We live in a special time and place in history. An American with one or two great ideas can achieve virtually unlimited success in the United States. The following entrepreneurs have all grabbed the world’s attention with their inventions and ideas, and every one of them is a recognized United States citizen. As you are about to see, these individuals are truly living the American Dream.
1. Steve Jobs: Apple
You can thank Steve Jobs for your iPhone, Mac and Pixar. After dropping out of college and traveling to India to study Buddhism (and consuming lots of LSD in the process), Jobs founded Apple Computer in 1976 with Steve Wozniak in Jobs’ California home.
Apple, as most people know, would later go on to become the biggest company in the world, but the path to glory certainly wasn’t an easy one. Jobs struggled early to find investors in his company, and he was even fired from Apple at one point. But after returning to his company 12 years later, Jobs introduced the revolutionary iPod to the world. Never before could you hold 1,000 songs in your pocket, and six years later with the iPhone, you could hold several thousand songs and search the web and make calls, all from one device that easily fits into your pocket. Jobs had created revolutionary devices that were years ahead of their time, something all entrepreneurs dream of doing, and thereby dominated the market - the iPod quickly sold by the millions, and the iPhone would go on to become the world’s best selling smartphone.
Other Apple creations include the iPad, iPad mini and the Apple Watch, and there are rumors that an Apple car is in the works as well. Although Jobs died in 2011, his visions continue to influence his company and also just about every individual in the modern world. That is no small achievement, and why many regard Jobs as the greatest entrepreneur of our time.
2. Elon Musk: PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX
Born in South Africa, Musk came to the United States during the dot-com boom of the 1990s looking to realize the American Dream. He started by moving to Silicon Valley, California, and founding Zip2, a software company, which he sold for over $300 million.
Although a millionaire, Musk did not settle down, instead going on to become a co-founder of PayPal and the founder of two billion dollar companies, Tesla and SpaceX, all before his 40th birthday. He’s also the largest shareholder in SolarCity, another billion dollar company.
None of this fell into Musk’s lap; he has famously worked 12 hours or more every day, including weekends, since he first moved to California, reluctantly taking only two brief vacations in the meantime (he contracted malaria during one of those trips and nearly died, which he said makes him loathe vacations). He only hires the best of the best to work for him, and if someone isn’t keeping up with the frenetic pace of his companies, Musk will immediately find a replacement.
Although characterized by some as heartless, Musk created his companies with the intention of ensuring humanity’s survival; Tesla is all about making electric cars cool and accessible, and SpaceX is attempting to further out progress in space, with the ultimate goal of colonizing Mars.
These are very challenging goals, but given that the newest Tesla car scored a 103 out of 100 in a 2015 Consumer Reports evaluation (the highest score ever given to a car) and SpaceX has already flown six rockets to the International Space Station, Musk has some credibility to his word. Every entrepreneur can take a lesson from Musk’s relentless determination to see his visions complete, no matter how hard that may be.
3. Jeff Bezos: Amazon
It all started with books. The first major online bookseller was Amazon, the product of Jeff Bezos, a former Wall Street computer scientist who quit his well-paying job to be a part of the development of the Internet. It was an incredibly risky move, and, like Steve Jobs, Bezos started by working out of his California home’s garage.
From there, though, things began to look up when the book orders on Amazon.com began growing. Bezos and his handful of employees worked tirelessly day and night to provide a wider selection of books and ensure their delivery to Amazon’s customers. Bezos focused his entire company around the customer, always stressing the importance of leaving customers with a positive experience. This became the foundation of Amazon and still serves as the company’s golden rule today.
Amazon quickly moved to expand its selection, offering everything from clothes to children’s toys. It opened up massive distribution centers around the United States to stock its items, and even created its own product, the popular e-reader Kindle. By making the process of ordering online easy and quick (Bezos eventually hopes to get all delivery times down to less than 24 hours) and acquiring any and all other competition (like Zappos), Bezos was able to dominate online retail. The rewards? Just this year Amazon, valued at $265 billion, became more valuable than Walmart by $30 billion. Not bad for a company that started by selling a few books.
