Jerry Yang

(http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/10/R4Q2.html)

Jerry Yang was born in Tapei, Taiwan, on November 6, 1968. Yang lived with his mother, brother and father but his father died when Yang was two years old. He moved with his mother and brother to San Jose, California, at age ten. Yang claimed that despite his mother teaching English, he only knew one English word, shoe. After taking only 3 years to master the English language, Yang was advised to take AP English courses in high school. Yang graduated from Sierramont Middle School, Piedmont Hills High School, then went on to receive his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University.

Jerry met a man named David Filo while at Stanford. Both would surf the Web at night in an effort to organize their late-night fun. This is how they came up with the idea of the Yahoo! directory to help their Stanford pals to locate cool websites. The two men today have one of the most successful brands on the internet. This makes Jerry Yang worth 2.2 billion dollars.

"We were just trying to take all that stuff and organize it to make it useful. As it became more popular, it became pretty clear we would have to get more people involved." Today, about 120 people have joined Yang and Filo in the Yahoo!