Tech's highest-paid young CEOs

Gone are the days when one had to wait for `grey hair days' for that 10-digit salary. Today's corporate world boasts of a breed of young CEOs taking home 10-digit salaries.

And little surprising that leading this pack of young guns are techies. In fact, the biggest boost to the trend came during 2000 tech boom when 30-something techies set up technology businesses.

However, as the boom went bust, there has also been a fall in the number of these young czars. According to a recent Forbes report, since the height of the tech boom in 2000, the number of CEOs aged 45 or younger at the helm of the 500 largest publicly traded US companies has dropped to 28 from 60, and just three haven't yet reached their 40th birthdays.

Here's meeting up with the young techies who are still holding fort and guarding their places in the highest paid CEOs list.

Nabeel Gareeb, MEMC Electronic Materials
Topping the list of highest paid CEOs is 43-year-old Nabeel Gareeb of Pakistani origin, CEO of chipmaker MEMC Electronic Materials since April 2002 with a total compensation package of $79.6 million.

Gareeb joined MEMC as CEO in April 2002. Gareeb's appointment came after Texas Pacific Group purchased the company from its German owners in 2001 and recapitalised the business.

Prior to joining MEMC, Gareeb was the Chief Operating Officer of International Rectifier Corporation, a leading supplier of power semiconductors, where he was responsible for worldwide operations, research and development and marketing.

He joined International Rectifier in 1992 as Vice President of Manufacturing and subsequently held other senior management positions. Gareeb immigrated to US from Pakistan more than 25 years ago. He holds an MSc in engineering management, and a Bachelors in electrical and electronic engineering.

Jen-Hsun Huang, Nvidia
Second on the list is Nvidia Corporation co founder Jen-Hsun Huang. Huang founded graphic chip maker in April 1993 today commands a pay packet of $45.9 million. He has being President, Chief Executive Officer, and a member on Nvidia's Board since its inception.

Under his leadership, Nvidia emerged as a leading name in programmable graphics processing technologies and one of the semiconductor industry's largest fabless companies.

Huang also serves on the Rand Corporation's Board of Trustees and is a member of the Committee of 100, an organisation that addresses issues concerning the Chinese-American community and US-China relations.

Prior to founding Nvidia, Huang held engineering, marketing and general management positions at LSI Logic, and was a microprocessor designer at Advanced Micro Devices.

Huang holds a BSEE degree from Oregon State University and an MSEE degree from Stanford University.

Jonathan Schwartz, Sun Microsystems
Jonathan Schwartz, chief executive officer and president of Sun Microsystems is the third highest-paid young tech CEO with an annual package of $13.5 million. A member of Sun's board of directors, Schwartz became company's CEO in 2006, succeeding the Sun's co-founder and current chairman of the board, Scott McNealy.

Schwartz was promoted to president and chief operating officer in 2004, and managed all operational functions at Sun -- from product development and marketing, to global sales and service.

A leader behind many of Sun's open source and standard setting initiatives, Jonathan's been an outspoken advocate for the network as a utility with more than just value for the computing industry -- but as a tool for driving economic, social and political progress.

Prior to his position as COO, Schwartz served as Sun's executive vice president for software, its Chief Strategy Officer, and held a variety of leadership positions across product and corporate development.

He joined Sun in 1996 after the company acquired Lighthouse Design, where he was CEO and co-founder. Prior to that, Schwartz was with McKinsey & Co. Schwartz received degrees in economics and mathematics from Wesleyan University.

Shantanu Narayen, Adobe Systems
Forty-four-year old electronics engineer from Hyderabad, Shantanu Narayen, became Adobe's CEO last year. His annual compensation is at $12 million.

Narayen joined Adobe in January 1998 as Vice President and General Manager of Adobe's engineering technology group. In January 1999, he was promoted to Senior Vice President, Worldwide Products and in March 2001 he was promoted to Executive Vice President, Worldwide Product Marketing and Development.

In January 2005, Narayen was promoted to President and Chief Operating Officer of Adobe. Prior to joining Adobe, Narayen co-founded Pictra Inc in 1996.

Together with the ex-CEO Bruce Chizen, Narayen spearheaded the $3.4 billion acquisition of Macromedia Inc in 2005, expanding Adobe's software platform and solutions and strengthening the company's presence in key markets ranging from enterprise and vertical industries to mobile devices and multimedia publishing.

