Founder life arcs

Adopted, dropped out, founded Apple in a garage at 21, was fired from his own company at 30, came back at 42 to build the most valuable company on Earth.

1. 1955age 0

   Born in San Francisco; given up for adoption at birth.

   Raised in Mountain View by Paul and Clara Jobs — Paul was a machinist, Clara an accountant.

2. 1972age 17

   Drops out of Reed College after one semester.

   Stays on campus for 18 months auditing classes, including a calligraphy course that later shaped the Mac.

3. 1974age 19

   Travels to India seeking spiritual answers.

   Comes back, takes a job at Atari designing arcade boards. Secretly subcontracts the design work to Wozniak.

4. 1976age 21

   Co-founds Apple Computer in his parents' garage.

   Sells his VW van to fund the first batch of Apple I boards. The third co-founder, Ronald Wayne, sells his stake back for $800.

5. 1980age 25

   Apple goes public.

   Jobs's stake is worth $217 million on day one. He doesn't give any of it to Lisa, the daughter he had refused to acknowledge.

6. 1985age 30

   Forced out of Apple by John Sculley and the board.

   Sells most of his Apple stock in protest, keeps one share to receive shareholder mailings.

7. 1986age 31

   Buys Pixar from Lucasfilm for $5M and founds NeXT.

   Spends a decade and ~$50M of his own money keeping Pixar alive.

8. 1995age 40

   Toy Story ships; Pixar IPOs a week later.

   Becomes the first animation billionaire.

9. 1997age 42

   Returns to Apple after Apple buys NeXT.

   Cuts the product line by 70%, reinstates the board, kills the Newton, and launches the 'Think Different' campaign within months.

10. 2007age 52

    Launches the iPhone.

    Already two years into the cancer he kept secret from the board.

11. 2011age 56

    Resigns as CEO; dies six weeks later.

Started a mail-order business at 17 with his father's school-prize money; spent 70 years running what became the world's largest furniture retailer from a small office in Småland.

1. 1926age 0

   Born on Elmtaryd Farm in Agunnaryd, southern Sweden.

2. 1931age 5

   Begins selling matches in bulk to neighbours, on bicycle.

   Buys them by the hundred from a wholesaler in Stockholm, sells them individually for a small mark-up.

3. 1943age 17

   Founds IKEA with money his father gave him for good grades.

   Name is an acronym: Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd. Sells pens, picture frames, watches — anything mail-order.

4. 1948age 22

   Adds locally-made furniture to the catalogue.

5. 1953age 27

   Opens the first IKEA showroom in Älmhult.

   A response to a price war: lets customers see the quality before ordering by mail.

6. 1956age 30

   First flat-pack furniture (the Lövet table).

   Discovered when a photographer unscrewed the legs to fit a table in his car for a catalogue shoot.

7. 1973age 47

   Moves to Switzerland; later to Denmark.

   Restructures IKEA into a Dutch foundation to put the company beyond the reach of family disputes and Swedish wealth taxes.

8. 1976age 50

   Writes The Testament of a Furniture Dealer.

   Distills IKEA's nine commandments — including 'Wasting resources is a mortal sin' — that still guide the company.

9. 2014age 88

   Returns to live in Sweden.

10. 2018age 91

    Dies at home in Småland, in the village he was born in.

Daughter of Hungarian-Czech immigrants in Queens; sold her uncle's hand-blended creams door-to-door, talked Saks into giving her a counter, and turned a four-product line into the world's largest cosmetics company.

1. 1908age 0

   Born Josephine Esther Mentzer in Corona, Queens, New York.

2. 1924age 16

   Apprentices at her uncle Dr John Schotz's chemistry lab.

   Schotz developed a face cream he called Super-Rich All-Purpose Crème — the basis of every product Estée later sold.

3. 1930age 22

   Marries Joseph Lauter (the family later changes the spelling to Lauder).

4. 1933age 25

   Begins selling hand-blended creams door-to-door at New York beauty salons.

   Adopts the name Estée — a French version of Esty, what her family called her.

5. 1939age 31

   Divorces Joseph.

   Reconciles and remarries him in 1942 after deciding she had made the wrong decision.

6. 1946age 38

   Founds Estée Lauder Inc. with Joseph in a converted Manhattan restaurant.

   Four products: cleansing oil, skin lotion, all-purpose crème, and a face powder.

7. 1948age 40

   Talks Saks Fifth Avenue into giving her counter space.

   Sells out the entire opening order within forty-eight hours.

8. 1953age 45

   Launches Youth-Dew bath oil — the first Estée Lauder mass hit.

   Built around free sampling: a bottle of Youth-Dew came with every product, sold or not.

9. 1985age 77

   Estée Lauder Inc. crosses $1 billion in revenue.

10. 2004age 95

    Dies at her Manhattan home.

Failed the LSAT twice, played a chipmunk at Disney World, sold fax machines for seven years, then turned a $5,000 idea into a billion-dollar company without taking a dollar of outside capital.

1. 1971age 0

   Born in Clearwater, Florida.

2. 1989age 18

   Father — a personal-injury lawyer — pushes her toward law.

   She fails the LSAT twice and gives up. Her father's habit of asking 'What did you fail at this week?' becomes her favourite parenting story.

3. 1993age 22

   Works at Walt Disney World as Goofy and a chipmunk.

   Was rejected for the Goofy role at first because she was 'too short'.

4. 1994age 23

   Joins Danka selling fax machines door-to-door across Florida.

   Gets her business cards ripped up and is escorted out of buildings most days.

5. 1998age 27

   Cuts the feet off a pair of control-top pantyhose.

   The 'aha' moment that became Spanx. Spends two years prototyping at night while still selling fax machines by day.

6. 2000age 29

   Files her own US patent; finds a North Carolina hosiery mill willing to make footless pantyhose.

7. 2001age 30

   Spanx is featured on Oprah's Favorite Things.

   Sales triple overnight. Blakely runs the entire operation from her apartment.

8. 2012age 41

   Forbes names her the youngest self-made female billionaire.

   Spanx has never taken outside funding.

9. 2013age 42

   Signs the Giving Pledge.

   First female billionaire to commit half her wealth to philanthropy.