The coolest and most powerful people over 40 in Silicon Valley

Larry Ellison
Oracle's Executive Chairman of the Board and Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison works behind a computer during his keynote address at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco, California September 30, 2014. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith

Silicon Valley is known for its obsession with youth. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg once suggested that people over 30 shouldn't really work in tech startups because "young people are just smarter." 

Advertisement

These folks are bucking the trend.

Pulled from our recently published Silicon Valley 100 list, meet the elder statesmen and stateswomen of Silicon Valley.

 

 

Advertisement

Nick Woodman, 40

nicholas woodman, gopro, sv100 2015
SUN VALLEY, ID - JULY 09: Nicholas Woodman, founder and CEO of GoPro, arrives for the Allaen & Co. annual conference on July 9, 2013 in Sun Valley, Idaho. The resort will host corporate leaders for the 31th annual Allen & Co. media and technology conference where some of the wealthiest and most powerful executives in media, finance, politics and tech gather for a weeklong meetings which begins Tuesday. Past attendees included Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. (Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images) Kevork Djansezian/Getty

Founder/CEO, GoPro

GoPro, the company that makes wearable sports cameras, priced its IPO at $24 a share when it went public in June. Woodman became a billionaire when his company went public, and his whole family became millionaires too. GoPro went public at a $2.6 billion valuation.

Advertisement

Marissa Mayer, 40

Marissa Mayer, yahoo, sv100 2015
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer smiles before the session "In Tech We Trust" in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos January 22, 2015. More than 1,500 business leaders and 40 heads of state or government attend the Jan. 21-24 meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) to network and discuss big themes, from the price of oil to the future of the Internet. This year they are meeting in the midst of upheaval, with security forces on heightened alert after attacks in Paris, the European Central Bank considering a radical government bond-buying programme and the safe-haven Swiss franc rocketing. Ruben Sprich/Reuters

CEO, Yahoo

In September, Alibaba went public. Investors in Yahoo expected Alibaba's public value to send Yahoo’s stock soaring. But after Alibaba's debut, Yahoo's stock crashed.

Months later, Yahoo unveiled a plan to spin off its remaining 15% stake in Alibaba, tax-free, into a public, independent investment company called SpinCo. Yahoo shareholders would receive shares "distributed pro rata," which means they'd own shares in two companies.

Advertisement

Stewart Butterfield, 41

stewart butterfield, slack, sv100 2015
Flickr/kk

Cofounder/CEO, Slack

Slack is a workplace-communication app. Slack has group- and private-chat features and lets users share files and work collaboratively. Slack was originally an internal tool used by CEO Stewart Butterfield's team at Tiny Speck, the company that made the multiplayer game Glitch, but Butterfield decided to spin it out into its own product and company.

Slack's growth as an enterprise communication tool has been organic — it hasn't spent any money on marketing. It's one of the fastest-growing enterprise apps of all time. Slack recently confirmed that it raised $160 million at a $2.8 billion valuation. That means it more than doubled its value since October, when it raised $120 million at a $1.12 billion valuation.

Advertisement

Josh James, 41

Josh James, domo technologies, sv100 2015
Twitter/joshjames

Founder, CEO, Domo

Earlier this year, data-management startup Domo announced a $200 million Series D round of financing led by BlackRock that brought its total funding up to $450 million. It's now valued at about $2 billion.

Founder Josh James held Domo in stealth mode for nearly five years to keep the competition at bay while he built a platform for collecting and visualizing business data, making it easy for executives to skim and understand. Though Domo has only 1,000 customers compared to competitor Tableau Software’s 23,000, he said that Domo "makes a higher average revenue per customer than Tableau does" during Re/code’s Code/Enterprise: San Francisco event.

Advertisement

Adam Cahan, 42

Adam Cahan, yahoo, sv100 2015
Wikimedia Commons

SVP of product and engineering, video, design, and emerging products, Yahoo

Adam Cahan formerly worked at Google on mobile initiatives and joined Yahoo a few months before Marissa Mayer, but he soon found himself in the CEO's office, tasked with heading up the expansion of mobile for Yahoo.

