Each year, FORTUNE publishes its lists. Everyone is familiar with the Fortune 500 list of the biggest companies. Not everyone is familiar with the “40 under 40” list of the most influential people in the world under the age of 40. I never made that list. I’m sure that I consistently ranked 43rd, 44th. I have often wondered who these people really are, what they did to get the high rating, and what makes them so influential. If I had known that years ago, I might have at least come in 42nd.
I spent a few years in the business world. In retrospect, the best and the brightest made the difference. They seemed to be better educated, They saw the long-term better, They had a vision, and they took measured risks. I suspect the same is true today. It’s always been that way, except this time it’s different.
People over 60 years old, and those under 25 years old should consider the “40 under 40” list required reading. It helps us understand how the world has changed, how it is changing, and it points us to the future.
Technology, obviously, dominates the list of new young companies led by young people. Time was when a person needed years of experience to rise to the top of a major corporation. Not so much anymore! Kids start companies in the college dorms, expand them when they leave the ivied halls, get the financing they need, and grow to a billion dollars in a few years. What do those companies do? What do they make? What value do they bring to the world? None of those questions is easy to answer.
A few years back the “40 under 40” list would have included Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, and others who changed our world. Let’s look at those who are changing our world today.
The number one most influential person on the list is Kevin Systrom, co-founder and CEO of Instagram, which is owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s (tied for #1) Facebook.
Systrom founded the photo-sharing company in 2010. Today it serves one billion users per month who want to share pictures with their friends.
Brian Chesky, #5, founded Airbnb, an online hospitality company, in 2009. The company has 4.0 million rooms for rent in 34,000 cities and handles about 100 million web searches each month.
Xu Li, #7, cofounded Bytedance in 2010. The company specializes in data mining that allows people to aggregate news the way they want it presented. It also furthers China’s strategy of being the leader in Artificial Intelligence (A.I) in the field of machine learning.
Dhivya Suryadevara, #4, is CFO of General Motors. I think they make cars and trucks. She has degrees from India and her MBA from Harvard.
Katrina Lake, #8, cofounded Stitch Fix, a subscription-based personal shopping platform in 2011. Its two and a half million users provide revenue of about $1.0 billion per year.
Rena Kalioby, #40, founded AFFECTIVA in 2009. It trains machines to recognize human feelings – “emotion A.I.” It has captured visuals of 6.8 million people to date and compared them to their emotions at the time of the photo.
What does that all mean? To say that change is in the air is a gross understatement. Do any of these companies create value? That depends on your definition of value.
They create thousands of jobs and billions of net worth for millions of people. The data tell the story about the future. Jobs will go to those who train in technology and highly skilled professions. Low skilled people will struggle to find meaningful work. It does not take many people to create a company with a huge market cap.
GM has a market cap of $53 billion and employs 180,000 people. Facebook, on the other hand, has a market cap of $504 billion, but only 25,000 employees. Bytedance has a market cap approaching $45 billion with only 4,000 employees. Apple is nearly at a $1.0 trillion market cap with only 123,000 employees. Change is coming. A.I. is everywhere.
The Fortune 500 was traditionally a compendium of manufacturers and financial institutions. Most made something that people wanted.
Most of the companies on the “40 under 40” list don’t really make anything. They process data, they provide platforms for social communications, business analysis, and strategic alignments. Do we need these companies? Maybe it’s for the millennials to decide.
The “40 under 40” are a big influence in the world. They are leading us to the future, in a direction we may not have chosen, understood, or even dared to risk. This list of leaders consists of highly educated, multi-degree folks that surely fit comfortably among the best and the brightest the world has to offer. It’s always been that way, except this time it’s different.
