30 influential entrepreneurs: companies, key dates and where they stand

Here are 30 influential entrepreneurs, from Edison (1879) to Rihanna (2017), each with a company, a verified fact, a key year and a status on October 22, 2026. Fifteen have died; for the other fifteen, the table gives their known role as of that date. The word “influential” refers to our selection: HYTRAPE uses no official ranking and other names could have appeared here. No estimated fortune is quoted, because those figures vary with the source and the date.

At a glance

• Selection: 30 people chosen by HYTRAPE, with one key year per row, from 1879 to 2017.
• Status on October 22, 2026: 15 deceased; the most recent death is that of Frederick W. Smith (FedEx), on June 21, 2025.
• Recent change: Warren Buffett has been chairman emeritus of Berkshire Hathaway since September 18, 2026; Greg Abel has run the group since January 1, 2026.
• Recent listing: SpaceX, founded in 2002 and led by Elon Musk, has been listed on Nasdaq since June 2026.
• Founder or not: McDonald’s (Ray Kroc), Starbucks (Howard Schultz) and Tesla (Elon Musk) existed before these leaders arrived.
• Method: facts cross-checked against the sources listed at the bottom; a fact with a single source is attributed in the text; no fortune is quoted.

10 company founding dates

The table of 30 entrepreneurs

The table follows the chronological order of the key years. The key year is that of the main fact in the sentence, most often the creation of the company. Larry Page and Sergey Brin take two rows, which brings the total to 30 people.

