Entrepreneurs I admire

George Soros, Amancio Ortega, Stephan Schmidheiny…

George Soros

Some people hate hackers, I don´t. Indeed twenty years ago I was one. I used to hack telephone systems so I could call my girlfriend in Italy for free. Hackers expose faults in security systems generally before other thieves who could cause much greater damage (i.e. selling phoney calling cards rather than just calling girlfriend) come on line. Now Soros is a hacker. A hacker of the financial systems. A speculator who finds the cracks, the faults in the financial universe. The famous billion dollars he made speculating against the British Pound is a case in point. But other than a financial hacker of the highest order Soros is in my view the best entrepreneur and philanthropists in the world.

Also check out speeches and writings by George Soros.

Amancio Ortega

Amancio Ortega is the wealthiest man in Spain and one of the wealthiest in the World. According to Forbes he is worth around $10bn. His wealth comes from one source, the garment industry, Zara being his most famous clothing chain. Among Amancio´s peculiarities I would cite his aversion for the press and extremely secluded life, his dislike for advertising (Amancio has built the only large clothing company that does not advertise), his love for real estate that makes it such that when you buy Inditex shares now you are actually buying a ton of shops and buildings, his obsession with providing fashionable clothing at prices that people can afford. Amancio Ortega has been much more successful than Fidel Castro at bringing decent clothing to the masses.

Have a look at Amacio Ortega’s Foundation

Stephan Schmidheiny

Stephan is worth around $5bn according to Forbes. His story is peculiar. Stephan inherited a series of very environmentally unfriendly businesses in Switzerland and as opposed to what most heirs would have done, that is to extall the virtues of these businesses and fight environmentalists, Stephan sold them and became a champion of sustainable development. I admire Stephan because, not having any ties with Latin America, he chose that region as the main beneficiary of his philanthropy and has done a wonderful job. He and I are partners in Educarchile, the most successful of the two Educar efforts.

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