Leigh Gallagher - Fortune Zoom: Surprising Ways to Supercharge Your Career

By Marc Andreessen

By Leigh Gallagher

Kevin Plank

Katrina Markoff

John Janick

Marissa Mayer

Elon Musk

Meredith Whitney

Tony Hsieh

Larry Page, Sergey Brin

Eric Ryan, Adam Lowry

David Chang

Kevin Feige

Seth Macfarlane

Jennifer Hyman, Jennifer Fleiss

Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler, Charles Adler

Brian Chesky

Jess Lee

Kevin Systrom

Biz Stone, Ev Williams

Dolf Van Den Brink

Rob Goldstein

Aditya Mittal

Scott Harrison

Ben Rattray

Blake Mycoskie

Hosain Rahman

Boaz Weinstein

LeBron James

Where Are They Now?
The 40 Under 40 Class Lists

Additional Contributors

Omar Akhtar (Mycoskie)

Katie Benner (Whitney; Weinstein)

Ryan Bradley (Chen, Strickler, Adler; Rahman)

Erika Fry (Rattray)

Miguel Helft (Page, Brin)

Michal Lev-Ram (Hsieh)

Pattie Sellers (Mayer)

Anne VanderMey (Musk; Harrison)

Kurt Wagner (Ryan, Lowry)

By MARC AnDREeSSEN

S hortly after I got to know Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberga four-time Fortune 40 Under 40 alum whose company Andreessen Horowitz invested inI mentioned Netscape, the company I started when I was 23. He said, What did Netscape do, again?

I responded with a look of surprise, to which he replied, Dude, I was in junior high. I wasnt paying attention.

After the bruise on my ego faded, I realized this was an excellent response. It demonstrated that Mark was too young to be scarred by the dotcom crash and, more important, that he would not look to the past to dictate the future.

Thats a key trait for anyone transforming business today, and certainly a commonality among all of the esteemed people profiled in Zoom . Brian Chesky didnt emulate anything in the existing hospitality industry when he started Airbnb. Yancey Strickler and Perry Chen didnt borrow from other fundraising modelsin fact, they figured out a way to bypass the hurdles of traditional fundingwhen they built Kickstarter. Ev Williams and Biz Stone didnt consider the freeze on venture financing in consumer technology when they sought to raise money for Twitter. And Larry Page and Sergey Brin didnt copy anything about the 35 search engines before them, but instead said, We have a better idea.

These moments of defying convention, as well as the personal backstories of these incredible founders, are well researched and captured in this book. But its not just entrepreneurs in the traditional sense that Fortune s editors have chosen to assemble and analyze in these pages. Zoom also includes leaders in entertainment, athletics, and social good, as well as the determined individuals who are reinvigorating Fortune 500 companies. Perhaps most significant, the writers, having spent the past five years reporting on the most promising young luminaries, compiling the 40 Under 40 lists, and scrutinizing and decoding them, reveal insights and trends here that cannot be found anywhere else. Thats what makes this book so interestingand important.

After all, building a business is hard. Crazy hard. Things always go horribly wrong. And most companies fail. Only a very few win big. In venture capital, for instance, just 10 to 15 companies funded a year are responsible for 97% of the returns. We glorify the ones that create new products and industries, but startups are really more like sausage factories. People love eating sausage, but no one wants to watch the sausage get made. Even the most glorious startups suffer crisis after crisis after crisis. The individuals profiled here arent afraid to share that side of their stories: the mistakes, the missteps, the madness.

But the profiles in this book also demonstrate something else just as pivotal. Companies that succeed do so because of someone at the helm with an irrepressible visiona leader (or leaders) with principles, courage, and maniacal drive.