Over the last few weeks, CB Insights, the tech market intelligence platform, has been running a weekly poll of their subscribers, in the style of the NCAA Basketball Tournament, to determine which technology executive was most admired. This week, the "champion" was finally announced, and it was none other than Elon Musk (Tesla and Space X), who handily beat Steve Jobs (Apple) in the final matchup. A well-deserved winner for all the game-changing businesses Elon is involved with, from electric cars to space travel. Anand Sanwal, the CEO of CB Insights, was kind enough to let me share the final bracket with all of you, below.
As you can see, this 64 entrepreneur field was loaded with talent, including the founders of many great technology companies, like Alibaba, Twitter, Netflix, Oracle, Airbnb, Dell, Snapchat and Paypal, to name a few. So, it was really like splitting hairs between all the talent on this list. What do you think? Did the voters get this right? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.
From my perspective, back in 2011, I detailed my entrepreneurial heroes, including my rationale for each one. That list included Steve Jobs (Apple), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Larry Page/Sergey Brin (Google), Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and Richard Branson (Virgin). All five of these guys made it to the Elite Eight in this tournament, so I very much agree with these results. I was only missing Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Marc Benioff (Saleforce), all legends themselves.
The winner, Elon Musk, would have definitely made my list, if I had written my post in 2016. But, I think I would have had Steve Jobs win this head-to-head battle based on sales results to date. I think Elon's vision is a lot bigger than Steve's, but the proof is still in the pudding, so to say. If he is successful in accomplishing his ambitious goals over the next decade, then I could definitely see making Elon the winner down the road.
If the above chart is hard to read, the original post can be found here on the CB Insights website. If you are not already subscribed to the CB Insights newsletter, subscribe from their home page, as their market research by tech sector is invaluable to the venture community. Thanks again, Anand, for letting us share this fun piece with our readers.
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