Tony Xu is a Chinese-American entrepreneur. He is known as the CEO and co-founder of DoorDash. Tony is also a known donator of left leaning political causes. In the year 2021, Tony became one of Stand With Asian American’s most significant supporters by donating 10 million dollars. Tony’s donation went to various Asian American organizations that strive to fight hate crimes committed against Asian Americans. Tony was born in Nanjing, China in 1985. When Tony was 5 years old, he and his mother immigrated to the United States. Tony’s mother was a doctor in China but could not continue to practice medicine so she was required to work several jobs to support her and Tony. One of these jobs was the role of a waitress at a Chinese restaurant where Tony would later work as a dishwasher. Something else interesting about Tony is that Tony Xu is not his birth name. Tony had his name legally changed so that he could have a name that was easier for westerners to pronounce. Tony chose his name from a character in his favorite TV show, “Who’s The Boss”, Tony Danza. While attending Stanford University in 2012, Tony and a few close classmates established a food delivery service that would become DoorDash. Tony has said that his inspiration to start the company came from his time working as a dishwasher in the same restaurant as his mother. Over the course of a decade, DoorDash became more and more popular and by 2022 it had become the largest food delivery service in the United States. Tony chose to make the company public in December of 2020, which made him a billionaire.

Mark Zuckerburg was born in White Plains, New York on May 14, 1984. Since he was young, Mark demonstrated talent with computers. After taking a programing course at the university near his home, Mark developed a instant messaging platform which his father would use in his office. Mark was 12 years old. Mark would later go on to enroll at Harvard University but would drop out during his sophomore year to focus his time on creating a social media platform, Facebook. Facebook was originally two separate platforms called FaceMash and HarvardConnection.com, which Mark co-founded. FaceMash was a website that would rank enrolled Harvard students based on attractiveness and HarvardConnection.com was for students to use for social networking. In 2004, Mark was sued by his co-founders, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss and Divya Narendra on the grounds that Mark had stolen intellectual property from their website. This scandal came to an end in 2008 with Mark paying the settlement of $65 million dollars and granting stock options to the Winklevoss twins. The twins attempted to reanimate the case in 2011 but it did not proceed to the courtroom.  Since then, Mark has reached across the tech world and dipped his toes into virtual reality through his company, Meta. However, Meta has caused some problems for Mark in the form of consumer data being leaked or sold. In 2018, reports that Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm, had paid a 3rd researcher to illegally collect the sensitive and private data of over 50 million Meta users. A month later, Facebook released that 87 million users had their data incorrectly shared with Cambridge Analytica. At the end of April 2018, Mark had to testify before America’s House and Senate committees. Mark denied involvement as he had not been aware of this issue until it was reported in the press. Mark declared that Facebook would implement safeguards to prevent any similar issues arising in the future. Mark Zuckerberg is regarded as a trailblazer in the social media world. Facebook is now the number 1 most used social media platform across the world with nearly three million monthly users. Mark demonstrated that through willpower, determination, and plenty of bumps along the way, you can turn a talent into a successful business.