Bitcoin Forum

Who are the people who have motivated you?

Who do you emulate in your business?

I have mine; you have yours.

Who are they?

Let's go with four, in order of importance and when we get a suffucient number of replies, I'll tell you who mine are.

Let's have some fun, OK?

My $.02.

;)

Off the top of my head just a few: Ray Kroc, Warren Buffet, Michael Bloomberg (His business not politics), and Steven Cohen of (the former?) SAC Capital.

Not bad at all and respectable!

Thank you for your input!

My $.02.

;)

PS:  Bloomberg's politics suck raw eggs, so I am glad that we agree on that one!

;)

Jobs, the early Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Buffett, Bezos, Narayana Murthy of Infosys, Masayoshi Son etc

Kewl and well considered!

Thank you for participating in my thread!

My $.02.

;)

I don't really have any favourites, but I always admire people who left school relatively early or didnt go to college or uni etc and just built their empires up off their own backs and business acumen and without any help from their rich parents or whatnot.

The ones that has achieved the best business results in their life like Warren Buffet, Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, Carlos Slim and other. But mostly the inventors like Bill Gates because the real money comes not from doing specific thing like owning high quality restaurant all around the world or owning a tourism business but from things that are totally new and are invented not for money purpose but for curiosity and desire to change something.

Not really my heroes, but in a certain way I look up to : Lloyd Blankfein, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos.

But I respect all people who took a certain risk in their life to achieve something, I encourage all people to do so.

Here in Spain interns earn 0€/month, and contracted workers earn 700-900€/month working from 9A.M. to 19A.M. This salary for contracted workers are offered in important companies too.

And in some companies interns work from 6 months, and when they end, they are contracted again in the same company as intern for other 6 months, giving the false hope to get contracted some day, so they have a worker from 1 year with 0€ cost.

Also in other companies, you are contracted for a 4h part-time work, and they compel to make 4 more extra hours every day not rewarded. If you don't do this 4 not payed extra hours, guess what happen...

So, as I don't have businnes heroes in my country, I will name "Silicon Valley" and the way they do businnes as my heroes.

1. Hiroshi Yamauchi was the inventor of Nintendo 64, the Gamecube, and Pokeman.
2. Jack Odell was an English engineer who invented the Matchbox car for his daughter.
2. Jerry Yang co-founded Yahoo!

My business is investing, so I look at businessmen from this perspective.

I wouldn't call him a hero, but I've always admired Jim Rogers. He's a more astute investor than his former partner Soros, and he's far more likeable.

In terms of pure investing skills, Jesse Livermore is still in a class by himself. His book is timeless, too.

I particularly enjoy studying historical figures from a business perspective. Two of my favorites, for example, John Law and Christopher Columbus were incredible businessmen, aside from the other more notorious aspects of their personalities. Augustus, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, and a few other Roman emperors are also a good study in various business philosophies.

I've also learned much from studying the business histories of Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, the early Rothschilds, the early Medicis, and the Founding Fathers of the United States.

What do you mean by achieved the best business results? Those seem to be some pretty mainstream and popular picks. I don't necessarily think people who earn the most amount of money are the best businessmen either, and I'm also not sure I'd call Gates much of an inventor. What did he even invent?

Yeah, Gates is a marketer de luxe!

My $.02.

;)

I admire Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Gordon Moore. They are amazing people who never give up and built there empire through dedication and sweat.
-T

I dont really have a 4, but more like two that I get the most educated decisions on studying them.

1. Mark Cuban
2. Chamath Palihapitiya

Henry Ford is one of mine.

Chancellor Palpatine is my hero

Well, I see that you do not live in the real world!

A star wars character is your hero and business role model?  ::)

So troll lol.

Elon Musk founder of Tesla, I'd love to work in one of his factories designing electric cars.


 

I'd love to design an all electric RV with smart glasses, a system that adds 95% alcohol to several stuff to make beverages, an inside dependable water supply, self inflating tires, futuristic doors and everything you need to have fun travelling on the road including many ways to generate electricity such as expandable solar arrays, turbines that can be dropped into a river and held with a rope to generate electricity and incredible efficiency with AC due to the smartglass.

Like an ultra high tech camper. I'd live in it. Also it would have a few small areas for dedicated hydroponics and a very primitive food printer/replicator.

This is the life for me, on the road, looking for adventure, i'm sure many others have that dream and a car like this could quickly become a lifestyle for the few who want something like this enough.

TLDR, like Elon Musk proved that an electric car can be fun and sexy and better then a gasoline vehicle I want to prove that an electric RV can excellent for traveling.

If you can afford one.

Tesla cars are only for the financial elite.

If you are going to build an electric RV I hope you get a lot of government funding so that you can waste good taxpayers money for he sake of proving that something can be done but maybe should not be done.

When you electric RV runs out of juice someplace north of Nome in the dead of Winter, don't call me, eh?

That was always Tesla's, first make a super expensive, fast car to draw everyone's attention, then less expensive and finally one suited for mass production.

I may also point out that Tesla has already done this but for another company, Mercedes, when Tesla was nearly bankrupt Mercedes gave them a few million dollars to create an all electric version of the smart car which is a ridiculously small car (only good for the city really) but somewhat affordable.

http://www.smartusa.com/models/electric-drive/overview.aspx

Cheapest new electric car (if you call it a car), Designed with Tesla's technology $12,500

I love travelling in any way possible, if a small vehicle now can get 300 miles of range and a microwave and a few other appliances can be run from the solar panels (which people are doing even today) then I don't see why there can't be an electric camper.

Furthermore the electric engine used in Tesla's is tiny and extremely powerful, the thing would fly and there would be a ton of extra space (like in Tesla's cars).

Eventually as batteries improve, electrics are bound to beat other vehicles where range is concerned, A small but efficient generator can always be used to generate electricity more efficiently than an engine (constant RPM) without having to be as powerful and big as the engine itself in case of emergencies. Also a big cost of RVs is fuel which would be minimized.

TLDR: Electric cars are not for rich people, An electric RV would be superior.

I also look up to the way Warren Buffet made his money. He is the very definition of sound investing.

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/05/tesla_is_worse_than_solyndra_how_the_u_s_government_bungled_its_investment.html
"
Tesla Is Worse Than Solyndra

How the U.S. government’s bungled investment in the car company cost taxpayers at least $1 billion.



In 2009, as the financial crisis raged and General Motors and Chrysler plunged toward bankruptcy, Tesla Motors faced a seemingly impossible task: raising half a billion dollars to build an electric-car factory. Tesla had just staggered through a year of layoffs, canceled orders, and record losses. Then suddenly, salvation. The U.S. Department of Energy offered to lend the company $465 million at rock-bottom interest rates.

Four years later, Tesla Motors offers a remarkable example of how a well-timed government investment in the right company can pay off. Every week, 400 all-electric Model S sedans roll out of Tesla’s factory in Fremont, Calif., which the government’s loan financed. Motor Trend named the Model S its 2013 Car of the Year. Tesla’s stock is the toast of Wall Street, giving the company a market value topping $12 billion. And in sharp contrast to Solyndra, the solar panel maker that defaulted on its $528 million loan from the Energy Departtment, Tesla last week paid the government back early, with interest.

Yet despite all the public celebration, both Solyndra and Tesla stand as warnings of the dangers in deputizing bureaucrats to play bankers and venture capitalists. In both loans, the government walked away laughably undercompensated for the risk it accepted in the startup companies. In fact, the Tesla deal was arguably far more costly for America than the Solyndra fiasco.

Solyndra exposed the first way the taxpayer could lose out. The traditional advantage of making a loan (as opposed to buying stock in a company) is that lenders often get paid something even when the borrowing company fails, because they hold collateral. Solyndra’s bankruptcy revealed the ephemeral value of the government’s collateral. Taxpayers have yet to recover a penny from the company.

Tesla’s runaway success, by contrast, is demonstrating how making venture capital–style investments in risky companies—without demanding venture capital–style compensation in return—can end up costing taxpayers even more. In Silicon Valley, one Google pays for a dozen Pets.com. The government made the key mistake of loaning money to Tesla without insisting on receiving stock options, options that could have allowed the Department of Energy to pay for the Solyndra losses several times over.

When the government’s negotiators started hammering out the details of the Tesla investment in mid-2009, it was obvious to both sides that the feds were in a position to name their terms. Tesla’s management knew that if they couldn’t get the government’s money at 3 or 4 percent interest, their next cheapest source of capital would cost 10 times more, a whopping 30 to 40 percent annually. (That’s according to estimates Tesla made in a regulatory filing, which based its numbers on “venture capital rates of return for companies at a similar stage of development as us.”)

Today, the Energy Department defends the massive discount it offered as perfectly appropriate. “The loan program wasn’t intended to generate profit; the goal of the program is to provide affordable financing so that America’s entrepreneurs and innovators can build a strong, thriving and growing clean energy industry in the United States,” says a department spokeswoman.

Yet isn't affordability the exact reason stock options are standard in normal venture capital deals? When a company is struggling, the options can’t be exercised and thus are perfectly affordable, not draining a dollar of cash from a startup company. Unlike a loan, stock options only cost the company money if it goes on to success—at which point it can afford to share that success with its early investors.

Personal loans made in 2008 by Elon Musk, Tesla’s co-founder and CEO, provide a telling contrast. Musk received a much higher interest rate (10 percent) from Tesla and, more importantly, the option to convert his $38 million of debt into shares of Tesla stock. That’s exactly what he ended up doing, and the resulting shares are now worth a whopping $1.4 billion—a 3,500 percent return on his investment. By contrast, the Department of Energy earned only $12 million in interest on its $465 million loan—a 2.6 percent return.

The government had huge leeway to demand similar terms as part of its loan, given the yawning gap between its interest rate and the cost of Tesla’s next-best source of capital. The government was ponying up more capital than all of Tesla’s previous investors combined. At a bare minimum, the Department of Energy could have demanded a share of the company equal to the 11 percent Musk received for his $38 million loan the year before. Such an 11 percent share would be worth $1.4 billion to taxpayers today.

(Continued from Page 1)

And if the government had wanted to bargain like a real venture capitalist, Tesla’s desperate need for cash gave the feds the power to demand options on half the company’s stock, or more. Over at the Treasury Department, negotiators were demanding big ownership stakes in exchange for life-saving bailouts. The Treasury wound up owning 85 percent of AIG’s stock and 32 percent of GM’s.

There was nothing to prevent DOE from demanding stock options from Tesla. Tesla’s loan came courtesy of a 2007 law signed by George W. Bush, which provided $25 billion for loans backing “Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing.” While Congress required the Energy Department to lend at low rates, equal to what the government pays, the law was silent on the issue of stock options.

And, in fact, the Energy Department actually did negotiate for options on 3 million shares of Tesla stock as part of the original loan, options that would be worth $300 million based on Tesla’s current share price. Unfortunately for taxpayers, those options no longer exist. Tesla had the right to force the extinguishment of those options by repaying the loan early, as it just did. (The Energy Department says that was expected, since unlike typical options these were never meant to turn a profit but rather to encourage Tesla to repay the loan early if it could.)

Elon Musk didn’t mention that $300 million reason when he explained last week why Tesla was repaying the loan early. Musk cast the repayment not as a responsibility to his shareholders but rather as a moral duty to the taxpayers who made his company’s success possible. “Having accepted taxpayer money, I thought we had an obligation to repay it as soon as we reasonably could," Musk told the Wall Street Journal last week.

Asked to explain what, in fact, was Musk’s primary motive for the loan repayment, a Tesla spokesperson declined to comment. (Musk also told the Journal that “If economics were the only consideration we would not have done this," despite the company’s significant economic incentive to kill the government’s options.)

Supporters of the government stimulus program point to Tesla as a shining example of how such investments can be long-term successes. “Ultimately, making the U.S. the leader in advanced vehicles and clean energy will pay for itself many times over as our economy grows and new industries are created,” says an Energy Department press officer.

Here’s hoping that proves true. In the meantime, the question of how to compensate taxpayers for Tesla-esque successes remains a distinct issue, one that the government would do well to pay more attention to the next time it plays venture capitalist. If the government had demanded an ownership stake in reasonable proportion to the amount of money it put at risk, Tesla would be just as successful as it is today. The only difference would be that the taxpayers who saved the company would share in that success."

My heroes are Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. They simply change the world as you know it.

I don't have heroes in business, but the people I try to emulate for sure Mark Cuban. Cuban is very honest, blunt and wants to kick ass 24/7. That is me to a T, if I didn't have to sleep I would be working hard to claw to the top of my market.

Second I would say Gary Vaynerchuk, again he just puts it honest and hustles 24/7.

I guess nobody. Some of the best businessmen/women, I just try to throw a little of everyone in my ways, regardless of anything.

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates should not belong in the same category.


Steve Jobs have a record creating new companies and new product. Bill Gates just got lucky knowing the right people to work for him.

Bullshit.

He got a contract with IBM.

There was no luck involved.

Yours is a typical "Progressive/LooneyLeftie/Liberal" resssponse.

Jobs, Gates & Musk

Bad news boys and girls.

Electric cars are still dependant on fossil fuels for the most part, just as they have been since before 1900 when the first electric car was built.

Have a nice day and make sure to polish up your Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanies!

The US government made millions on the Tesla loan. This is a very misleading title, sure they could have made more but the thousands of well paid jobs coming back are going to be better than the US making more money on Tesla.

Henry Ford and Dale Carnegie. One changes the world and the other changed the way I think.

There ya go!

so Gordon Gekko and Scrooge Mcduck don't count?  ;D

however i give you a new name, i respect Pietro Ferrero

Erret Lobban Cord.

Donald John Trump, Sr.
an American business magnate, investor, television personality and author

Trump is indeed a trip!

Jobs surely, Buffet, Gates...

I would  say Alan Mulally from Ford .The turnaround he accomplished at Ford required the right combination of business savvy and cultural influence within the company. It was all just in time too. By the time the Great Recession hit, Ford was able to weather it without a bailout. All while dealing with the dynamics of unions. Few CEO’s in history could have done when he has with that company.

Here is my hero:

Muhammad Yunus



http://www.grameen-info.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=793&Itemid=758

I am in Share Market business so for me Warren Buffet for international Hero and Rakesh Jhunjhunwala from India.

these 2 are really  Star of Share Market and for me too.

Myself 8)

Genghis Khan. He was ruthless, and always got what he wanted.



That's the way you do business.

Anyone Said Gabe Newell before? This man CEO of Valve Entertainment - creators of Half Life, Dota2. They used to make games now they only collect dollars from people. Wagons of dollars. Steam is a goose with the golden eggs after all. The most successful online game shop ever created.