By Stefania Aulicino
Tony Hsieh spent more than a decade building Zappos from on-line shoe retailer into an e-commerce powerhouse. In November 2009 he sold it to Amazon for $1.2 billion and stayed on as CEO under new ownership at a salary of $36,000 in order to keep his dream alive.
Bill Linton founder of Promega Corp, an innovator in the life sciences industry, spent the last 32 years growing his company in excess of $260 million in sales with 200 patents, 2000 products, 1000 employees, 14 branches and 50 global distributors operating in 90 countries. Promega is a privately-owned company with 400 shareholders, most of them employees of the company.