Narayen is a frequent speaker at industry and academic events. He serves on the Advisory Board of the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley.

Narayen holds a bachelor's degree in electronics engineering from Osmania University in India, a master's degree in computer science from Bowling Green State University, and a master's degree in business administration from the Haas School of Business.

Dara Khosrowshahi, Expedia
At no. five is CEO of Expedia Dara Khosrowshahi with a total compensation package of is $4.9 million.

Founded as a division of Microsoft in October 1996, Expedia was spun off in 1999. The company was later purchased by USA Networks in 2001.

The 39-year-old Khosrowshahi became CEO of Expedia when it spun off from IAC/InterActiveCorp (IAC) in August 2005. He joined IAC in 1998 as vice president of strategic planning. Prior to this he worked at Allen & Company LLC from 1991 to 1998, where he served as vice president from 1995 to 1998.

Khosrowshahi received a BA in engineering from Brown University in 1991.

Francisco D'Souza, Cognizant
At no. six is thiry-nine-year old Francisco D'Souza, president and chief executive officer of Cognizant. D'Souza who has been the company's President and CEO since January 2007 has an annual compensation package of $3.7 million.

Prior to this he was the Chief Operating Officer for Cognizant's global delivery, marketing and sales, business development and client services operations. He has also led the company's North American and European operations.

Earlier, Francisco held key positions at The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation in marketing, strategic planning and new business development in Germany, US and India.

Born in Kenya, he has Bachelors degree from the University of East Asia. He has also done MBA from Carnegie-Mellon University.

How to boost Windows XP performance

Heard Microsoft is readying its next operating system, one that will be free of those Vista 'complexities'? Happy with your dear Windows XP? How about adding some power to it?

Here are some simple tips and tricks to boost up your Windows XP performance.

Defragment your hard drive

One of the easiest way to boost up XP's speed is defragmenting your hard drive regularly.

Defragmenting drive organises all data so that it can be read continuously. The process compiles files scattered at multiple locations on the hard drive, making it faster to retrieve files. This helps your operating system run faster and search files faster.

To defragment go to Programmes click Accessories then System Files and click System Defragmenter and Run this application. The process should be done at least once every week.

Disable Windows Index Service

Windows XP by default indexes files on local and network drives to speed up the file search process.

However, this slows the PC performance as it indexes files continuously. But if you don't use the service regularly it is better to disable the process.

To turn off, go to Control Panel and click Administrative Tools and click Services. Now, click on the option stop Windows Index Service.

Remove unused Fonts

You may face trouble or delay in loading XP if you have too many fonts installed. Your Windows XP boot-up time may increase or applications that display font previews may take longer to render all the fonts.

To remove the unused fonts access Windows XP Fonts Control Panel. Click on a font to remove, or select multiple fonts and press Delete button.

The less number of fonts, the faster programmes like Office and other graphics will load.

Use XP Powertoys

Wanna add some power to your Windows? How about some PowerToys to speed up the functionality to your Windows experience. PowerToys are primarily additional programmes that developers work on after a product has been released.

Some of the interesting PowerToys to add to your Windows XP experience are: SyncToy, ClearType Tuner, Virtual Desktop Manager, Alt-Tab Replacement, Tweak UI, Webcam Timershot and CD Slide Show Generator.

SyncToy can help users copy, move and synchronise files from different devices such as digital cameras, cell phones, portable media players, camcorders and PDAs.

Virtual Desktop Manager helps users manage up to four desktops from the Windows taskbar. This power toy is quite similar to the Spaces in Apple OS Leopord. This programme helps in segregating different types of applications and switch between them.

Remove unwanted start-up programmes

First and foremost clean up the programmes that you do not wish to start. Over a period of time, many programmes get installed on your system that hog on the system resources. Such programmes run automatically when you boot up your system. So remove these programmes as they reduce the startup speed and consume system memory.

There are also chances that spyware programmes, viruses and trojan horses get installed into the automatic start locations on your system. Always check what is running on your system every time when you load your PC. It is better to disable programmes that you either don't need or don't identify.

The easiest way to remove unwanted startup programmes is go to Start then run and type 'msconfig'. This will give you a list of applications that are started at boot up and are running in the background.