Name	Company	What changed	Key year	Status on October 22, 2026
Thomas Edison	Menlo Park laboratory, Edison General Electric	Develops a practical incandescent lamp in 1879 at his Menlo Park laboratory, opened in 1876; his electric companies are merged in 1889 into Edison General Electric, which he does not control, then in 1892 into General Electric.	1879	Died on October 18, 1931.
Andrew Carnegie	Carnegie Steel Company	Sells Carnegie Steel to J. P. Morgan in 1901, which leads to the creation of U.S. Steel, then funds libraries (2,509 according to Carnegie Corporation) and establishes Carnegie Corporation of New York in 1911.	1901	Died in August 1919.
J. P. Morgan	J. P. Morgan & Co.	Combines Carnegie Steel with other companies to form U.S. Steel in 1901; during the bank panic of October 1907 he raises cash from financial and industrial institutions to support the New York Stock Exchange.	1901	Died on March 31, 1913.
Henry Ford	Ford Motor Company	Founds Ford Motor Company on June 16, 1903, launches the Model T in 1908 and installs a moving assembly line at Highland Park in October 1913; more than 15 million Model Ts are sold.	1903	Died on April 7, 1947.
Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel	House of Chanel	Enters fashion as a milliner in 1909 according to the V&A; Wikipedia dates the opening of her shop at 21 rue Cambon in Paris to 1910 and the launch of the Chanel N°5 perfume to 1921.	1910	Died on January 10, 1971.
Madam C. J. Walker	Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company	Moves the headquarters of her beauty and hair-care company for Black women to Indianapolis in 1910; thousands of Walker Agents sell its products.	1910	Died in 1919.
Walt Disney	The Walt Disney Company	Founds an animation studio with his brother Roy in 1923, releases Steamboat Willie in 1928 and opens Disneyland in Anaheim in July 1955.	1923	Died on December 15, 1966.
Ingvar Kamprad	IKEA	Registers IKEA on July 28, 1943, at the age of 17; the company adds furniture to its range in 1948 and adopts flat-pack in 1953.	1943	Died on January 27, 2018; no operational role at IKEA since 1988.
Estée Lauder	Estée Lauder Companies	Founds in 1946, with her husband Joseph, the cosmetics company that bears her name and launches Youth-Dew in 1953, a bath oil that also works as a perfume.	1946	Died in 2004.
Soichiro Honda	Honda Motor Co.	Founds Honda Motor Co. on September 24, 1948 in Hamamatsu; the Dream D-Type, introduced in August 1949, is the first motorcycle developed entirely by the company.	1948	Died in 1991.
David Ogilvy	Ogilvy	Founds in 1948 the agency now called Ogilvy; his campaigns include the one for Hathaway shirts.	1948	Died on July 21, 1999.
Ray Kroc	McDonald’s	The McDonald brothers created the original restaurant; Ray Kroc opens the first restaurant of his franchise network in Des Plaines, Illinois, in April 1955, then buys the company from the brothers in 1961.	1955	Died on January 14, 1984.
Sam Walton	Walmart	Opens the first Walmart store in Rogers, Arkansas, on July 2, 1962, takes the company public in 1970 and launches Sam’s Club in 1983.	1962	Died in 1992.
Warren Buffett	Berkshire Hathaway	Takes the helm of Berkshire Hathaway at 34 and has served it since 1965, according to his shareholder letter of September 18, 2026; the group operates in insurance, energy, rail freight, manufacturing, services and retail.	1965	Chairman emeritus and director since September 18, 2026; Greg Abel has been CEO since January 1, 2026.
Frederick W. Smith	FedEx	Creates Federal Express, which starts deliveries in 1973 with 14 Dassault Falcon jets and carries 186 packages to 25 US cities on the first night.	1973	Died on June 21, 2025; he was FedEx’s founder and executive chairman.
Bill Gates	Microsoft	Co-founds Microsoft in 1975; IBM’s first PC ships in August 1981 with MS-DOS 1.0, an operating system from Microsoft.	1975	Left Microsoft’s board (announced March 13, 2020); announced on May 8, 2025 that the Gates Foundation will close in 2045.
Steve Jobs	Apple	Co-founds Apple on April 1, 1976; he introduces the iPhone on January 9, 2007, on sale in the United States in June 2007.	1976	Died on October 5, 2011.
Larry Ellison	Oracle	Takes part in 1977, according to Wikipedia, in creating the database company that becomes Oracle, and runs it as CEO until 2014.	1977	Chairman of the board and chief technology officer of Oracle (release of September 22, 2025).
Richard Branson	Virgin Atlantic, Virgin group	Founds Virgin Atlantic, whose first flight links London Gatwick to Newark in June 1984; according to Wikipedia, the Virgin group grew out of a mail-order record business launched in 1970.	1984	Founder of Virgin Atlantic and the Virgin group.
Oprah Winfrey	Harpo Productions, OWN	According to Wikipedia, her national talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show airs from 1986 to 2011; the OWN network launches on January 1, 2011.	1986	Chair of Harpo Productions and OWN, according to Wikipedia.
Howard Schultz	Starbucks	Joins Starbucks in 1982, leaves it in 1985 to open his own coffee bars (Il Giornale), then buys Starbucks in 1987 and becomes its leader.	1987	Chairman emeritus of Starbucks; left the board of directors on September 13, 2023.
Jeff Bezos	Amazon	Creates Amazon in 1994; the company opens in 1995 as an online bookstore and today also offers cloud services through Amazon Web Services.	1994	Executive chair of Amazon since July 2021; co-founder of Project Prometheus (November 2025).
Pierre Omidyar	eBay	Launches AuctionWeb in 1995, an auction website that becomes eBay.	1995	Co-founder of Omidyar Network; left eBay’s board in 2020, according to Wikipedia.
Larry Page	Google, Alphabet	Co-founds Google in 1998 with Sergey Brin; their search engine ranks pages by the links between them; he is Alphabet’s CEO from October 2015 to December 2019.	1998	Alphabet director since 1998 and chair of its executive committee (2026 proxy statement).
Sergey Brin	Google, Alphabet	Co-founds Google in 1998 with Larry Page; he is its president from May 2011 to October 2015, then Alphabet’s president until December 2019.	1998	Alphabet director since 1998, member of the executive committee (2026 proxy statement).
Jack Ma	Alibaba Group	Alibaba is established in 1999 by 18 people led by him; he remains executive chairman until September 10, 2019.	1999	No longer runs the group: Joe Tsai is chairman and Eddie Wu is CEO (Alibaba website); Jack Ma left the board in 2020.
Elon Musk	SpaceX, Tesla	Founds SpaceX in 2002; on May 30, 2020, its Crew Dragon capsule carries two NASA astronauts to the space station, the first crewed launch from US soil since 2011.	2002	CEO of Tesla since October 2008 and of SpaceX, listed on Nasdaq since June 2026.
Mark Zuckerberg	Facebook, Meta	Founds the social network Facebook in 2004, renamed Meta in October 2021 for the whole group.	2004	Founder, chairman and CEO of Meta.
Arianna Huffington	The Huffington Post, Thrive Global	Co-founds The Huffington Post in 2005, according to Wikipedia, then leaves its newsroom in August 2016 to launch Thrive Global, focused on health and productivity.	2005	Founder and CEO of Thrive.
Rihanna	Fenty Beauty, Savage X Fenty	Founds Fenty Beauty, launched with 40 foundation shades (in 2017 according to Wikipedia), then the brand Savage X Fenty (intimates and loungewear), launched in 2018.	2017	Founder of both brands; Fenty Beauty is one of LVMH’s houses.

