and raised in Muscat, Oman, Qais Al Khonji was educated in the UK, then worked in banking. In 2010, he started his own business in Oman, Qais United Enterprises Trading, which imported goods from China. He is the founder of Genesis International, an IT company, and also founded Genesis Projects and Investments, which analyzes oil and works with many of Oman’s biggest petrochemical corporations. Al Khonji is highly active in the education sector, promoting local projects for young people and helping Omani students to study at colleges abroad.

While still at high school, American computer programmer Shawn Fanning began working on a file-sharing service to download music from the internet. He later dropped out of college to complete the software. Fanning and his friend Sean Parker co-launched the software, called Napster, in June 1999. It gained millions of users but was shut down in 2001 due to legal challenges from the music industry. In 2002, Fanning cofounded Snocap, an online music company, which he left in 2006. He has also cofounded two social networking services, Rupture and Path.com, both of which he sold. In 2012, he reunited with Parker to launch the video chat platform Airtime.com.

Argentinian Hernán Botbol founded his first company, Wiroos Internet Hosting, with his brother and an associate in 2005. The next year, they acquired Taringa!, a social networking website aimed at Latin American users. With Botbol as CEO, Taringa! grew across the Spanish-speaking world to around 30 million registered users. In 2015, Botbol and Taringa! partnered with bitcoin wallet producer Xapo, enabling Taringa! users to earn bitcoin for posting popular content. Known as Taringa! Creators, this system drove advertisement revenue and almost doubled the volume of content being uploaded to the website.

While studying at the Rhode Island School of Design, American Brian Chesky met fellow student Joe Gebbia. They later shared an apartment in San Francisco and in 2007 rented it out to conference delegates. Their enterprise, named “Airbed and Breakfast,” was the foundation of Airbnb, which the pair formally founded in 2008 with another friend, Nathan Blecharczyk. Chesky became CEO of Airbnb, which gained start-up capital from investors and has grown into a global business offering a rental platform to property owners.

Born in Atlanta, American Joe Gebbia is one of the three cofounders of peer-to-peer lodging company Airbnb. After working in publishing, he started the business in San Francisco in 2008 with two friends Brian Chesky and Nathan Blecharczyk. Airbnb expanded globally and now lists properties in nearly 200 countries. Gebbia, still a key part of the company, is head of Samara, Airbnb’s in-house product design team, which develops innovative projects. Gebbia has also designed a range of modular furniture that launched in 2017.

A computer engineer from Boston, Nathan Blecharczyk created his first IT business while still at high school. He studied at Harvard University while continuing to code and develop websites then, after graduating, worked as a computer engineer. In 2008, Blecharczyk cofounded Airbnb with Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia and was responsible for coding the company’s first website. He played a major role in Airbnb’s rapid rise to prominence and success, overseeing the creation of its data science, engineering, and performance marketing teams. In 2017, Blecharczyk became Airbnb’s chief strategy officer, a position he still holds, as well as chairman of Airbnb China (also known as Aibiying).

Born in Sweden, Daniel Ek was a website developer in his teens, leaving university early to concentrate on his growing business. In 2006, he sold his online advertising business, Advertigo, to the Swedish marketing company TradeDoubler. That year, Ek began a legal music streaming service, Spotify, with Martin Lorentzon, cofounder of TradeDoubler. Spotify then launched in 2008, paying royalties to musicians and using advertising to make it free for users. With Ek as CEO, the company rapidly grew, adding millions of songs to its catalogues, attracting many investors, and going public in 2018.

The son of a Russian academic, Pavel Durov was born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). After graduating from college in 2006, Durov founded VKontakte (later VK), a social media and networking website for Russian-speaking users. Working with his brother, Durov grew VK into one of the largest websites in Russia. In 2014, VK was purchased by Mail.ru, a Russian internet company, and Durov later stepped down as CEO. He now runs Telegram, a messaging service that he and his brother set up in 2013.

Born in New York, American David Karp began computer programming at a young age. He was a web developer for an internet forum, UrbanBaby, and, after its sale in 2006, started a software consultancy. Karp founded a blogging and social networking website called Tumblr, which was launched to the public in 2007. Within five years, it was hosting over 70 million blogs and had around 100 employees. In 2013, Yahoo! purchased Tumblr for $1.1 billion. Karp was the company CEO until 2017.

Originally from Boston, Michelle Phan grew up in Florida and in 2005 began a personal blog about makeup. She made and published online tutorials, then set up a YouTube channel in 2007. Her videos have been viewed over one billion times. In 2011, Phan cofounded MyGlam (later ipsy), a subscription service delivering monthly cosmetic samples. She also worked with L’Oreal to create her own line of makeup.

Born in Swaziland (now Eswatini), Phiwa Nkambule started fixing computers in his teens. He moved to South Africa in 2007 and left college in 2014 to found Cybatar, a software company involved in fuel delivery. The year after, Nkambule cofounded Riovic, which uses online solutions to help customers find insurance, lowering the price of premiums through crowdfunding. This enabled many South Africans to buy car, household, or health insurance for the first time. Nkhambule has also established an online platform to help students with debt from tuition fees.

In 2014, Carl Kronika, a Danish 14-year-old high-school student founded a communications and web solutions agency, Copus. The company, which is based in Odense near Copenhagen, provides public relations services for start-ups, including web design, video production, and also social media campaigns. Copus initially won business by offering work for free to nonprofit organizations. Within a year of founding Copus, Kronika had taken on a partner five years his senior. The firm began to attract larger and more high-profile clients, including the Danish brewing company Carlsberg in 2017. Kronika continued to attend high school while holding the role of Copus’s CEO.