If you don't yet know the six rising business stars in the following pages, you should. From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, they're helping to define Harvard's next generation of leadership.
Photograph by Coral von Zumwalt.Ali (left) and Hadi Partovi
Though twins Ali and Hadi Partovi, 35, live in separate cities—Ali in Piedmont, Calif., and Hadi in Seattle—they are never too far apart. Since college, each has either been employed by or at a start-up acquired by Microsoft. Hadi led the team that developed Internet Explorer; Ali co-founded LinkExchange, bought by Microsoft for $265 million in 1998.
Now they run iLike.com, a website that allows users to share and download music. With 13 million users worldwide, iLike ranks among the top five music websites and is the dominant music platform on Facebook. “They both have tremendous instincts for what works virally, how people like to be social online,” says Marc Bodnick, a managing director at Elevation Partners who is on the board of iLike. The greatest challenge so far? “Putting personal egos behind the company’s ego,” says Hadi.
Their parents brought the twins from Iran to Westchester, N.Y. when the boys were 11, then worked multiple jobs to put them through private school. At Harvard, the twins insisted on being placed in separate houses; both wound up rowing crew and concentrating in computer science. “Our parents infused us with the idea that you can accomplish anything,” says Hadi. A good thing, considering Ali’s aspiration for iLike: “To redefine the music industry.”
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