We spend a lot of time with crazy startups at WIRED -- meeting insanely ambitious mission-driven founders, as well as those running horribly boring businesses that happen to generate billions in revenue. Our team mines events from Berlin to Budapest in search of the next Skype or Supercell, and we've got pretty good at cutting through the hype to identify who you need to know about. If we were VCs, we'd be charging you 20 per cent on any upside of our tips, plus healthy percentage fees to fill the office with lab-grown truffles.
This month, we reveal the 100 most influential individuals in the wider WIRED world, as nominated by more than 200 people in our network. The only rules for nomination to the WIRED 100 are that the individuals must have a strong European connection, if not a base here; and they are being judged on their influence today, rather than historic achievements or funding raised.
For the WIRED 100, as in each of the past five years, we wanted to identify not success nor wealth, but influence: that special ability to touch the culture, to build scalable success, to connect millions of people. From investors to inventors, engineers to e-commerce innovators, we collated hundreds of suggestions on little paper tabs (paper!) on our office walls, and with the input of the WIRED team put them in order. We excluded anyone from Condé Nast for avoidance of conflict, as well as names not closely linked to Europe.
Discover the full 2015 WIRED 100 here
- Read our full profile of Martha Lane Fox (no. 50) here
- Read our full profile of Frédéric Mazzella (no. 49) here
- Read our full profile of Miki Kuusi (no. 32) here
- Read our full profile of Pieter Van der Does (no.12) here
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
