45 Successful Company Founders

Wildly successful companies all appear to be the same. The founder starts something and boom! Before you know it, magically, the heretofore unknown company is worth a billion dollars. End of story. The reality is usually the opposite – an incredibly rich, complicated and nuanced adventure. The public never learns about the blood, sweat and tears that went into building the company.

Take Rock Mackie, co-founder of TomoTherapy in Wisconsin. He built a great company and went public at a valuation of about one billion dollars. But what to think when we factor in – that at the company’s launch he had to lay off every single employee? That’s the reality of his accomplishment, starting a research project at the University of Wisconsin, lining up GE as his ideal partner, losing GE, releasing the entire staff, putting his own money in along with his partner, slowly rebuilding to the point of incredible success.

The 45 founders created approximately $41 billion of value in the world as measured by either the price of the company at point of sale or public market valuation. We did not have publicly available information for all companies so in some cases these are just estimates.

How They Did It features founders including: