Forbes Asia - October 2018

BEN STECHSCHULTE/REDUX;

New Media Mogul: November 5, 2012

50 | FORBES ASIA OCTOBER 2018

PLUS ÇA CHANGE

Closing Time

Edward Lampert was

desperately spinning o

Sears’ Hometown and Outlet

stores to generate cash. The

situation for the iconic retailer

was bad then—and has only

worsened. This year it’s closing

another 46 stores.

AT 35 , JACK DORSEY was running
two of the hottest startups in America:
Twitter and Square. In less than three
years, Twitter had gone from 30 million
monthly active users worldwide to 167
million, creating citizen journalists of
a sort who iled more than 400 million
tweets a day. Its revenue would top $300
million in 201 2. Square, meanwhile, would
end the year with $203 million in revenue
and would more than double that the next.
Rising valuations for the two companies gave
Dorsey a $ 1. 1 billion fortune, enough for him
to make he Forbes 400 for the irst time.
He already had his eye on something big-
ger, though. “I don’t think there has been any
recent revolution of our government or how we
think about running governments,” he told us.
“I would love to see technology help with that.”
Dorsey probably couldn’t have imagined
just how dramatically Twitter would end up
changing the tenor of American government.
Twitter is the president’s preferred communica-
tion method, of course, and has become one of
the world’s most powerful means of distributing
information. Square is less talked about, but more
successful inancially: Although Twitter’s revenue
fell in 201 7, Square’s continues to rise, increasing
30% last year to $2.2 billion. Dorsey is now worth
$6.3 billion.

FAST-FORWARD

To Bezos—and Beyond

2012: Amazon’s decision to

sell the Kindle Fire tablet at a

break-even price was weighing

on the e-retailer’s stock—and

on Je Bezos’ fortune, which

was then a mere $23 billion.

2018: That figure is now $160

billion after a breathtaking five-

year run in which Amazon

moved into markets such

as groceries, healthcare,

brick-and-mortar retail

and connected-home

devices.

SIGN OF THE TIMES
Guns Blazing
With President Obama in oice, firearm
owners rushed to stockpile weapons, fearing
he and Congress would introduce tougher
gun-control laws. That was good for gun
makers like Sturm Ruger and its CEO, Mike
Fifer (above); Ruger’s sales had more than
doubled in Obama’s first term, to $406 million.

FORBES ASIA

FROM THE VAULT

BY ABRAM BROWN