People
Founders and leaders we've studied. Click through for detailed profiles.
Beyoncé
Singer, songwriter, businesswoman, and cultural icon.
Alex Hormozi
Alex Hormozi is an entrepreneur known for transforming business strategies and mastering high-ticket sales through comp…
Jeff Bezos
Founder of Amazon, which grew from an online bookstore to the world's largest e-commerce and cloud computing company.
Napoleon Bonaparte
French military leader who conquered most of Europe.
Kobe Bryant
NBA legend who spent 20 seasons with the LA Lakers, winning 5 championships.
Warren Buffett
Chairman & CEO of Berkshire Hathaway.
Julius Caesar
Roman general, statesman, and dictator who conquered Gaul, crossed the Rubicon, and reformed Rome before his assassinat…
Andrew Carnegie
Steel magnate who built Carnegie Steel (later U.S.
Coco Chanel
Founder of Chanel and revolutionary fashion designer who liberated women from corsets, popularized the little black dre…
Winston Churchill
British Prime Minister who led the UK through World War II.
Cleopatra
Last active ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt.
Marie Curie
Physicist and chemist who discovered polonium and radium.
Walt Disney
Co-founder of The Walt Disney Company.
Thomas Edison
Inventor and businessman who developed the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the practical electric light bulb…
Albert Einstein
Theoretical physicist who developed the theory of relativity (E=mc²).
Henry Ford
Founder of Ford Motor Company.
Benjamin Franklin
Founding Father, inventor, diplomat, printer, scientist, and polymath.
Bill Gates
Co-founder of Microsoft and former richest person in the world.
Alexander the Great
King of Macedon who created one of the largest empires in history by age 30, stretching from Greece to northwestern Ind…
Jay-Z
Rapper, songwriter, and entrepreneur.
Steve Jobs
Co-founder of Apple, Pixar, and NeXT.
Michael Jordan
Six-time NBA champion with the Chicago Bulls and widely considered the greatest basketball player of all time.
Genghis Khan
Founder of the Mongol Empire, the largest contiguous land empire in history.
Abraham Lincoln
16th President of the United States who preserved the Union during the Civil War and abolished slavery with the Emancip…
J.P. Morgan
Banker and financier who dominated American finance in the Gilded Age.
Mozart
Austrian composer widely regarded as one of the greatest in Western music history.
Elon Musk
Founder/CEO of SpaceX and Tesla.
Jesus of Nazareth
Central figure of Christianity.
Joshua Kushner
a legacy independent of family ties while prioritizing relationships and ethical conduct.
Isaac Newton
Physicist and mathematician who discovered gravity, the laws of motion, and invented calculus.
Pablo Picasso
Spanish painter and sculptor who co-founded Cubism and became the most influential artist of the 20th century.
John D. Rockefeller
Founder of Standard Oil, which controlled 90% of US oil refining.
Theodore Roosevelt
26th President of the United States.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Bodybuilder (7x Mr.
Socrates
Greek philosopher considered the father of Western philosophy.
Steven Spielberg
Film director who created Jaws, E.T., Schindler's List, Jurassic Park, Saving Private Ryan, and many more.
Taylor Swift
Singer-songwriter and one of the best-selling music artists of all time (200M+ records).
Mark Twain
Author of 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' and 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.' Known as the 'father of American literat…
Leonardo da Vinci
Italian polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, scientist, engineer, and inventor.
George Washington
First President of the United States and commander of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.
Andre Agassi
Tennis legend who won 8 Grand Slam titles.
Marc Andreessen
Co-creator of Mosaic (first widely-used web browser), co-founder of Netscape, and co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz (a1…
Maya Angelou
Poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist.
Joan of Arc
French peasant girl who, claiming divine guidance, led the French army to several decisive victories during the Hundred
Sam Altman
Sam Altman co-founded OpenAI and has significantly influenced the landscape of artificial intelligence and startup cult…
Bernard Arnault
Chairman & CEO of LVMH, the world's largest luxury goods conglomerate (Louis Vuitton, Dior, Moët, Tiffany, etc.).
Mary Kay Ash
Founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, a direct-sales beauty empire.
Jane Austen
English novelist whose works — Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma — became some of the most beloved in th…
Johann Sebastian Bach
German composer and musician of the Baroque period, widely regarded as one of the greatest composers in Western music h…
Hannibal Barca
Carthaginian general considered one of history's greatest military commanders.
P.T. Barnum
Showman, businessman, and founder of the Barnum & Bailey Circus.
Marc Benioff
Founder & CEO of Salesforce, the cloud computing company that pioneered SaaS (Software as a Service).
Sara Blakely
Founder of Spanx, the shapewear company she started with $5,000 in savings.
Michael Bloomberg
Founder of Bloomberg LP, the financial data and media company.
Josephine Bonaparte
Empress of France as wife of Napoleon.
Anthony Bourdain
Chef, author, and TV host.
Richard Branson
Founder of Virgin Group, which spans 400+ companies including Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Records, and Virgin Galactic.
Sergey Brin
Co-founder of Google (now Alphabet) with Larry Page.
Brené Brown
Research professor, author, and speaker.
Jimmy Buffett
Singer-songwriter who turned 'Margaritaville' into a $1B+ lifestyle empire spanning restaurants, resorts, alcohol brand…
Tory Burch
Fashion designer and founder of Tory Burch LLC, a global fashion brand valued at ~$3.5B.
Augustus Caesar
First Roman Emperor.
James Cameron
Film director behind Terminator, Aliens, Titanic, and Avatar — the two highest-grossing films in history.
Ed Catmull
Co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios and former president of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation.
Charlemagne
King of the Franks and first Holy Roman Emperor.
Yvon Chouinard
Founder of Patagonia, the outdoor clothing company known for environmental activism.
Francis Ford Coppola
Film director who created The Godfather trilogy, Apocalypse Now, and The Conversation.
Céline Dion
Canadian singer with one of the most powerful voices in music history.
MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson)
YouTube creator with 300M+ subscribers — the most on the platform.
Frederick Douglass
Escaped slave who became the most prominent abolitionist leader in America.
Bob Dylan
Singer-songwriter and Nobel Prize in Literature laureate.
James Dyson
Inventor and founder of Dyson Ltd.
Daniel Ek
Co-founder and CEO of Spotify, the world's largest music streaming platform with 600M+ users.
Larry Ellison
Co-founder and chairman of Oracle Corporation, the database and cloud computing giant.
Roger Federer
Swiss tennis player widely regarded as one of the greatest athletes of all time.
Enzo Ferrari
Founder of Ferrari, the iconic Italian sports car and racing company.
Richard Feynman
Nobel Prize-winning physicist known for quantum electrodynamics, the Feynman diagrams, and his work on the Manhattan Pr…
Lady Gaga
Singer, songwriter, and actress who became one of the best-selling music artists of all time.
Charles de Gaulle
French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during WWII and served as President of France (1959–1969).
Katharine Graham
Publisher of The Washington Post during Watergate.
Paul Graham
Co-founder of Y Combinator, the most influential startup accelerator in history (Airbnb, Stripe, Dropbox, Reddit).
Catherine the Great
Empress of Russia who expanded the empire, modernized the country, and made Russia a great European power during the Ag…
Ken Griffin
Founder and CEO of Citadel LLC, one of the world's most successful hedge funds, and Citadel Securities, the largest mar…
Andy Grove
Former CEO of Intel who transformed it into the world's largest semiconductor company.
Reed Hastings
Co-founder of Netflix, which transformed from a DVD-by-mail service into the world's largest streaming entertainment co…
Jimi Hendrix
Guitarist, singer, and songwriter widely considered the greatest electric guitarist of all time.
Ryan Holiday
Author and entrepreneur known for popularizing Stoic philosophy.
Jensen Huang
Co-founder and CEO of Nvidia, which became one of the world's most valuable companies by dominating AI/GPU computing.
Carl Icahn
Corporate raider turned activist investor.
Elizabeth II
Queen of the United Kingdom for 70 years — the longest reign in British history.
Ingvar Kamprad
Founder of IKEA at age 17.
Stephen King
Author of 65+ novels, many of which became iconic films (The Shining, IT, The Shawshank Redemption).
Henry Kissinger
US Secretary of State and National Security Advisor.
Phil Knight
Co-founder and former chairman of Nike.
Ray Kroc
Businessman who turned McDonald's from a single restaurant into the world's largest fast-food chain.
Estée Lauder
Founder of Estée Lauder Companies, one of the world's largest beauty and skincare conglomerates (Clinique, MAC, La Mer,
Ralph Lauren
Fashion designer who founded Ralph Lauren Corporation.
George Lucas
Creator of Star Wars and Indiana Jones.
Palmer Luckey
Founder of Oculus VR (sold to Facebook for $2B) and Anduril Industries (defense tech, valued at $14B+).
Jack Ma
Co-founder of Alibaba Group, China's largest e-commerce company.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Florentine diplomat and political philosopher.
Charlie Munger
Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett's partner for 60+ years.
Mansa Musa
Emperor of the Mali Empire, often cited as the richest person who ever lived.
Satya Nadella
CEO of Microsoft since 2014.
Friedrich Nietzsche
German philosopher whose works on power, morality, and the 'Übermensch' profoundly influenced Western philosophy, liter…
Christopher Nolan
British-American filmmaker known for The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk, and Oppenheimer (Best P…
David Ogilvy
Founder of Ogilvy & Mather and known as the 'Father of Advertising.' His campaigns for Dove, Rolls-Royce, and Schweppes
J. Robert Oppenheimer
Theoretical physicist who directed the Manhattan Project, creating the atomic bomb.
Rosa Parks
Civil rights activist known as 'the mother of the civil rights movement.' Her refusal to give up her bus seat in 1955 s…
Dolly Parton
Singer-songwriter, actress, and businesswoman.
Melanie Perkins
Co-founder and CEO of Canva, the graphic design platform valued at $40B+ with 170M+ monthly users.
Michael Phelps
Most decorated Olympian of all time with 28 medals (23 gold).
Rihanna
Singer and founder of Fenty Beauty and Savage X Fenty.
J.K. Rowling
Author of the Harry Potter series, which has sold 600M+ copies and spawned a $25B franchise.
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