Our selection and verification rules

The title speaks of influence, but no single measure can rank it. This list is an editorial selection by HYTRAPE: it mixes founders, leaders who grew a company created before them, a banker, and figures from fashion, media and music who became business owners. We do not present it as a ranking.

Statuses are those of October 22, 2026. Where possible they come from company documents: press releases, official pages, proxy statements and reports filed with the SEC. A fact that rests on a single source is attributed in the text, for example “according to Wikipedia”. Estimated fortunes were removed, because they change with the ranking and the date of measurement.

Technology: products, succession and the stock market

We place eight profiles in technology: Edison, Gates, Jobs, Ellison, Page, Brin, Musk and Zuckerberg. Their products follow a precise calendar: MS-DOS shipped with IBM’s PC on August 12, 1981, Windows 95 launched on August 24, 1995, and Microsoft has been publicly listed since March 13, 1986, according to the company’s facts page.

Succession comes up often. Larry Page and Sergey Brin left their roles as Alphabet’s CEO and president in December 2019: Sundar Pichai, already Google’s CEO, took over Alphabet, and the two founders stayed on as shareholders and board members. At Oracle, Larry Ellison left the CEO role in 2014, then the company promoted two CEOs on September 22, 2025, with Safra Catz becoming executive vice chair of the board. On Elon Musk’s side, xAI Holdings became a SpaceX subsidiary in February 2026, and on June 11, 2026 SpaceX announced an initial public offering price of $135 per share.

Distribution: from the store to the platform

Six profiles belong to distribution and logistics: Bezos, Walton, Kamprad, Ma, Omidyar and Smith. Walmart gives the clearest sense of scale through its own figures: 24 stores in 1967, 51 in 1972, 276 in 1980 and 1,928 stores and clubs in 1992. When it went public in 1970, its shares were offered at $16.50.

IKEA published its first annual catalogue in 1950, according to the company’s heritage page. At FedEx, Frederick W. Smith stepped down as CEO in 2022 to become executive chairman, a post he held until his death. At Alibaba, the chairmanship and the CEO role passed to Joe Tsai and Eddie Wu, who appear in those roles on the group’s website today.

Finance: capital, panic and philanthropy

Three profiles belong to finance and investing: Carnegie, Morgan and Buffett. Carnegie published the essay “The Gospel of Wealth” in 1889, which describes the philanthropic responsibility of the wealthy, then created Carnegie Corporation in 1911. The Panic of 1907, in which J. P. Morgan intervened, spurred according to the Federal Reserve the monetary reform movement that led to the Federal Reserve System.

Warren Buffett’s succession happened in two steps: Greg Abel became CEO on January 1, 2026, then Howard G. Buffett, a director since 1993, was elected chairman of the board on September 18, 2026. On May 8, 2025, Bill Gates announced that the Gates Foundation would close in 2045, with plans to spend more than $200 billion by then.

Consumer goods: prices, sales networks and brands

Thirteen profiles belong to consumer goods, fashion, media and advertising. Price sometimes plays the leading role: the Model T cost $850 in 1908, $490 in 1914 and $260 in 1924, according to the Library of Congress. Henry Ford announced on January 5, 1914 a minimum wage of $5 a day, up from $2.34, for workers who met the company’s conditions.

Other paths run through a sales network. The “Walker Agents” sold Madam C. J. Walker’s products door to door, and Biography.com credits Ray Kroc with creating McDonald’s System, Inc., which became McDonald’s Corporation. Estée Lauder’s first major order, in 1947, was for $800 worth of products for Saks Fifth Avenue. On the image side, Steamboat Willie was shown in New York on November 18, 1928 and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered on December 21, 1937 in Los Angeles.

Founder, successor or financier

The table separates those who created a company from those who grew or financed it. The McDonald brothers opened the original restaurant; Ray Kroc met the brothers in 1954, built a franchise network from 1955 and bought the company in 1961. Howard Schultz joined Starbucks in 1982 and bought it in 1987. Tesla was incorporated on July 1, 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning; Elon Musk led the February 2004 funding round and has run Tesla since October 2008, and a 2009 settlement lets five people, including him, call themselves co-founders.