Windows XP's Disk Cleanup

This Windows XP utility helps free up disk space. The cleanup process involves searching and analysing the hard drive for files that are no longer of any use. It then removes the unnecessary files, freeing up disk space on the hard drive.

XP users can use Disk Cleanup to remove temporary Internet files, remove downloaded programmes files, empty the Recycle Bin, remove Windows temporary files, remove optional Windows components and remove installed programmes that are no longer in use.

Meet top 10 Web billionaires

The dotcom boom ushered in the new-age entrepreneurship and with it came a new set of billionaires. Billionaires who have brought their start-ups a long way from their ‘garage’ days.

Many of them pioneers in their space, these online companies have today evolved into popular global brands and the key people behind them deck up the global rich list.

Forbes recently released its annual list of 34 innovators who made their billions through the Internet. Incidentally, the 2008 list also includes three Indians: Indiabulls' Sameer Gehlaut, Party Gaming founder Anurag Dikshit and co-owner of Indian job site Naukri.Com, Kavitark Ram Shriram.

Here' a profile of the top 10 billionaires who made their fortune from the Web.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google
Topping the Web billionaires list are the Google duo Sergey Brin and Larry Page with a net worth of $18.7 billion and $18.6 billion respectively.

Brin, the president and head of Google's technology division, started Google along with Page in 1998 out of a friend's garage. Moscow-born Brin received a Bachelor of Science degree with honours in mathematics and computer sciences from the University of Maryland.

He is currently on leave from the PhD programme in computer science at Stanford University, where he received his master's degree. Brin continues to share responsibility for day-to-day operations along with Page and Schmidt.

Larry Page is Google's founding CEO and grew the company to be the behemoth it is today. In 2001, he moved into his role as president, products. Son of a computer science professor at Michigan State University, Page's love for computers began at age six. He earned a Bachelor of Science in engineering from the University of Michigan.

Despite getting Eric Schmidt (chief executive of Google) on board, Page is still credited with being intensely involved in company's affairs. He is said to go through CV of every employee before the person is hired at Google even today.

Jeffrey Bezos, Amazon
Jeffrey Preston Bezos, founder, president, CEO and chairman of Amazon.com has a net worth of $8.2 billion.

Inspired by the amazing power of Internet, Bezos created a business model that leveraged Internet's ability to deliver huge amount of information efficiently. In 1994 he founded Amazon.com, an online bookshop. Amazon tried to compete with brick and mortar shops on three counts: lower prices, authoritative selection and a wealth of product information.

In 1997, Amazon went Public, and expanded from selling books to an online retailer with a vast portfolio of goods. Bezos started his career with Fitel, a start-up that was building a network to conduct international trade. The Princeton University graduate later went on to work as a financial analyst for DE Shaw & Co before founding Amazon in 1994.

In 2004, he founded a human spaceflight startup called Blue Origin. Bezos also has a personal investment company called Bezos Expeditions. He was named Person of the Year by Time magazine in 1999.

Though Amazon as a company may not inspire the awe, it did during its heydays, Bezos still has his name intact among the most venerable tech honchos.

Pierre Omidyar, eBay
Father of online auction, Pierre Omidyar founded eBay. Ranked at no. 4 in the Web billionaires list, Omidyar's net worth is $7.7 billion.

French-born computer programmer, Pierre developed fascination for computers in high school and graduated from Tufts University in 1988 with a degree in Computer Science. After graduation he worked for Claris, a subsidiary of Apple Computer, developing software for the Macintosh.

In 1991, he co-founded Ink Development Corp with three friends. The company included an Internet shopping segment and was later renamed eShop Inc. In 1996, eShop was sold to Microsoft.

Intrigued by the technical problem of establishing an online venue for direct person-to-person auction of collectible items, he created a simple prototype on his personal Web page, and launched an online service called Auction Web in 1995. The revenue soon started pouring, with business expanding by word of mouth. In 1997, Omidyar changed the company’s name to eBay.

Eric Schmidt, Google
Chief executive of Google Eric Emerson Schmidt ranks at no. 5 with a net worth of $6.6 billion. Schmidt joined Google from Novell, where he led the company's strategic planning, management and technology development as chairman and CEO.

Prior to his appointment at Novell, Schmidt was chief technology officer and corporate executive officer at Sun Microsystems Inc, where he led the development of Java, Sun's platform-independent programming technology, and defined Sun's Internet software strategy.

