The Most Talked about Tech CEOs of 2013

Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com

With an employment background firmly established with Oracle and Apple (two of the world’s most respected I.T. companies) it is unsurprising that Marc Benioff was destined for great things; it’s even less surprising that he makes top people and most talked about lists frequently.

Being the founding owner of salesforce.com, a now multi billion dollar company and an influencer in cloud computing, he makes a rather anticipated entry on the most talked about CEO list for 2013. Not only did he announce that Salesforce would be launching Salesforce1 (a brand new platform for mobile apps) but he additionally announced that Salesforce would be joining forces with Hewlett-Packard to provide a hybrid form of cloud computing.

Marissa Mayer, Yahoo 

Marissa Mayer is no stranger to high profile, high pressure jobs; for years she was a key spokesperson and executive for the giant that is Google. Being involved in the company growing from 20 employees to the world dominating search engine it is today, it was only a matter of time until she moved on to an even higher powered position.

Given that 2013 was Marissa Mayer’s first complete year as Yahoo CEO she has been considered as hot property in the world of media and interest has only increased as she progressed through her year with a series of high profile Yahoo acquisitions.

Her appearance as a most talk about CEO in 2013 will be surprising to none; she has consistently featured in one of the widest ranging list of publications ever graced by any CEO, such as Forbes magazine and Vogue, as well as blogs across the world.

She’s additionally attracted her fair share of criticism by controversially placing a ban on Yahoo mothers working at home. With a year like this Mayer’s newspaper column space doesn’t look set to go away anytime soon.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has never been one to shy away from innovation. The success of Amazon is much documented and the 10 million worldwide customers are testament to how effectively Amazon runs their business. However a lesser known interest of Bezos’, until 2013, was his company Blue Origin, which has, since 2000, aimed to make space travel a commercial reality. This company became more widely known this year following Bezos’ alleged talks with Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic. The idea of two entrepreneurial giants such as these joining forces is enough to capture the interest of the entire business world.

His appearance on this most talked about CEO list may additionally be down in no small part to his upcoming book: ‘The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon’. Given the incredible success of Amazon as not only a book store but much more besides, his insight into the Amazon machine was always going to attract interest. After all, who wouldn’t want a little bit of Bezos’ magic that has seen Amazon shares increase in value by over 220%?