Thomas Edison’s case is similar. His electric companies were combined in 1889 into Edison General Electric, then merged in 1892 with Thomson-Houston to form General Electric. The National Park Service states that he never controlled Edison General Electric, and Wikipedia says J. P. Morgan engineered the 1892 merger.

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Read next

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Sources

• Berkshire Hathaway, communiqué et lettre aux actionnaires du 18 septembre 2026
• Wikipédia (EN), Warren Buffett
• SpaceX, communiqué de prix de l’introduction en Bourse (11 juin 2026)
• NASA, communiqué sur le vol Demo-2 (30 mai 2020)
• Tesla, amendement au rapport annuel 2025 (10-K/A, SEC)
• Wikipédia (EN), Elon Musk
• Wikipédia (EN), Tesla, Inc.
• Meta, page de direction : Mark Zuckerberg
• Wikipédia (EN), Mark Zuckerberg
• Alphabet, circulaire de vote 2026 (SEC)
• Alphabet, annonce du 3 décembre 2019
• Google, notre histoire
• Amazon, circulaire de vote 2026 (SEC)
• Amazon, les livres au cœur de l’entreprise
• Wikipédia (EN), Jeff Bezos
• Microsoft, faits et dates clés
• Microsoft, communiqué du 13 mars 2020
• Fondation Gates, communiqué du 8 mai 2025
• Apple, communiqué du 9 janvier 2007 (iPhone)
• Apple, déclaration du conseil du 5 octobre 2011
• Apple, communiqué des 50 ans (mars 2026)
• Oracle, communiqué du 22 septembre 2025 (SEC)
• Wikipédia (EN), Larry Ellison
• Alibaba Group, histoire
• Alibaba Group, annonce du 10 septembre 2018 (SEC)
• Wikipédia (EN), Jack Ma
• Omidyar Network, Pierre Omidyar
• Wikipédia (EN), Pierre Omidyar
• Thrive, à propos
• TechCrunch, Arianna Huffington quitte le HuffPost (août 2016)
• Wikipédia (EN), Arianna Huffington
• LVMH, Fenty Beauty by Rihanna
• Savage X Fenty, à propos
• Wikipédia (EN), Fenty Beauty
• Starbucks, communiqué du 13 septembre 2023
• Biography.com, Howard Schultz
• Wikipédia (EN), Howard Schultz
• Virgin Atlantic, communiqué des 40 ans
• Wikipédia (EN), Richard Branson
• Wikipédia (EN), Oprah Winfrey
• FedEx, hommage à Frederick W. Smith (juin 2025)
• Wikipédia (EN), Frederick W. Smith
• Walmart, histoire
• Walmart, Sam Walton
• Wikipédia (EN), Sam Walton
• IKEA, l’histoire d’IKEA
• IKEA, repères historiques
• IKEA, décès d’Ingvar Kamprad (28 janvier 2018)
• Wikipédia (EN), Ingvar Kamprad
• Biography.com, Ray Kroc
• Wikipédia (EN), Ray Kroc
• Honda, 75 ans d’histoire
• Honda, chronologie des années 1990
• Wikipédia (EN), Soichiro Honda
• Ogilvy, à propos
• Adweek, Ogilvy fête ses 50 ans
• Adweek, décès de David Ogilvy
• Wikipédia (EN), David Ogilvy
• Estée Lauder Companies, notre fondatrice
• Wikipédia (EN), Estée Lauder
• The Henry Ford, guide de recherche sur Henry Ford
• Library of Congress, la chaîne de montage mobile de Ford
• Ford, la Model T
• PBS American Experience, Henry Ford
• Wikipédia (EN), Henry Ford
• Carnegie Corporation, l’histoire d’Andrew Carnegie
• Wikipédia (EN), Andrew Carnegie
• Library of Congress, J. P. Morgan
• Federal Reserve History, la panique de 1907
• Wikipédia (EN), J. P. Morgan
• National Park Service, biographie de Thomas Edison
• Wikipédia (EN), Thomas Edison
• V&A, Gabrielle Chanel
• PBS Antiques Roadshow, Coco Chanel
• Wikipédia (EN), Coco Chanel
• National Park Service, Madam C. J. Walker
• Library of Congress, Madam C. J. Walker
• Wikipédia (EN), Madam C. J. Walker
• D23, Walt Disney
• Wikipédia (EN), Walt Disney

Updated October 22, 2026. Statuses, titles and dates checked against the sources below; situations may change.