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For the September issue of WIRED we surveyed our extensive network to identify the 100 most influential people in our world, across Europe. Ahead of the issue hitting newsstands on Thursday 6 August, we are publishing 25 profiles everyday. Here are numbers 100 to 76:
25
Tech/Investment/Web Co-founder, Yandex, Moscow
In Russia you don't Google, you Yandex. The search engine is responsible for 57 per cent of all Russian search-engine traffic, leaving Google in second place on 34 per cent. Volozh, 51, who founded the company in 1997 and remains its largest individual shareholder, has a net worth of over $1.7bn.
24
Web/Politics Minister for Internet Safety and Security, London
After two and a half years as the head of Tech City and David Cameron's digital adviser, Baroness Shields, 53, had returned to the private sector. However, post-election, her friend the Prime Minister has promoted her to a role as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State.
23
Investment Venture capital, London
The company's recent $10 million fund with Shenzhen-based UAV maker DJI underlines Accel's reputation for strategic investment in emerging markets. Renowned for its early backing of Facebook, it led the B round of French ridesharing startup BlaBlaCar, which is now valued at $1 billion.
22
Gaming Co-founder and CEO, Supercell, Helsinki
Mobile gaming is booming and 37-year-old Paananen's company, now 73 per cent owned by Softbank, is leading the way with its tablet-based products. In 2014, the company generated $1.7 billion in revenue with three blockbuster games: Clash of Clans, Hay Day and Boom Beach.
21
Web/Politics European Union Data Protection Supervisor, Brussels
Watch out, tech giants: the 58-year-old Italian judge was appointed to lead the EU's data-protection organisation in December last year -- just as the EU began to redraft its rules. He has stated his commitment to innovation, but also said that "big data requires big data protection".
20
Tech/Social Co-founder, Founders Forum, London
Hoberman's Founders Forum is a key European networking gathering. Hoberman, 46, was awarded a CBE last year and helped get tech entrepreneurs behind the Conservative party. In April he launched the F Factor, a competition offering 14- to 25-year-olds the chance to win £10,000 for a business idea.
19
Investment Venture capital, London
Index has made investments in some of the biggest names in tech, including BlaBlaCar and Etsy, and is looking towards a mobile-first world with a new $400m smartphone-focused fund. In 2013, only two Silicon Valley competitors had an equal or better performance on billion-dollar exits.
18
Events CEO, Web Summit, Dublin
In November 2014, Dublin's Web Summit, which Cosgrave, 31, co-founded in 2010, registered more than 22,000 attendees. In 2015, Cosgrave further expanded it with the launch of sister events in Hong Kong and Las Vegas and an event about finance in Belfast in June 2015. His speakers have included Bono and Eva Longoria.
17
Social/Gaming Founder and CEO, King Digital Entertainment, London
Over the last 12 months, 48-year-old Zacconi has steered Candy Crush makers King through a tepid IPO and back into investors' hearts. Though first-quarter results were not as strong as a year earlier, the $604 million profit was still a three per cent increase on the previous three months.
16
Other Director, Wellcome Trust, London
Under 53-year-old Farrar, an infectious-diseases expert, the trust will spend more than £800m advancing medical research in 2015, putting it behind only the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The trust is a founding partner of the Francis Crick Institute for biomedical research, about to open in St Pancras.
15
Investment Ventures Europe Investor, London
In February 2015, Google Ventures' European arm made its first investment -- leading a $60 million round in Kobalt, the UK firm that ensures songwriters get money from streaming. The European VC team has $125m to invest, so its partners -- including Tom Hulme and Avid Larizadeh -- get their calls returned.
14
Computing/Tech CEO, ARM, Cambridge
ARMprocessors power almost every smartphone -- but CEO Segars, 47, wants to take on malnutrition and disease. He has backed projects in STEM education, and is working with UNICEF to bring the benefits of wearable tech to children across the globe. But it's the £16.6bn company's consumer tech that gives him his influence.
13
Investment Founder, Mail.ru; investor, Moscow/California
The 53-year-old Russian VC travels 200 days a year to meet the founders of the companies he invests in, a portfolio that includes WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and Alibaba. In 2015, his fund DST Global was involved in a $400m investment in India ride-sharing startup Ola Cabs.
12
Web/Retail CEO, Adyen, Amsterdam
Van der Does, 45, is the co-founder, CEO and president of Adyen, which he launched in 2006. It handles 187 currencies for 3,500 firms across the world, including Facebook, Dropbox, Airbnb, Netflix, Spotify and Groupon. At the end of 2014, Van der Does raised $250 million, which values the company at $1.5 billion.
