Scott Cook

Founder of Intuit, Cook launched the financial software company in 1983; it today offers software and online products to help individuals and small companies manage their finances. He started his career at Procter...

Adam Osborne

Creator of the first commercially successful portable computer, Osborne transformed personal computing in the early 1980s. Adam Osborne was born in Thailand in 1939 to British parents and spent much of his childhood...

Robert (Bob) Cohn

Co-founder of Octel Communications, the company that commercialized voice mail and made it ubiquitous on cell phones, in companies, and on residential phones, Cohn established Octel with Peter Olson in 1982. Octel...

Frederick M. Hoar

A Silicon Valley public relations and marketing executive legend, Hoar died January 2 after a three-year bout with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. He was 77. Hoar was one of Silicon Valley's most visible public...

Harlan E. Anderson

Co-founder of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), which at one time was the second largest computer company in the world, Anderson built a career spanning research, industry leadership, and philanthropy. Other notable entities...

George Schussel

Inventor of computer industry trade shows worldwide, Schussel is recognized for underlining and explaining technical issues while focusing on the business benefits and uses of technology. He became best known as the...

Shawn Fanning

Developed Napster, one of the first popular peer-to-peer filesharing platforms

William (Bill) Henry Gates

Founder of Microsoft, Gates is an American business magnate and philanthropist who co-founded the software company with Paul Allen. Gates has been consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people and was the...

Jeremy Stoppelman

CEO of Yelp, Stoppelman co-founded the company in 2004 and has led it as chief executive since its inception.

Steven (Steve) Paul Jobs

Co-founder and CEO of Apple, Jobs was an American business magnate who also previously served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios. He became a member of the board of The Walt...

Samuel (Sam) H. Altman

President of Y Combinator and co-chairman of OpenAI, Altman is an American entrepreneur, programmer, and blogger.

Reshma Saujani

Founder of Girls Who Code, a nonprofit working to increase the number of women in computer science and close the gender employment gap in that field, Saujani built a career spanning law,...

Lee E. McMahon

Contributor to early versions of the Unix operating system, including the sed stream editor, McMahon worked for Bell Labs from 1963 until 1989. McMahon was a computer scientist who graduated from St. Louis...

Charles Walton

The first patent holder for the RFID (radio frequency identification) device, Walton was an American inventor best known for a technology that uses radio waves to transfer data from an electronic tag,...

Michael (Mike) Lazaridis

Founder of Research In Motion (RIM), Lazaridis co-created and manufactured the BlackBerry wireless handheld device. He has also served as chancellor of the University of Waterloo, and is an Officer of the...

Pierre Morad Omidyar

Founder and chairman of eBay, Omidyar is a French-born Armenian-Iranian entrepreneur, philanthropist, and economist. Omidyar and his wife Pam are well-known philanthropists who founded Omidyar Network in 2004 in order to expand...

Tim Westergren

Founder and CEO of Pandora, Westergren started the Music Genome Project, a mathematical algorithm to organize music. The idea was marketed by Pandora Media. Westergren, along with the other developers, patented the...

Herbert Freeman

Contributor to the field of automatic label placement, computer graphics, and machine vision, Freeman published numerous works on geometric patterns from '61 and co-founded, with Azriel Rosenfeld of the University of Maryland,...

Reid Hoffman

Founder of LinkedIn, the world's largest professional network, Hoffman is sometimes called the "Oracle of Silicon Valley" for his track record of identifying transformative technology trends early. Hoffman was born on August 5,...

Samuel (Sam) Wyly

Co-founder of several computer businesses, including Datran, which began construction of a nationwide system of microwave towers to transmit data among 27 American cities, Wyly is an American entrepreneur, businessman, and philanthropist....