Items12The creator’s order
  1. 1James GoodnightJames GoodnightBorn 6 Jan 1943Cary, North Carolina, from 1976. Goodnight and his co-founders built SAS beside North Carolina State University, whose statisticians and agricultural researchers were its first users and recruits. Low costs, a campus-style headquarters and benefits such as on-site childcare kept staff turnover…0i
  2. 2Hermann HauserHermann HauserBorn 23 Oct 1948Cambridge, England, from 1978. Hauser and Chris Curry founded Acorn when Cambridge had a university but little technology industry, drawing on engineers such as Sophie Wilson and Steve Furber from the university. Winning the BBC Micro contract gave Acorn a national market through schools, and its…0i
  3. 3Mike LazaridisMike LazaridisBorn 14 Mar 1961Waterloo, Ontario, from 1984. Lazaridis co-founded Research In Motion with Douglas Fregin while studying engineering at the University of Waterloo, whose co-op programme supplied a steady stream of trained students. RIM's BlackBerry, with secure push email and a thumb keyboard, became the business…0i
  4. 4Mark ShuttleworthMark ShuttleworthBorn 18 Sept 1973Cape Town, from 1995. Shuttleworth founded Thawte in his parents' garage while a student at the University of Cape Town, issuing the digital certificates that secure web connections. South Africa's position outside American export controls on strong encryption let Thawte sell to customers…0i
  5. 5Jaan TallinnJaan TallinnBorn 14 Feb 1972Tallinn, Estonia, from the early 2000s. Tallinn, with Ahti Heinla and Priit Kasesalu, was one of the Estonian engineers who wrote the peer-to-peer software behind Kazaa and then Skype for Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. Estonia offered skilled, inexpensive programmers and a government keen on…0i
  6. 6Mike Cannon-BrookesMike Cannon-BrookesBorn 17 Nov 1979Sydney, from 2002. Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar started Atlassian straight out of the University of New South Wales and sold its software online to teams worldwide, so they never needed a sales office in California to grow. Being far from Silicon Valley kept costs and staff churn lower, though…0i
  7. 7Tobias LütkeTobias LütkeOttawa, from 2004. Lütke, who moved from Germany to Canada, started Shopify in Ottawa with Scott Lake and Daniel Weinand after building an online snowboard shop. Ottawa's government and telecoms engineers, a base of Nortel veterans and lower salaries helped Shopify hire and keep developers, and it…0i
  8. 8Rod DruryRod DruryWellington, New Zealand, from 2006. Drury built Xero in a small market where he could test cloud accounting with local accountants and banks, then expand to Australia and Britain with a proven product. Listing early on the New Zealand stock exchange gave access to capital without moving. Its growth…0i
  9. 9Juliana RotichJuliana RotichNairobi, from 2008. Rotich co-founded Ushahidi, open-source crisis-mapping software written by Kenyan developers, and then BRCK, a rugged router designed and partly built in Nairobi for patchy power and networks. Being in Nairobi meant designing for the conditions their customers actually faced,…0i
  10. 10Markus PerssonMarkus PerssonBorn 1 Jun 1979Stockholm, from 2009. Persson wrote the first version of Minecraft alone in his spare time and sold it directly to players online while it was still unfinished, so he needed no publisher or investors. Revenue from those early sales funded Mojang, founded with Jakob Porsér and Carl Manneh, and…0i