This became a massive growth opportunity for Cahan, who built up a team of over 600. His investment in mobile helped begin to put Yahoo on par with Facebook and Google, which already had thousands of people working on apps before Yahoo expanded into the territory.

Advertisement

Larry Page, 42

Larry Page, google, sv100 2015
Google CEO Larry Page speaks at a news conference at the Google offices in New York, Monday, May 21, 2012. AP Photo/Seth Wenig

Cofounder, Google

When Page took over as Google's CEO, he wanted to reinvigorate the company's vision. Today the company continues to dominate search, makes a ton of money with ads, and is leading a number of other innovative projects, including Google Glass. In the past year, Google generated nearly $18 billion in profits — money that Page will be able to use to forward his grand visions for granting internet access to the world.

Page also appointed senior vice president of product Sundar Pichai to the "second most important person in the company," leaving Page free to make his grand visions a reality.

Advertisement

Sundar Pichai, 42

Sundar Pichai, google, android
Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Android, Chrome and Apps, speaks during the Google I/O 2015 keynote presentation in San Francisco, Thursday, May 28, 2015. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu) Jeff Chiu/AP

Senior vice president, Google

In October, Sundar Pichai was promoted by Google CEO Larry Page as the company's new senior VP of products. It's a big promotion for Pichai, who's now in charge of Google's core products, including search, maps, research, Google+, Android, Chrome, infrastructure, commerce, ads, and Google Apps. Before, he was head of Android and Chrome.

Since being promoted, Pichai has spearheaded the announcement of Android M, the new-generation version of Android, Google Photos, an app for Apple iOS and Android that offers automatic image sorting and unlimited photo storage, offline Google Maps, and more.

Advertisement

Nirav Tolia, 42

nirav tolia, nextdoor, sv100 2015
Nextdoor CEO Nirav Tolia poses for a portrait at the company's headquarters in San Francisco, California February 11, 2013. Neighborhood social network start-up Nextdoor has raised another $21.3 million, even as many investors shy away from the sector in the wake of troubled Facebook initial public offering last year. Picture taken February 11, 2013. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith Robert Galbraith/Reuters

Founder, Nextdoor

In March, Nextdoor, a neighborhood-based social network, officially became a tech unicorn after raising $110 million in funding that put the company's valuation at $1.1 billion.

Nextdoor connects users with those who live close to them, creating a forum for discussing everything from neighborhood crime to the best places to eat. Though others, including Foursquare and AOL, have had mixed luck with the neighborhood-centric concept, founder Nirav Tolia believes Nextdoor's focus on small communities will make it an effective way to connect people. In the long term, the app also hopes to find a way to monetize the user recommendations.

Advertisement

David Marcus, 42

David Marcus, facebook, sv100 2015
LinkedIn/dmarcus

Vice president of messaging products, Facebook

Since joining the Facebook team last June, vice president of messaging products David Marcus has helped the company improve the app and roll out several features, including a Skype-like video-calling service and the ability to send locations to friends.

Before joining Facebook, Marcus spent three years as VP, then president of PayPal, where he reinvigorated the company by recruiting new talent, adopting new software tools, and developing the company culture. This background in mobile payments makes Marcus an ideal candidate to monetize the messenger app.

Advertisement

Ev Williams, 43

ev williams, medium, sv100 2015
Flickr/cmichel67

Founder, Obvious Ventures

Ev Williams, one of the cofounders of Twitter and Medium, just raised a boatload of money for his VC firm, Obvious Ventures, last month: $123,456,789, to be precise. This is its first-ever fund.

Williams says the numerically consecutive amount was "absolutely intentional," and that the firm is out to use the money to make positive change in the world. Obvious Ventures wants to invest in companies that are tackling those challenges head-on. Obvious Ventures' three main areas of investment are "sustainable systems," "healthy living," and "people power," according to cofounder James Joqauin.

Advertisement

Mikkel Svane, 44

mikkel svane, Zendesk, sv100 2015
Twitter/mikkelsvane

Cofounder/CEO, Zendesk

Mikkel Svane is the CEO of Zendesk, an enterprise cloud-based customer-service software company that handles businesses' technical and customer support. He took his company public in May 2014 despite early 2014's shaky SaaS market.

Zendesk ended up pricing its shares at $9, much less than the $12.50 per share it valued itself at just a couple months before. But Zendesk shares popped 49% on the day the company went public and have jumped nearly 150% so far. Zendesk is now worth roughly $1.7 billion.

Advertisement

Renaud Laplanche, 44

Renaud Laplanche, lending club, sv100 2015
NEW YORK, NY - MAY 06: Renaud Laplanche speaks at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2014 - Day 2 on May 6, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Brian Ach/Getty Images for TechCrunch) Brian Ach/Getty

Founder/CEO, Lending Club

Renaud Laplanche is the CEO of Lending Club, one of the world's biggest online lending marketplaces. Last year, Lending Club's IPO was the largest among all US tech companies. Laplanche founded Lending Club to let people provide low-cost financing to their peers. Now, it lets institutional investors do the same.

The online credit marketplace raised $870 million in its IPO last December. Today, it's valued at $6.5 billion.

Advertisement

Elon Musk, 44

elon musk, spacex, tesla, sv100 2015
Elon Musk, Tesla Chairman, Product Architect and CEO, speaks at the Automotive News World Congress in Detroit, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2015. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya) Paul Sancya/AP

CEO/CTO, SpaceX; CEO, Tesla Motors; chairman, SolarCity

Elon Musk has been busy. Last summer he announced he would be building a SolarCity plant in Buffalo, New York. The facility will be "one of the single largest solar panel production plants in the world," Musk said.

In addition, Musk announced he’d be building a five-mile-long Hyperloop track in Texas, designed for companies and students to test his design for a super-fast transportation system that will move people at 500 miles per hour in little "pods." Another Hyperloop track is set to be built starting in 2016, halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Advertisement

Tony Fadell, 46

Tony Fadell, nest, sv100 2015
In this handout image supplied by Sportsfile, Tony Fadell, Founder of Nest, speaks on the centre stage during Day 2 of the 2014 Web Summit at the RDS on November 5, 2014 in Dublin, Ireland. (Photo by Stephen McCarthy / SPORTSFILE via Getty Images) Stephen McCarthy/Getty

Nest Labs CEO, Google

When Google ended its Glass Explorer program in January, many presumed it was the end of the experiment. However, Google Glass — which builds wearable computers mounted on eyeglasses — is just getting started. The project was upgraded to its own department, now led by Nest CEO Tony Fadell.

Fadell will continue to run Nest, the home-automation company he cofounded, which Google purchased for $3.2 billion last year, while figuring out what’s next for Glass. In March, Google CEO Eric Schmidt hinted that the glasses might be on their way to the consumer market.

Advertisement

Shannon Liss-Riordan, 46

Shannon Liss-Riordan, sv100 2015
Shannon Liss-Riordan at her office in Boston. Lichten & Liss-Riordan

Employment-rights lawyer

Shannon Liss-Riordan, a Boston-based employment-rights lawyer, is leading the charge against Uber and Lyft. She has represented drivers from both companies who have filed lawsuits, alleging they’ve been misclassified as "independent contractors" when they should be classified as "employees."

Classifying workers as contractors is a common tactic for companies in the 1099 economy — it keeps them from having to deal with things like payroll taxes, job expenses, antidiscrimination protections, and overtime pay. In June, the California Labor Commission ruled that an Uber driver is an employee. Uber plans to appeal.

Advertisement

Yves Behar, 47

Yves Behar
Flickr/Fortune Live Media

Cofounder, August

Designer Yves Behar (known for designing the Jawbone UP fitness band) and his business partner Jason Johnson are out to take "the internet of things" by storm with a new app called August, which aims to make the house key obsolete. Using a lock, along with an app and Bluetooth, August can unlock your home and generate temporary keys that would allow plumbers, cleaners, or houseguests inside at specified times.

Behar and Johnson's product went on sale in the fall of 2014 and just raised a new $38 million round led by Bessemer Venture Partners to produce August en masse.

Advertisement

Peter Thiel, 47

peter thiel, founders fund, sv100 2015
Flickr/heisenbergmedia

Partner, Founders Fund; chairman, Palantir; founder, Thiel Fellowship; investor

Thiel started out as Facebook's first outside investor, and PayPal cofounder and CEO. In 2004 he cofounded Palantir Technologies, a computer software and services company specializing in data analysis. He also manages Founders Fund, a leading VC firm that's invested in startups like SpaceX, Yelp, RoboteX, and Spotify.

Thiel made waves in 2011 when he set up a fellowship to pay promising college students $100,000 to drop out of school to pursue startup ideas instead. Of the 84 students who've become Thiel Fellows, only eight have returned to college.

In April, startup incubator Y Combinator announced Thiel had become a part-time partner, joining Groupon founder Andrew Mason, Stripe cofounder Patrick Collison, and seven others.

Advertisement

Anthony Noto, 47

anthony noto, twitter, sv100 2015
Anthony Noto of Goldman Sachs speaks onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 at The Manhattan Center on May 1, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by Brian Ach/Getty Images for TechCrunch) Brian Ach/Getty

CFO, Twitter

Anthony Noto, a former Goldman Sachs banker, led Twitter’s IPO. In July 2014, he became Twitter’s CFO. When he arrived at Twitter, his annual salary was $250,000, and he received $64 million in Twitter stock (1.5 million shares), with the option to buy 5,000 more.

Noto has had a couple stumbles as CFO. In November he tweeted what was supposed to be a direct message about acquiring a company. He deleted it. In February, his Twitter account was hacked. Now that CEO Dick Costolo has decided to step down, Noto is on track to be one of the most powerful people at the company, although most insiders don't think he'll be picked as the next CEO.

Advertisement

Susan Wojcicki, 47

Susan Wojcicki, youtube, sv100 2015
Youtube CEO Susan Wojcicki speak onstage during 'Who Owns Your Screen?' at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on October 9, 2014 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for Vanity Fair) Kimberly White/Getty

CEO, YouTube

When Susan Wojcicki, a longstanding Googler and ad executive, was picked to run YouTube in early 2014, she had her work cut out for her. Her main job was to help YouTube monetize its audience more effectively. Part of that included finding ways for YouTube to promote its home-grown stars like Bethany Mota and the Epic Rap Battles duo and attract more high-quality and deep-pocketed advertisers to the service.

To help build out YouTube's tech offerings, Wojcicki has made a number of internal "hires." She also confirmed onstage at Re/code’s Code/Mobile conference in October that YouTube would explore the launch of an ad-free subscription service.

Advertisement

Jony Ive, 48

jony ive, apple, sv100 2015
Apple Senior Vice President of Design Jonathan Ive speaks onstage during 'Genius by Design' at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on October 9, 2014 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for Vanity Fair) Kimberly White/Getty

Chief design officer, Apple

Sir Jony Ive has played a huge part in Apple’s signature design for years, most recently with the release of the Apple Watch. The watch is Apple's first product in a new category since the company launched the iPad in 2010. It debuted to mixed reviews: Some analysts say people care less about it than even the iPod. An analytics firm estimates Apple has sold 2.79 million units of the Apple Watch since its debut in early 2015.

In May, Sir Jony, formerly Apple's senior VP of design, was promoted to the role of chief design officer. Two other Apple executives — Alan Dye and Richard Howarth — will take over Ive’s role starting this summer.

Advertisement

Rob Bearden, 48

Rob Bearden, HortonWorks, sv100 2015
Twitter/theCUBE

CEO, Hortonworks

Rob Bearden’s company, HortonWorks, went public in December. HortonWorks distributes and supports an open-source technology called Hadoop, which was invented at Yahoo to store and arrange huge amounts of web data on low-cost hardware.

Hortonworks priced at $16 on its opening day and jumped almost 50% to over $24. HortonWorks raised about $100 million and was valued at about $1 billion at the time it went public.

Advertisement

Bill Gurley, 49

Bill Gurley, benchmark capital, sv100 2015
Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital speaks onstage at the TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 at The Manhattan Center on April 29, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by Brian Ach/Getty Images for TechCrunch) Brian Ach/Getty

General partner, Benchmark Capital

As general partner at Benchmark Capital, Gurley invested in DogVacay, WeWork, Cyanogen, Uber, and many other startups — but he's also repeatedly warned of the impending "tech bubble" in Silicon Valley. In a SXSW keynote, he warned that Silicon Valley's optimism could lead to the demise of some of these $1 billion-valuated "unicorn" companies. It's unsettling for tech founders to hear, for whom achieving unicorn status is a badge of honor.

His latest battle cry is that the tech sector is in a "dry bubble," where lots of money is being poured into private companies but few liquidity events are happening.

Gurley is a board member of Uber, the world's largest private company worth $50 billion, and his firm is invested in $20 billion Snapchat.

Advertisement

Simon Khalaf, 49

Simon Khalaf, Flurry, sv100 2015
YouTube/InterWest Partners

President, CEO, Flurry

Last summer, Yahoo purchased mobile-analytics company Flurry for a substantial $200 million. Flurry's technology monitors mobile users' trends and analyzes how people use applications, potentially giving Yahoo an edge in mobile going forward. Yahoo has already added support for the Apple Watch to Flurry's analytics, letting app developers monitor how apps fare on the watch.

Before the acquisition, Flurry raised $73.3 million through eight rounds of funding.

Advertisement

Mark Pincus, 49

Mark Pincus, zynga, sv100 2015
Zynga CEO Mark Pincus speaks during the Zynga Unleashed event at the company's headquarters in San Francisco, California October 11, 2011. Social games company Zynga is betting an entirely new slate of games based on bingo, casinos and hidden objects will draw in fresh players as rivals circle its dominant position in games on Facebook. REUTERS/Stephen Lam Stephen Lam/Reuters

Cofounder, CEO, Zynga

Mark Pincus is back on top. Though he stepped down as CEO of gaming company Zynga less than two years ago, the billionaire resumed his CEO role in April. Pincus launched Zynga in 2007 and found success through well-known games “FarmVille” and “Words With Friends.”

However, the company failed to adapt to changes in the gaming landscape and its stock fell tremendously. But with Pincus back at the helm, things are shifting, and it looks like it’s for the better. Zynga beat earnings estimates for Q1.

Advertisement

Marc Benioff, 50

mark benioff, salesforce, sv100 2015
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - SEPTEMBER 19: Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff delivers the keynote address during the Dreamforce 2012 conference at the Moscone Center on September 19, 2012 in San Francisco, California. A reported 90,000 people registered to attend the cloud computing industry conference Dreamforce 2012 that runs through September 21. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) Justin Sullivan/Getty

Cofounder/CEO, Salesforce

More than just a self-made billionaire CEO, Marc Benioff is a force for equal rights. Recently he made headlines for his plan to ensure equal pay for both men and women at Salesforce, through which the company will examine the salaries of all 16,000 employees. "My job is to make sure that women are treated 100% equally at Salesforce in pay, opportunity, and advancement," he said.

He also made waves when he threatened to reduce the company's investment in Indiana after the state passed a law that allowed business owners to refuse service to gay married couples. Pressure from Benioff and other business leaders eventually helped convince Indiana lawmakers to revise the law. 

Benioff is regarded as a tech visionary, and his company continues to see record growth. Salesforce ended its last fiscal year with $5.37 billion in revenue, a major milestone for a 100% cloud-computing company. He's also a major force in his home town of San Francisco: The Salesforce Tower is under construction and will be the tallest building in the city when done, and a childrens' hospital named after Benioff opened earlier this year.

Advertisement

Megan Smith, 50

Megan Smith, CTO US government, sv100 2015
Wikimedia Commons

US chief technology officer

As the country's CTO, Megan Smith oversees IT policies and initiatives across every sector of the economy. Since taking the post last September — the first woman to ever hold the position — Smith has advised President Obama on decisions surrounding net neutrality, helped improve how technology was used in the fight against Ebola, and built a website dedicated to celebrating women in science in tech.

Smith's no stranger to the consumer side of the tech industry. Before joining the White House team, she served as vice president of Google's secretive Google X division

Advertisement

Andy Rubin, 52

Andy Rubin, google, sv100 2015
Google Director of Mobile Platforms Andy Rubin (L), T-Mobile Chief Technology Officer Cole Brodman (C) and Motorola Inc CEO Sanjay Jha display the new "Cliq" cellphone in San Francisco, California September 10, 2009. Motorola Inc on Thursday took the wraps off the new cellphone that uses Google's Android software and seeks to tap into the popularity of online social networks like Facebook and Twitter. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith Robert Galbraith/Reuters

Managing director, Playground Global

Andy Rubin, best known as the founder of Android — which Google bought in 2005 — left Google in the fall of 2014 to found a VC firm that will invest in robotics. Rubin was involved in robotics-related work at Google, but now he'll be providing hardware companies with the capital to go full-throttle in the robotics industry.

His venture, which he's calling Playground Global, has already raised a $48 million fund, and with Rubin as the managing director, and an A-list board of directors that includes ex-Googler Matt Hershenson, former Microsoft executive Peter Barrett, and WebTV cofounder Bruce Leak, hardware companies can start lining up for funding.

Advertisement

Tim Cook, 54

tim cook, apple, sv100 2015
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - MARCH 9: Apple CEO Tim Cook smiles in the product demonstration area after an Apple special event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on March 9, 2015 in San Francisco, California. Apple Inc. announced the new MacBook as well as more details on the much anticipated Apple Watch, the tech giant's entry into the rapidly growing wearable technology segment as well (Photo by Stephen Lam/Getty Images) Stephen Lam/Getty

CEO, Apple

Over the past year, Apple has rolled out two major new products under Tim Cook's leadership, the iPhone 6 and the Apple Watch. In addition, Apple has announced plans to break into music streaming with the launch of Apple Music. It also announced iOS 9 and rolled out a new line of MacBooks.

Last October, Apple CEO Tim Cook made waves and was lauded by activist groups when he came out as gay, becoming the first and only openly gay CEO in the Fortune 500.

Advertisement

Reed Hastings, 54

reed hastings, netflix, sv100 2015
Reed Hastings, founder and CEO of Netflix, attends a red carpet as Netflix launches its video streaming service in France in Paris September 15, 2014. Netflix will focus on ramping up in six new European markets in the next year, including France and Germany, before taking the video streaming service to additional countries, its chief executive said in an interview. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters

Cofounder, CEO, Netflix

Netflix has been crushing the online-streaming-video category. The company raised a $1.5 billion round of debt financing in February to produce more original contentWall Street also can’t get enough of it: When news broke in May that Netflix may be entering China, its stock jumped to an all-time high. A month later, its stock broke a new record.

Netflix has even partnered with Marriott Hotels so you can watch movies and TV shows from the Netflix app while on vacation. The company recently launched a new website design.

Advertisement

Angela Ahrendts, 55

Angela Ahrendts
Ian Gavan/Getty

SVP of retail and online stores, Apple

In spring 2014, Angela Ahrendts left Burberry, where she served as CEO, to go to Apple. There she was named senior vice president of retail and online stores. Ahrendts, who is Apple’s only female executive, made more than $70 million last year; that’s more than anyone else at Apple, including CEO Tim Cook.

Ahrendts also oversaw the rollout of the Apple Watch this spring, and it didn’t quite go smoothly. Instead of having a seamless, easy ordering process by letting people order online and in stores, the shipping date for many models of the Apple Watch was delayed for months. Apple even removed the April 24 availability date from the Apple Watch page on its website, signaling that there were major delays with shipping the device.

Advertisement

Meg Whitman, 58

meg whitman, hewlett-packard, sv100 2015
Meg Whitman, CEO of Hewlett-Packard, arrives for the first session of annual Allen and Co. conference at the Sun Valley, Idaho Resort July 10, 2013. REUTERS/Rick Wilking Rick Wilking/Reuters

Chairwoman, president, CEO, Hewlett-Packard

HP announced that it would be undergoing massive multiyear layoffs in 2012. Since then, the company has eliminated 48,000 employees. It's on its way to eliminating 55,000 by October. And in November, Whitman will split HP into two companies, and the layoffs will likely continue.

Whitman has also said she’ll be moving more jobs from HP’s Enterprise Services unit offshore after HP splits in two. Last year, Whitman got a $1.5 million raise and a $4.3 million bonus.

Advertisement

Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, 68 and 52

kara swisher, walt mossberg, re/code, sv100 2015
Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. Twitter/waltmossberg and Michael Kovac/Getty

Cofounders, Re/code

In May, Vox Media, which owns SB Nation and The Verge, bought Swisher and Mossberg's 18-month-old tech blog Re/code in an all-stock deal. Multiple sources told Business Insider at the time of the sale that the value of the deal was between $15 and $20 million, in addition to some stock incentives for Re/code's executives.

Swisher and Mossberg, the cofounders of Re/code, raised about $10 million from investors, including NBC Universal and Windsor Media. Business Insider was told the company was on track to generate $12 million this year largely from its conference business; the website pulled in only about 2.5 million monthly readers.

Despite the impressive revenue figure for such a young media company, Mossberg and Swisher noticed some disturbing trends in the media landscape that caused them to sell Re/code. Other websites, like Vox, had much larger audiences and had raised much more capital; Swisher and Mossberg would have had to give up their controlling stakes in Re/code if they wanted to remain independent.

They'll be continuing to break tech news for Vox under new leadership, and they'll help Vox build out a strong conference business.

Advertisement

Lynda Weinman, 60

Lynda Weinman
Lynda Weinman, co-founder of Lynda.com Wikimedia

Cofounder, Lynda.com

In April, online-learning website Lynda sold to LinkedIn. The deal, a $1.5 billion cash-stock blend, closed in Q1. Most of Lynda's employees joined LinkedIn following the acquisition, which lets LinkedIn's 350 million users access the platform for skill building and education, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner said.

Founded in 1995 by Lynda Weinman and her husband, Bruce Heavin, Lynda.com lets users learn business, technology, software, and creative skills through videos. People can access Lynda on their own, and corporations and schools can purchase subscriptions.

Advertisement

Jimmy Iovine, 62

Jimmy Iovine
AP

Cofounder, Beats Electronics

When Apple acquired Jimmy Iovine’s Beats Electronics in May 2014, Iovine joined Apple at an undisclosed position. Along with Eddy Cue, Iovine helped launch Apple Music, Apple’s music-streaming service. Apple announced the product in June on-stage at its big Worldwide Developers Conference.

Apple Music will allow users to stream from a catalogue of over 30 million songs found on iTunes along with curated playlists and music videos. It competes with streaming services like Spotify, Rdio, and Tidal.

Advertisement

Ed Lee, 63

ed lee, mayor san francisco, sv100 2015
San Francisco mayor Ed Lee (C) greets people as he walks through Chinatown on November 8, 2011 in San Francisco, California. Candidates for San Francisco mayor are making one last push to encourage people to vote as San Franciscans head to the polls to vote for a new mayor, district attorney and sheriff. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) Justin Sullivan/Getty

Mayor, San Francisco

Since he was first elected, Lee has aligned himself with the city's startup culture, visiting a new Silicon Valley-area startup every week. A survey conducted by Lee's administration found that, in general, San Franciscans really like the Silicon Valley tech industry and don't cite it as the main cause for the high cost of housing there.

Lee, who's up for reelection this year, found himself amid controversy a couple years ago when he gave rapidly expanding Twitter a tax break to move to a bigger office downtown rather than leave the city.

Advertisement

John Doerr, 64

John Doerr
AP/Matt Rourke

Partners, Kleiner Perkins

Kleiner Perkins has been a legendary venture-capital firm in Silicon Valley for decades, and John Doerr is its undisputed leader. He's been in the game long enough to invest in now-legendary giants like Amazon and Google. Over the past year, Kleiner Perkins has made investments in Slack, Snapchat, Instacart, secretive virtual-reality company Magic Leap, Uber, and others. Nineteen of its portfolio companies have gone public or have been acquired in the past year, including Lending Club and Dropcam.

Earlier this year, Ellen Pao, a former Kleiner Perkins partner and assistant to Doerr, brought a sexual-discrimination case against the firm. Kleiner Perkins successfully defended itself in trial, with testimony by Doerr helping along the way. Last week, Doerr sent an email to friends and partners apologizing for the distraction caused by the trial and lamenting that it's "so hard for women and minorities in the tech and venture industry."

Advertisement

Art Levinson, 65

art arthur levison, calico, google, sv100 2015
YouTube/National Medals

CEO, Calico

Calico is a company Google launched in September to try to cure death by tackling aging and illness. Headed up by Apple chairman and former Genentech CEO Art Levinson, Calico is focused on extending human life. To that end, it’s teamed up with  research-based biopharmaceutical company AbbVie.

In September, the companies announced a partnership to invest up to $1.5 billion to research, develop, and bring to market drugs that could help prolong human life by fighting age-related diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's.

Advertisement

John Thompson, 66

john thompson, microsoft, sv100 2015
Microsoft Chairman of the Board John Thompson smiles during the question and answer session of Microsoft Shareholders Meeting December 3, 2014 in Bellevue, Washington. The meeting was the first for Thompson as board chair. (Photo by Stephen Brashear/Getty Images) Stephen Brashear/Getty

Chairman, Microsoft; CEO, Virtual Instruments

John Thompson had a huge comeback in 2014 when he was named chairman of Microsoft. Thompson led the Microsoft CEO search committee, ultimately hiring Satya Nadella last year. He has been a huge proponent of Nadella, encouraging him to roll out initiatives at Microsoft.

Thompson got started at IBM and later became CEO of Symantec. He grew Symantec from $600 million to $6 billion in revenue when he left in 2009. Thompson is also the CEO of a five-year-old startup called Virtual Instruments, which offers software that helps big companies keep their most important applications from crashing. VI is on track to hit $100 million in revenue.

Advertisement

Larry Ellison, 70

Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison delivers the keynote address during the annual Oracle OpenWorld conference on September 30, 2014 in San Francisco, California.
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison delivers the keynote address during the annual Oracle OpenWorld conference on September 30, 2014 in San Francisco, California.. Getty

Founder and former CEO, now chairman and CTO, Oracle

Oracle founder Larry Ellison stepped down from his CEO role in September and was succeeded by Hurd and Catz, who took over as co-CEOs. Ellison remains as chairman and CTO of the company; Catz, who was previously co-president and CFO, is now the world's highest-paid female executive; Hurd has been with Oracle since 2010 and was previously the CEO of HP.

Catz and Hurd have a big vision for the direction of the company, and their stepping up led to the stock hitting an all-time high. While Catz has said there would be "no significant changes" in the company, Hurd points out that two CEOs are better than one as the company needs "a lot of leadership." Nonetheless, Ellison still quietly runs the show for the time being.

Advertisement
Close icon Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification.