Lei Jun

Four years after building its first smartphone, Beijing based Xiaomi is valued at $45 billion. How Xiaomi got to that point, though, says less about its products (which get only so so reviews) than its founder. From the start, Lei rebuffed industry convention selling online only, giving users a strong voice on software changes, and hawking phones for a third of an iPhones price. That, it seems, is how you get to be the worlds fifth ?largest smartphone maker overnight.