11
Web/Social/Design Director of Global Platform Partnerships, Facebook, London
Codorniou, 38, oversees the apps in the social network, a role that has significant influence on their success. His attention has been on developers outside Silicon Valley, such as the Beijing-based caricature app MomentCam, which won Facebook's first FbStart app competition in March 2015.
10
Web Google president of EMEA business and operations, London
Former Olympic rower Brittin, 46, joined Google as head of direct sales in the UK in 2007. In February, he was promoted to VP responsible for its EMEA business and operations. He has already announced an investment of $25 million to teach digital skills to a million people by 2016.
9
Apps Founder, Spotify, Stockholm
Ek has revamped Spotify (again) over the past year. Now the music-streaming platform hosts podcasts and videos from renowned media partners including Vice and MTV. And the new Spotify app adjusts the beat of your playlist to your running. But can the 32-year-old survive a new assault from Apple?
8
Design Designers, London and Copenhagen
Heatherwick's work with Denmark's Ingels, 40, on Google's new US and UK HQs is exciting the Valley's power brokers. Even scaled back from its original plans, their proposed US Googleplex will comprise 55,277m2 of flexible, translucent canopies.
7
Tech/Telecoms Founder, Free/42, Paris
Niel's influence in France is second to none: the 47-year-old is the founder of one of the country's leading ISP and mobile operators, Free, and co-owner of Le Monde. He's launched tech college 42, which aims to produce 60 graduates a year. The mission continues: in 2016, he'll unveil 1000 START-UPS, the largest ever digital-business incubator.
6
Apps General Manager UK, Ireland & Nordics, Uber, London
Bertram, 32, is behind Uber's successful expansion to London, a city that Travis Kalanick, Uber's CEO, described as the "Champions League of transportation": the taxi firm provides over a million rides a month there. She now has to tackle allegations of tax avoidance.
5
Tech/Other Facebook vice president for EMEA, London
Mobile is the main priority for Mendelsohn, 44. Facebook now has more than 100 million users in Africa alone, 80 per cent accessing the social network on mobile devices. Its internet.org project, which in the past year was launched in Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia, is driving much of that growth.
4
Web/Other CEO, WPP, London
Sorrell's salary became news in 2014 when it was revealed the 70-year-old's compensation was £43 million -- the highest amount of any FTSE 100 company CEO by far. Since then, WPP has bolstered its position as the largest advertising group in the world by continuing to make acquistions. And Sorrell does have 179,000 staff.
3
Politics Eu Commissioner for Competition, Brussels
In April 2015, Vestager, 47, filed a complaint against Google for anti-competitive behaviour. It was the result of a five-year investigation initiated by Vestager's predecessor, Joaquín Almunia, after Microsoft and other companies first made antitrust allegations. Can she tame the giant?
2
Tech/Computing/Design Chief Design Officer, Apple, California/UK
Apple's emphasis on the design and feel of its products puts Ive's role on a par with CEO Tim Cook's. The 48-year-old is considered the world's most high-profile designer of hardware and software. That doesn't stop him quietly returning to the UK, most recently for Goodwood's cars.
Turn to the next page to find out who's topped the list in the The 2015 WIRED 100...
By David Rowan Editor, WIRED
1
Investment/Web/Apps CEO, Rocket Internet, Berlin
Oliver Samwer is determinedly telling WIRED why the 33,000 employees in Rocket Internet's 30 companies across 110 countries are but a pixel on a spreadsheet of his ultimate ambitions. "I hope in ten years when we achieve 250,000 employees that I'm going to say the goal is one million, ja?" the 42-year-old CEO of Berlin's Rocket Internet startup machine says in a machine-gun-fire response when your correspondent manages to corner him in Berlin. "You plant seeds. You already know you have, say, 3,500 people in Africa. Will you have in ten years 10,000? No way. There will be maybe 40,000 people."
Samwer does not make time for journalists – his response when WIRED requested an interview was curt: "As you know we focus all of our time on building great companies. Unfortunately I am too much working currently [sic] and need to focus." When we persuaded his team that, as the individual nominated by our network as the single most influential European in WIRED's annual list, he should at least accede to a photograph, he reluctantly granted a (repeatedly rescheduled) nine-minute cover shoot. So the odds are low, when WIRED arrives at the Noah conference in Berlin in mid-June, that Samwer, scheduled to give a late-afternoon keynote, will be available to answer questions about his extraordinary, hyper-scaling, systematised, controversy-generating company-building empire. But then a strange thing happens. A speculative text message leads to a phone call and then a two-minute warning that Samwer is after all available to meet WIRED. And he's ready to clarify a few popular misconceptions about his business. "Our company is built on very simplistic virtues," Samwer begins, a Rocket media handler looking on in an otherwise empty VIP tent. "We had success because we worked very hard, because we tried to grow more global faster, because we tried to run faster, because we tried to think ten per cent smarter." When he and his brothers Marc and Alexander began exploring online businesses in California back in 1994, you had to be "an Einstein" to be part of the internet revolution. "But we stand for the type of analytical entrepreneur who could have been a lawyer, could have been working for a big company if he hadn't started an internet company. Maybe [we should demolish] the myth of internet building -- it's also something that relatively normal people can achieve with relative success."
