Scott Cook founded Intuit in 1983 after hearing his wife complain about paying bills, creating Quicken to help people manage household finances.
Steve Wozniak designed the Apple I and the Apple II, co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs in 1976 and later created the first programmable universal remote.
Tim Cook succeeded Steve Jobs as Apple's CEO in 2011 and led the company until 2026, growing its market value from $348 billion to over $4 trillion. He became executive chairman in September 2026.
Steve Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976, was forced out in 1985, built NeXT and bought Pixar, then returned as CEO in 1997 and led Apple until his resignation in 2011.
Marc Benioff sold his first program at 15, rose to Oracle's youngest vice president, and founded Salesforce in a San Francisco apartment in 1999 with the promise of 'The End of Software'.
Michael Dell built one of the world's largest technology infrastructure companies, took it private in the biggest management buyout since the Great Recession, and later returned it to the public markets.
Bill Gates co-founded Microsoft in 1975, became a billionaire at 31 and, after leaving day-to-day management, turned to global health and climate work through the Gates Foundation and Breakthrough Energy.
He co-founded Infosys in 1981, ran it as CEO while revenue grew sixfold, then left in 2009 to build an identity system for a billion people. In 2026 the government asked him to fix India's exams.
