Ask an Expert: Who are your picks as top entrepreneurs?
— -- So here we are in the middle of summer and change is needed. The daily grind, the normal hours, the regular column — they just don't cut it during these long days!
Luckily, I was just sent a copy of Success magazine. If you haven't seen Success lately, you should really check it out. New, improved, slick, easy to read, full of great ideas, and even containing a CD of interviews, the new Success is quite impressive.
On the cover is a story discussing the 50 greatest entrepreneurs of all-time. Now that got my creative juices flowing. It got me to thinking. Who would I consider to be the Top 10 entrepreneurs of all time? For me, the best of the best are those who not only created a great business, but changed business and/or the world in the process.
You may disagree, and please leave a comment if you do. For my money, here are the Top 10 American Entrepreneurs Ever:
No. 10: Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com:If the essence of entrepreneurship is the willingness to take a risk with money to make money, then Bezos has it in spades.
When, while working on Wall Street in the early 90s, Bezos discovered that Internet usage was growing at an amazing 2,600% per year, he quit his cushy corporate gig, drove west to Seattle, started Amazon.com in his garage, and in the process, not only invented online shopping, but essentially, what the Internet would become.
No. 9: Juan Trippe, Pan Am:If the world has gone from, as Thomas Friedman says, large to tiny, then one of the founding fathers of that trend must be Trippe, the founder of the defunct Pan American airways. Trippe made airline travel affordable to the masses, and thus changed how we all travel. As he said, "In one fell swoop, we have shrunken the earth."
No. 8: Walt Disney, Disney:Despite early failures, including losing the rights to his first animated character (Waldo the Rabbit), and filing for bankruptcy, Walt Disney kept at it, eventually creating one of the great multi-disciplinary entertainment companies in history.
