During his time as CEO at two major Internet companies, Dorsey also received criticism for censoring content on Twitter. In 2021, he resigned as CEO of Twitter.
Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick
Travis Kalanick was born on August 6, 1976 in America. He founded Uber in 2009 and held the position of CEO until 2017. Uber provides technology taxi services, helping people call personal cars via smartphones.
Kalanick was born and raised in the suburbs of Los Angeles. He was interested in computers from a young age and learned to write and program in middle school. He studied computer engineering at the University of California (UCLA) but dropped out in 1998 to found the startup Scour with some classmates at UCLA. Scour, which provided Internet search and file-sharing engines, was one of the first dot-com companies to allow users to share movies and music online. Along with its rapid popularity, the company was sued for copyright infringement. Scour eventually filed for bankruptcy in 2000 and subsequently sold off all of its assets.
In 2001, Kalanick founded Red Swoosh, specializing in file sharing technology, then sold it to Akamai in 2007 for nearly 19 million USD. In 2009, he co-founded Uber with Garrett Camp. From the beginning with only three rental cars, Uber has become a technology taxi “giant” and operates in 66 countries.
In 2017, because of scandals in handling sexual harassment and discrimination at Uber, Kalanick resigned as CEO of Uber. In 2018, he opened venture capital fund 10100 again, focusing on e-commerce and real estate with the goal of creating large-scale jobs.
Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma
Jack Ma was born on September 10, 1964 in Zhejiang, China. He used to be Chairman and CEO of Alibaba, a major mainland e-commerce corporation.
As a child, he was interested in English and worked as a tour guide in Hangzhou throughout his youth. He failed the Hangzhou Teacher’s College entrance exam twice because of math. On the third attempt in 1984, he succeeded and graduated with a major in English in 1988. From 1988 to 1993, he taught English at Hangzhou Institute of Engineering and Electronics. In 1994, he founded his first company, Haibo Translation Agency, providing English translation and interpretation services.
During a business trip to the US in 1995, he first encountered the Internet and saw a great business opportunity from the lack of websites in China. When he returned to his homeland, he opened China Pages, specializing in creating websites for Chinese businesses and one of the first Internet businesses in the country. Two years later, he left the company due to strong competition from competitors.
In 1999, he and his former colleagues founded Alibaba to allow small businesses to do business with each other. Alipay was born in 2003 to make transactions more convenient. In 2007, Alibaba IPO in Hong Kong and in 2014 IPO in the US. This is the largest IPO in the history of the New York Stock Exchange when it raised 21.8 billion USD, raising the company’s valuation to 168 billion USD. In September 2018, he resigned as Chairman of Alibaba.