
Who was the greatest entrepreneur ever?
Who was the greatest entrepreneur ever, let us start by suggesting a list of five possible candidates.
The current richest man in the world with wealth of $296 billion, Elon Musk is a very controversial character and a man disliked by many. However, he does have a valid claim to be the greatest entrepreneur ever.
Born in South Africa on 28th June 1971, Musk completed his education in Canada at Queens University. He formed his first business, Zip2, at the age of just 24. Zip2, a software company, was sold to Compaq just 4 years later for $307 million.
Of course Elon Musk’s most famous and successful businesses are Tesla and SpaceX. SpaceX was founded with $100 million from the sale of his stake in PayPal but Tesla was not a company founded by Musk. He did however recognize the potential of electric vehicles and invested in Tesla in the early years. His purchase of Twitter/X is a black cloud having paid $44 billion for a business now worth a quarter of that amount.
Our second candidate for the greatest entrepreneur ever is John D. Rockefeller. I think it is fair to say that Rockefeller knew how to spot a market opportunity! He founded Standard Oil in Ohio in 1870 at the age of 31, he had a strong work ethic and recognized the potential of oil products as mass market.
Prior to the formation of Standard Oil kerosene and other oil derived products were just for the rich but Rockefeller brought these products to the middle and working classes. He expanded the business by undercutting and then buying out his competitors, by the end of the 1870’s Standard Oil was refining 90% of oil in the USA.
At the time of his death in 1937 John D. Rockefeller was worth around $1.4 billion which was equivalent to 1.5% of the GDP of the United States.
Jack Ma Yun endured a difficult start to his career, despite graduating with an honors degree in Arts he was rejected from 31 job applications including KFC! Undeterred he forged a successful career which ultimately led him to found Alibaba.
Launched in 1999 Alibaba was initially a team of just 19 people but within 1 year had raised $25 million in venture capital. By January 2018 Alibaba had reached a value of $500 billion and had expanded its activities to include payments systems and cloud computing. Jack was voted in the top 50 world leaders in a 2017 survey for Fortune.
Jamshedji Nusserwanji Tata was the founder of Tata Group which is India’s biggest conglomerate company and this I believe gives him a claim to be the greatest entrepreneur ever. He found his first trading company in 1868 and was the first businessman in his now famous business family.
Tata was famed for his innovative strategies and founded cotton mills, the Taj Mahal hotel, Tata Steel, Tata Power and the Indian Institute of Science. In his work as a philanthropist he raised the modern day equivalent of $150 billion for his projects for education and healthcare.
Colonel Harland David Sanders is one of my favorite businessmen, if his story was made into a film people would consider it far-fetched, an unbelievable story of rags to riches by a man in his mid-sixties, a true contender for greatest entrepreneur ever.
Following an up and down career that had more downs than ups Sanders found himself in the position of being 65 years old with only some small savings and the now equivalent of $1,200 in annual state pension. He decided to launch the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise with the secret chicken recipe he himself developed.
He travelled the USA trying to sign up restaurants for KFC, often sleeping in his car to save money. In the early days it was difficult with many rejections and much frustration but in the time the franchise took off. By the time Sanders was 73 KFC had over 600 outlets around the world including in USA, Canada, Australia, Mexico and Jamaica. Colonel Sanders truly showed the importance of never giving up in life and went on to live to 90, when he died KFC was the second biggest food company in the world.
Who is your greatest entrepreneur ever? Tell us in the comments below.Â
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Greatest entrepreneur ever – other suggestions:
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/financial-theory/10/the-10-greatest-entrepreneurs.asp

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