You want to be a CEO before you turn 30, but sometimes, you may start to lose faith. The road ahead seems like a long, uphill battle. You may start to think that 30 is too soon to accomplish what you want to accomplish ? if you can accomplish it at all.
Many have been where you are and have found ways to push through it and meet their goals. In fact, many who are far younger than you have succeeded in realizing their dreams of becoming entrepreneurs and CEOs. When you are feeling down and like all the odds are against you, think about some of these youngest CEOs to get you inspired and get back on track. These five young entrepreneurs started from humble beginnings, but turned around their fortune with the right mix of intelligence, ambition, determination and perseverance. Long before the startup boom, their stories of hardship, labour and success set new benchmarks, and serve as an inspiration to everyone. Here?s our list of Young CEOs In The World 2019 who started with nothing.
Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg ? CEO, Facebook
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is an American technology entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is known for co-founding and leading Facebook as its chairman and chief executive officer. Born in White Plains, New York, Zuckerberg attended Harvard University, where he launched Facebook from his dormitory room on February 4, 2004, with college roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes.
Originally launched to select college campuses, the site expanded rapidly and eventually beyond colleges, reaching one billion users by 2012. Zuckerberg took the company public in May 2012 with majority shares. His net worth is estimated to be US$55.0 billion as of November 30, 2018, declining over the last year with Facebook stock as a whole.
He is also one of the youngest billionaires in the world: as of 2018, he is the only person in the Forbes Top 10 Billionaires list who is under the age of 50, and the only one in the Top 20 Billionaires list who is under the age of 40. Since 2010, Time magazine has named Zuckerberg among the 100 wealthiest and most influential people in the world as a part of its Person of the Year award. In December 2016, Zuckerberg was ranked 10th on Forbes list of The World?s Most Powerful People.
David Karp
David Karp ? Founder, Tumblr
David Karp (born July 6, 1986) is an American web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder and former CEO of the short-form blogging platform, Tumblr.
Karp is the man behind the popular blogging platform Tumblr, which is valued at $800 million. Karp launched Tumblr when he was only 20, and the service took off within a matter of weeks. Now the 26-year-old CEO has a net worth of more than $200 million.
Karp is another example of a CEO who found success not by doing anything particularly innovative, but by finding a need and filling it. There were other blogging platforms when Tumblr was started. He recognized the need for a different format to appeal to those who wanted a short-form blogging platform but who were too limited by Twitter. Karp began his career as an intern under Fred Seibert at the animation company Frederator Studios, where he built the studio?s first blogging platform and conceived, wrote, and edited their first internet video network, Channel Frederator. Karp went on to work for online parenting forum UrbanBabyuntil it was sold to CNET in 2006. Karp then started his own software consulting company, Davidville, where he worked with computer engineer Marco Arment on projects for clients. During a gap between contracts in 2006, the two began work on a microblogging website, which was launched as Tumblr in February 2007. As of November 1, 2017, Tumblr hosts over 375.4 million blogs. In August 2009, Karp was named Best Young Tech Entrepreneur 2009 by BusinessWeek and in 2010, he was named to the MIT Technology Review TR35 as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35.
On May 20, 2013, it was announced that Yahoo! and Tumblr had reached an agreement for Yahoo! to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion. Karp remained CEO of the company.
Ritesh Agrawal
Ritesh Agarwal ? CEO, OYO Rooms
Ritesh Agarwal has had an interesting childhood. He was never fond of studies so he dropped formal education out of his plans. The idea of Oravel Stays struck him when he was 18. The basic idea was a budget hotel chain that provides B&B. Realizing that no other service offered a room for a budget traveller, Ritesh took the idea from Oravel stays to OYO rooms and voila! Agarwal started OYO with 11 only rooms in a Gurgaon hotel. This is one of the best successful entrepreneurs stories in India. Today, OYO has 65000 rooms in about 5500 properties across 170 cities in India.
Ritesh started his entrepreneurial journey when he was 17 years old. He dropped out of college and launched his first start?up Oravel Stays Pvt. Ltd. in the year 2012. Oravel was designed as a platform to enable listing and booking of budget accommodation. Being an avid traveler, he soon realized that the budget hospitality sector lacked predictability. Therefore, he pivoted Oravel to OYO Rooms in 2013 with the key proposition of offering affordable and standardized accommodation.
Ritesh Agarwal has benefited the society in more than one ways. He has also managed to achieve what most of the people only think of. Below listed are some of the accomplishments of this teenager. He has been named among the top 50 entrepreneurs by the TATA first dot awards in 2013. Finalist of the global student Entrepreneurship Awards India. He has been named one of the 8 hottest teenage startup founders in the world by a BusinessInsider in the year 2013. He is the World?s youngest CEO at 17.
Advait Thakur
Suhas Gopinath ? CEO, Globals, Inc.
Suhas Gopinath is an Indian entrepreneur. He is the founder, CEO, and Chairman of Globals Inc., an IT multinational company. He took charge as CEO at the age of 17, three years after founding the company. At the time, he was the world?s youngest CEO. He taught himself to make websites with the help of books, and made his first, www.coolhindustan.com, at the age of 14. He incorporated his company Globals Inc., the same year, in 2000. He became CEO of his company at the age of 17. He was thought to be, for a time, the youngest CEO of a company.
In 2005, Gopinath was the youngest among the 175 recipients of Karnataka?s Rajyotsava Award.On 2 December 2007, The European Parliament and International Association for Human Values conferred ?Young Achiever Award? on Gopinath at the European Parliament, Brussels.In November 2008, he was invited to represent the World Bank?s ICT Leadership Roundtable for adopting ICT in Africa to increase employability and fostering ICT skills in students from these countries.He was announced as ?Young Global Leader? for 2008?2009 by the World Economic Forum, Davos. In that position he would be involved in development programs across the world. He holds a diploma on global leadership and public policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government and Harvard University.
