See how different Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and other tech CEOs looked when they first started their companies
Elon Musk today runs several more companies than he did in 1999, when the photo on the left was taken.
Mark Zuckerberg isn’t the only tech CEO whose style evolved over the years.
Other Big Tech leaders have significantly changed up their looks since starting their companies; some are nearly unrecognizable (remember the Jeff-Bezos-is-jacked memes?)
Here’s a look at the style transformations of some of tech’s biggest names:
Jeff Bezos
Amazon has come a long way from just selling books, and its founder, Jeff Bezos, is also very different today.
Bezos founded Amazon from his garage in Bellevue, Washington, in 1994. Decades later, gone are the photoshoots where he’s posing with a softcover while looking bookish.
Now, he’s gained pounds of muscle and changed his clothing style. He attributes his new look partly to working out with a celebrity personal trainer and changing his diet.
Mark Zuckerberg
Zuckerberg is currently in the T shirt-and-chain era of his fashion evolution.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook from his dorm room at Harvard in 2004.
Zuck, who famously wore the same thing every day to save brainpower for more important decisions, has said goodbye to that era. Instead, Zuck can now be seen sporting graphic tees and chain necklaces.
Like Bezos, he’s also gotten more fit. Part of Zuckerberg’s physical transformation stems from hobbies like Brazilian jiu-jitsu and MMA fighting.
Michael Dell
Dell is another member of the college dropouts-turned-tech founders club. He started his company while still enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin.
While you probably won’t catch him rocking a t-shirt to a professional event, he’s appeared to prefer to drop the glasses since then.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin
Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in 1998.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in 1998. They met as students at Stanford and built Google from a garage they rented from the late Susan Wojcicki, who was later YouTube’s CEO.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk today runs several more companies than he did in 1999, when the photo on the left was taken.
The photo at left shows Musk in 1999, around the time the “PayPal mafia” was formed.
Musk has said he doesn’t care for exercise and “almost never” works out, though he’s credited fasting and the weight loss drug Wegovy with his appearance today.
Bill Gates
Fun fact: The photo on the left is actually Gates’ mugshot from when he got a speeding ticket without his license in 1977.
Gates and the late Paul Allen cofounded Microsoft from a garage in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1975.
Gates left Microsoft’s board in 2020 and today spends more of his time focused on the philanthropic foundation he started with his now-ex-wife, Melinda French Gates.
Half a century later, he’s still rocking glasses — with some different frames.
Jack Dorsey
Dorsey has been sporting a beard in the years since he stepped down as CEO of Twitter in 2021.
Twitter was founded in 2006. Cofounder Jack Dorsey has been seen with a full beard pretty regularly since departing as CEO and focusing his efforts more on cryptocurrency at Block, formerly Square.
Richard Branson
At left is Richard Branson in 1969, one year before he started the Virgin brand.
Richard Branson started the Virgin brand in 1970 with a mail-order record business.
At 73 years old today, Branson’s day-to-day life still features plenty of exercise, from tennis and cycling to kite-surfing. As such, he’s usually sporting a tan.
Jack Ma
New photos of Ma are scarce as he’s been out of the limelight in recent years.
Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma disappeared from public view in 2020 after criticizing China’s financial regulation system.
He resurfaced in Thailand in 2022 and has been teaching as a visiting professor at the University of Tokyo.
Anne Wojcicki
Anne Wojcicki is the CEO of DNA testing company 23andMe and the younger sister of former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki.
Anne Wojcicki cofounded genetic testing company 23andMe in 2006. She is the younger sister of late former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki.
Whitney Wolfe Herd
Whitney Wolfe Herd became the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire after taking Bumble public.
Whitney Wolfe Herd co-founded Tinder before founding Bumble in 2014. She stepped down as CEO of the dating app last year.
Herd became the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world on the heels of Bumble’s IPO.
The entrepreneur currently serves as executive chairman on Bumble’s board of directors.
Evan Spiegel
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel was the world’s youngest billionaire in the year 2015, when he was 25 years old.
Evan Spiegel co-founded Snap, which owns services like Snapchat, in 2011. The company’s success made him the world’s youngest billionaire in 2015, when he was 25.
While he’ll often suit up or don a tux when attending a more formal event with his wife, Miranda Kerr, he’s often seen in a white or black t-shirt and jeans.
Reed Hastings
Reed Hastings cofounded Netflix in 1997 with Marc Randolph.
Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph cofounded Netflix in 1997 as a DVD-by-mail service provider before it would become the streaming giant it is today. Hastings gave up the CEO title in January 2023, though he still serves as board chairman.
More recently, you can catch him in snowboarding attire after he bought a ski mountain in Utah.
Sam Altman
Altman’s first startup was Loopt. Today, he leads OpenAI.
Altman is best known as the CEO of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, but his first startup was Loopt, a mobile service that allowed for real-time location sharing with friends.
The picture at left shows him in those days, circa 2006. In 2008, he was sporting two polo shirts with a double-popped collar on stage at Apple’s WWDC conference. 15 years later, however, he’s worn a tuxedo to the White House while continuing to keep it casual during interviews with more casual looks too.
