5. Ingram Micro
> Year founded: 1979
> Industry: Computer hardware
> Sales: $34.6 billion
> # of employees: 15,650
> Fortune 100 rank: 75
Micro D was founded in 1979, and Ingram Computer was founded in 1982. The two merged to form Ingram Micro (NYSE: IM) in 1989. Built off a series of strategic acquisitions, the company expanded its business from the United States to become one of the biggest global distributors of software and IT services. The company went public in 1996, a
nd is now a $34 billion, 15,600 employee corporation.
4. Cisco Systems
> Year founded: 1984
> Industry: Communications equipment
> Sales: $40.0 billion
> # of employees: 71,825
> Fortune 100 rank: 62
Cisco was founded in 1984 by Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner in San Jose, Calif. The company’s first specialty was internet routers. While it was not the only or first company to produce routers, it certainly was one of the most commercially successful in the early days of the internet, leading to Cisco’s premiere on the Nasdaq exchange in 1990. Over the next 20 years, Cisco developed into the dominant provider of business networking infrastructure.
3. Dell
> Year founded: 1984
> Industry: Computer hardware
> Sales: $61.5 billion
> # of employees: 100,300
> Fortune 100 rank: 41
Dell (NASDAQ: DELL), originally called PC’s Limited, was founded by current chairman and CEO Michael Dell while he was still a student at the University of Texas at Austin. Dell began building personal computers out of his dorm room, although the company did not design its own model, the Turbo PC, until 1985. In 1988, with growing popularity, the company changed its name to Dell Computer Corporation and had its initial public stock offering. It exploded from a $1,000 small business to an $85 million enterprise in just four years. The company’s success grew as it branched into other home computer devices, including printers and laptops.
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2. Amazon.com
> Year founded: 1994
> Industry: Internet retail
> Sales: $34.2 billion
> # of employees: 43,200
> Fortune 100 rank: 78
Amazon.com was founded as an online bookstore in 1994 by current chairman and CEO Jeff Bezos. Unlike many of the new internet-only companies of the early 1990s, Amazon’s strategy was slow growth, which was one of the reasons it survived the dot-com bubble burst around the turn of the century. Amazon has since expanded its selection to every kind of consumer good available on the market. Amazon also sells the Kindle e-book reader, which overtook the competition to eventually dominate the market.
1. Google
> Year founded: 1996
> Industry: Search engine
> Sales: $29.3 billion
> # of employees: 31,353
> Fortune 100 rank: 92
Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is the youngest company on the Fortune 100. Founded just 15 years ago at Stanford by (then students) Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the company’s original search engine was called BackRub. In 1998, the pair renamed their engine “Google” and began working out of a garage in Silicon Valley. In 2004, Google had its initial public stock offering, and, with a reportedly superior search algorithm, it survived the dot-com bubble when a dozen other major search companies went bankrupt. Over the past decade, Google has expanded its site to include a variety of tools, including the popular email service Gmail. It also produces the popular Android smartphone operating system.
-Michael B. Sauter, Douglas A. McIntyre