Before joining Sun in 1983, he was a member of the research staff at the Computer Science Lab at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), and also held positions at Bell Laboratories and Zilog. He is generally acknowledged as the one who catapulted Google from being a promising tech company to a universal ‘God of Internet'. Schmidt has a degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University, and a Master's and PhD in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Jeffrey Skoll, eBay
eBay's first president and second-largest shareholder, Jeffrey Skoll has a net worth of $3.6 billion.

He served as director of eBay from December 1996 to March 1998. An Internet pioneer, Skoll served as eBay's vice president strategic planning and analysis in February 1998, its president from August 1996 to February 1998.

One of the eBay cofounders, Skoll left the company and turned his attention to making movies and philanthropy. He was executive producer of North Country, starring Charlize Theron, and two George Clooney films, including Syriana. Skoll was also the executive producer of An Inconvenient Truth, the global-warming documentary that featured former Vice President Al Gore.

Skoll served as channel marketing manager for Knight-Ridder Information Inc, an online information services company, from July 1995 to July 1996. Prior to this, Skoll served as president of Skoll Engineering, a systems consulting firm, that he founded.

He was also the co-founder of Micros on the Move, a computer rentals company, as an adjunct to Skoll Engineering in 1990. He also serves as director at Community Foundation Silicon Valley and Ingenio Inc.

Graduating in BASC Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto, he later pursued MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Shi Yuzhu, ZTgame
Founder of China's third-largest online games company, Zhengtu, Shi Yuzhu has a net worth of $2.8 billion.

He recently listed the company on NYSE Euronext. Almost half of his fortune comes from stakes in financial institutions China Minsheng Banking and Huaxia Bank.

Shanghai's richest resident, Yuzhu was born in Huanyuan of Anhui Province. He graduated in Mathematics from Zhejiang University in 1984 and pursued software master degree from Shengzhen University.

A few years later, he made his first million by selling his own software, and established the company Giant Group in 1991. Later in 1996, due to the over investment in Giant Building project and mismanagement, the Company fell into abyss of finance.

Yuzhu later become an expert in capital operation, and paid back to the public small investors in Giant Building project. In 2004,Yuzhu sold his production technology, assembly line and brand by 1.2 billion Yuan RMB.

Hiroshi Mikitani, Rakuten
Hiroshi Mikitani is the man behind online shopping mall Rakuten, one of the Japan's most popular Web destination. With a net worth of $2.6 billion, Mikitani is Japan's leading Internet entrepreneur.

Mikitani last year moved his company's headquarters from chic Roppongi neighborhood into cheaper bayside Tokyo. He reportedly treats employees to free meals with extra money. He also plans to launch e-commerce business in Taiwan. Mikitani is an MBA from Harvard University.




Mark Cuban, Broadcast.com
Next on the list is Mark Cuban, the founder of Broadcast.com, HDNet, and several other companies. With a net worth of $2.6 billion, Cuban has also been an angel investor for several startups including SlideShare, Goowy, RedSwoosh, Box.net, Weblogs Inc and Mahalo.

Having worked as a bartender and a salesperson, Cuban started MicroSolutions in 1986, a systems integrator and software reseller. In 1990, Cuban sold MicroSolutions to CompuServe, then a subsidiary of H&R Block for $6 million.

In 1995, he started Audionet with a fellow friend, which later became Broadcast.com in 1998. During the dotcom boom, Broadcast.com was acquired by Yahoo for $5.9 billion in stock.

A passionate basketball fan, Cuban bought Dallas Mavericks, an NBA basketball team, from Ross Perot in 2000 for $285 million. He also serves as a chairman of HDNet, an HDTV cable network. Cuban also plans to build his media empire.

David Filo, Yahoo
The tenth richest Web billionaire is David Filo with a net worth of $2.5 billion. Co-founder of Yahoo Inc, David Filo met Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang as Stanford grad student.

A native of Moss Bluff, Louisiana, he co-created the Yahoo Internet navigational guide in April 1994 with Jerry Yang. Filo is credited of having bought 40 per cent stake in Alibaba.com for $1 billion in 2005.

Filo serves as a key technologist, directing the technical operations behind the company's global network of Web properties. He is credited with helping build Yahoo into the world's most highly trafficked website and one of the Internet's most recognised brands.

Filo holds a BS degree in computer engineering from Tulane University and an MS degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University.