With the recent increase in companies appearing on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and NASDAQ, the economy has seen some success in coming back from the Great Recession. More and more startups and businesses are being started and some are doing quite well–so well, in fact, that they, along with their CEOs, have made a name for themselves in society and created a product that forever changed the way we live. This is definitely more apparent in the just-released list by Forbes magazine of 20 most powerful CEOs under 40 here in the United States. Technology surely has played a huge part in the way business has been done in the past year and if you look at the list, CEOs from some of the industry’s most well-known companies are at the top of the list.
Just how does one get to the top of Forbes’ list? Well Forbes will only consider you for the list if you’re at the helm of one of the 20 biggest publicly-traded companies, have to answer to shareholders, and carry all the responsibilities of running a business. Oh, and you have to be under the age of 40. Not surprisingly, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is not on the list this year because he fails one of the stated criteria. Nevertheless, the list is mighty impressive and gives praise to the technology industry.
At the top of the list is Google’s CEO Larry Page, 38, since he’s running the show at one of the world’s largest companies and who has definitely shaped the way Internet search is being done. Since starting their search engine development in 1996 to ultimately founding the company two years later, Mr. Page and his co-founder Sergey Brin, have amassed an enormous volume of information to share on their site. Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that they also have a market cap of nearly $200 billion.
Number two on Forbes’ list is Groupon’s founder and CEO, Andrew Mason, 31. The guy who brought coupons back that spawned a litany of “clones” catering to different niches, took the company public just last fall and has a market cap of nearly $13 billion today. This, after he turned down a reported $6 billion dollar acquisition bid from Google two years ago. Not bad for a kid with a music degree from Northwestern and accidentally became a software developer.
While not working with a tech giant, but still using technology to disrupt an industry, Elon Musk, 40, rounds out the top five top CEOs. This hard-working entrepreneur is in charge of Tesla Motors, one of the most talked about automotive brands in the industry for its production of 100% electric cars. Taking on a disruptive role is nothing new for Mr. Musk since when he was in his mid-20s, he and his brother started Zip2, an online publishing software for new organizations. His biggest role was soon after when he co-founded and ran the monster of all online payment services, PayPal. Now, he’s moved through the ranks of Tesla Motors serving as the CEO and “product architect”. The company has run up a market cap of $3.28 billion.
When you view Forbes’ list of the top 20 most powerful CEOs under 40, it’s important to note that the top spots for CEOs were mostly from technology-related companies. I’m certain that in the next year, more companies from the tech industry will appear on here, including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. But it’s probably all going to depend on whether Forbes’ data from Capital IQ (a Standard & Poor business) justifies that claim.
To view Forbes’ complete list of the top 20 CEOs, please click here.
Photo Credit: Google CEO, Larry Page, via Google.com
