From founder to 500: 21 current CEOs who now lead empires
Leading a Fortune 500 company isn’t easy. Starting a new company and building it up to be one of the largest and most successful businesses in America is even harder.
But these 21 current CEOs are living proof that it isn’t impossible. Some were solo start-up creators, others co-founded a promising enterprise, and a few had to wait a few years between starting their companies and taking the helm.
Some of these current CEOs are still relatively young, heading up companies capitalizing on new and emerging trends like cryptocurrency and blockchain, with others having spent decades in their role steering companies that have now become institutions. Brian Armstrong’s cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase became the first crypto company to break into the list this year, despite virtual currency’s rough start to 2022 creating some serious headaches for Armstrong’s company.
Several of these companies are on a meteoric rise this year, such as electric car manufacturer Tesla, co-founded by current CEO Elon Musk. The company climbed 35 spots in this year’s rankings, as the electric vehicle industry continues to grow with Tesla at the head.
Other companies have recently made their founders new chief executives, such as FedEx’s Rajesh Subramaniam, or even welcomed back founders to the company as CEOs to handle a rapidly evolving business environment. Starbucks founder Howard Schultz returned to run the company for the third time last March, as the company navigates unionization demands from workers and even a possible foray into the NFT space.
The average age of the founder-turned-500 CEO was 54 years, with some as young as 37 and others as senior as 74. Despite the record-breaking year for women leading Fortune 500 businesses, all this year’s founders-turned CEOs are men, making this founder to CEO track another glass ceiling yet to be shattered.
Chief executive tenures have been becoming shorter in recent years. The average CEO spent 6.9 years in the role in 2020, down from eight in 2016, according to a 2020 survey by recruiting and consulting company M&A Executive Search. The trend carried on into the pandemic, with one report finding that 11.6% of 3,000 companies surveyed had a CEO change in 2020.
Which makes the founders-turned-CEOs of this year’s list stand out even more by bucking the trend and sticking with their companies through the good and bad times, sometimes for decades. Here are the 21 founders-turned-CEOs on this year’s Fortune 500
1. Mark Zuckerberg
Company: Meta (formerly known as Facebook)
Fortune 500 rank: 27
Year company was founded: 2004
CEO since: 2004
2. Michael S. Dell
Company: Dell Technologies
Fortune 500 rank: 31
Year company was founded: 1984
CEO since: 2007
3. Rajesh Subramaniam
Company: FedEx
Fortune 500 rank: 39
Year company was founded: 1971
CEO since: 2022
4. Elon Musk
Company: Tesla
Fortune 500 rank: 65
Year company was founded: 2003
CEO since: 2008
5. Richard D. Fairbank
Company: Capital One Financial
Fortune 500 rank: 108
Year company was founded: 1988
CEO since: 1994
6. Howard D. Schultz
Company: Starbucks
Fortune 500 rank: 120
Year company was founded: 1971
CEO since: 2022
7. Jensen Huang
Company: Nvidia
Fortune 500 rank: 134
Year company was founded: 1993
CEO since: 1993
8. Marc R. Benioff
Company: Salesforce
Fortune 500 rank: 136
Year company was founded: 1999
CEO since: 2001
9. Stephen A. Schwarzman
Company: Blackstone
Fortune 500 rank: 159
Year company was founded: 1985
CEO since: 2007
10. Mark D. Millett
Company: Steel Dynamics
Fortune 500 rank: 196
Year company was founded: 1993
CEO since: 2007
11. Jack Dorsey
Company: Block (formerly Square)
Fortune 500 rank: 208
Year company was founded: 2009
CEO since: 2009
12. Leonard S. Schleifer
Company: Regeneron Pharmaceuticals
Fortune 500 rank: 231
Year company was founded: 1988
CEO since: 1988
13. Niraj S. Shah
Company: Wayfair
Fortune 500 rank: 275
Year company was founded: 2002
CEO since: 2002
14. Ernest C. Garcia III
Company: Carvana
Fortune 500 rank: 290
Year company was founded: 2012
CEO since: 2012
15. Jeffrey C. Sprecher
Company: Intercontinental Exchange
Fortune 500 rank: 384
Year company was founded: 2000
CEO since: 2000
16. Marc Rowan
Company: Apollo Global Management
Fortune 500 rank: 386
Year company was founded: 1990
CEO since: 2022
17. Richard N. Barton
Company: Zillow Group
Fortune 500 rank: 424
Year company was founded: 2004
CEO since: 2019
18. Eric Wu
Company: Opendoor Technologies
Fortune 500 rank: 425
Year company was founded: 2014
CEO since: 2014
19. Brian Armstrong
Company: Coinbase Global
Fortune 500 rank: 437
Year company was founded: 2012
CEO since: 2012
20. Jure Sola
Company: Sanmina
Fortune 500 rank: 482
Year company was founded: 1980
CEO since: 2020
21. Robert L. Reffkin
Company: Compass
Fortune 500 rank: 495
Year company founded: 2012
CEO since: 2012
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