The sons of two Cologne lawyers, the Samwer brothers returned from their Silicon Valley sojourn ready to bring West Coast business models to Europe much faster than their originators. In 1999 they launched a German eBay-like auction business called Alando, which they famously sold to eBay for $50 million (£30m) within 100 days of its going live. They launched a Facebook-ish social network called StudiVZ in 2005, which Holtzbrinck Ventures bought two years later for $85 million. Soon they were gaining a reputation for cloning Pinterest (as Pinspire), YouTube (MyVideo), Twitter (Frazr), Airbnb (Wimdu), Groupon (CityDeal) and Birchbox (Glossybox). By the time this magazine covered their parent business, Rocket Internet, as "the clone factory" in 2012, Oliver Samwer had gained a reputation as a ruthless, if sometimes insensitively brash, CEO: his image had not been burnished by an email he had sent some lieutenants the previous October headed "when is it time for blitzkrieg". "I will die to win and I expect the same from you," he told staff building an international furniture business. "The time for the blitzkrieg must be chosen wisely, so each country tells me with blood when it is time. I am ready – anytime! I do not accept surprises. I want this plan confirmed by all three of you: you must sign it with your blood."
That, though, was before Rocket became respectable: when it announced its intention in September 2014 to float on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, Samwer sent a more measured email to all staff explaining his mission to build "one of the world's greatest internet companies". "For Rocket, being global is the big prize," he wrote. "Innovation never stops... we must win. To lead in our industries we have to innovate every day in providing the best services for our customers... Our strength is not in any single company or country. Our unique power is being the platform that brings it all together, and makes all the individual businesses possible. And the power of this platform is just getting started."
The IPO on October 2, 2014, raised €1.6 billion (£1.1bn), and made the Samwer brothers billionaires; now the business is finalising a move to a new 22,000m2 HQ building in Berlin's Kreuzberg district overlooking Checkpoint Charlie, from where it will be the "platform" that links companies such as HelloFresh and Foodpanda in food, Dafiti and Lamoda in fashion, Lazada and Linio in e-commerce, and Westwing and Home24 in home and living.
Rocket's website declares its mission as "to become the world's largest internet platform outside the United States and China" -- yet there was never any grand plan, nor any particular vision, Samwer says. "We didn't have that vision. This entire word 'vision' always sounds very far away. When I hear, 'What's your vision, what's your misison, what's your strategy?' -- I think for us basically we would like to be very successful entrepreneurs in the internet space and have a very big impact on lots of people and markets and countries. With Jeff Bezos, Jack Ma, I think they never expected to be that big either." As he told WIRED three years ago: "We are builders of companies, we are not innovators."
So he's not particularly bothered by the accusations of cloning others' original ideas. "Even Edison said [success was] 99 per cent perspiration, one per cent inspiration," he says now. "Are you really sure that of all the supermarkets in the UK, they all invented the same? I've never read a story that Tesco is the clone of Asda. Everyone has the chance to pick up ideas – and most people don't pick up. It's the difference between waking up -- which is easy -- and getting up, which is difficult. Your children have no problems to wake up. It's harder to make your children get up."
Oliver Samwer speaks quickly and firmly, and offers few opportunities for interruptions. "I would have an easier life if it was all easy?" he continues. "It's damned difficult. Would I love to be the very first ever in the world with an idea? Yes, maybe. Do I lose sleep over it? No. I like what I'm doing. We try to build successful companies that are sustainable, that are market leaders, that provide great service to customers. Maybe one day people will write, 'He didn't invent many companies, but he invented one,' and maybe the business model of Rocket will be one day be declared pioneering, an original idea."
In aiming to be "the home screen of the world", Rocket's original idea is to identify, then build, then scale businesses in e-commerce, marketplaces, finance-tech and travel more quickly and aggressively than anyone else. It divides the businesses it launches (or invests in) into "proven winners" -- such as fashion retailer Lamoda and home-interiors business Westwing; "emerging stars" -- payment gateway Paymill and home-cleaning firm Helpling; and "concepts" -- laundry service ZipJet and carpool platform Tripda. It has "Regional Internet Groups" in Africa, Asia Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East to take a new business quickly into any territory where Berlin sees the numbers working.
Rocket gives you access to a network of experts, help in setting and scaling up the business, and access to capital," says Stefan Smalla, co-founder of interiors- commerce business Westwing in his Munich office. "That makes them great investors. It's not this romantic game building e-commerce – it's super expensive, and you need a boatload of capital to get it going." In four years, Rocket has helped Westwing scale to 15 countries from Brazil to Kazakhstan, with 1,600 employees and, as of 2014, €183m in revenue, growing at 66 per cent year on year. Part of the benefit is the centralisation of best practice: "We were looking at rolling out HR software, so we contacted Rocket, and got access to a few benchmarks of good products," Smalla says. "There are email lists such as CTO @ Rocket, product @ Rocket -- experts who run stuff across the Rocket portfolio, who can help."
Very often, Rocket will develop a business model internally and then go on to recruit its founders, typically management consultants such as Paul Philipp Hermann, formerly of the Boston Consulting Group and now co-founder of real-estate-listings business Lamudi. "I had the advantage of [launching with] a proven business model, of having a lot of help with fundraising, and lots of contacts," Hermann says. "We launched in late 2013 and are currently in 33 countries -- last January we were launching a new country every two weeks. They take a lot of the risks out – and provide an environment where you can thrive and learn. We have regular calls with Oli -- we go through our numbers, our KPIs, our planned strategy – and we meet four times a year in the office to go through things in more detail. You do realise it's not 100 per cent your company -- but then again, if I had launched alone, I'd be in a ten-person startup, scared of running out of cash tomorrow. Rocket gives you an unfair advantage."
One criticism often made of the Samwers is that businesses are structured so as to minimise the founders' upside, thereby hindering the growth of an ecosystem where wealthy founders re-invest. Samwer naturally disputes this. "Nobody created as many millionaires outside the US and China as us. Maybe we didn't create multibillionaires yet, but let's look at how many multibillionaires there are anyway in non-US and non-China tech. Microsoft was once a millionaire factory. We're not a factory yet, but we've filled several school classes, and there are multimillionaires and also multi-hundred millionaires there."
Increasingly, prospective founders are responding to the benefits of being inside the machine. "In Germany you really need it because the culture is so antagonistic to startups that a factory approach makes such a difference," according to Christian Grobe, who went from McKinsey to co-founding peer-to-peer lending business Zencap. "A lot of our McKinsey friends don't think about going to big companies like Mercedes now – they want to launch a startup in Berlin with Rocket. The downside is that you're expected to deliver your numbers from day one. There's no trying-out period."
Samwer is blunt, too, about his mistakes. "I invested in Facebook at $15bn and sold it at $15.5 because I was scared," he tells Marco Rodzynek on stage at Noah. "I missed the chance to invest in Delivery Hero at $10m; the list is very long." He also pulled out of Turkey after losing money in a series of businesses. "I don't regret it. You learn. There's no transformation if you don't try. In the same year we entered 27 markets; yes, Turkey didn't work, but 26 worked. I'm so focused on what's next I can't start crying at the past. "The most important thing is that you chose the right business model. Then it's all about being number one in this business. You'll have a period when you'll have substantial significant losses as you build enough of a critical distance from number two, three, four. Being number one and giving everything to become that is very important. It's speed, but also the detail, the focus on the operations, the loyalty of the customers. It comes down to the normal virtues – hard work, thinking a little faster, smarter, going more international, and being a little braver and luckier."
And his founders know he won't give them any slack. "Oli's passionate, no bullshit, straight to the point," says Christian Grobe. Paul Philipp Hermann agrees: "I've never seen someone more passionate about what he's doing. He really, really wants to succeed in whatever he does. He schedules 12-hour phone sessions when he has companies on the call for 20 minutes one after the other. Who does that?"
"He's driven, loyal, aggressive, but he honours people who do good," says Paymill's Mark Henkel. "In Europe, in my eyes, Oliver Samwer is the internet: I guess that drives you. He's also someone who fears failing. I don't think what drives him is money.
He wants to prove that this company is a real company."
At Noah, Samwer likens himself simply to a baker. "I bake a cake out of three things: ideas, people and capital. I do that every day, and there's always a shortage of one."
So what are his remaining ambitions? "We would like to be involved in many, many of the winners in Europe, Latin America, Russia, South Asia, India, Australia, the Middle East and Africa," he says without pause. "I'm now 42; I've got quite a few years still to go. When I look at [Rupert] Murdoch, when I look at [SoftBank's] Masa Son in Japan, who has a 300-year business plan -- I'll be in this business for my whole lifetime. That means still many years to come. I want to sit here in five, ten, 25 years -- and hopefully we'll be a lot bigger."
David Rowan is editor of WIRED. He wrote about DeepMind in 07.15
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
