The Largest Fortune 500 Company Still Led by Its Founder

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Mar 1, 9:30AM EST

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The Largest Fortune 500 Company Still Led by Its Founder — © jetcityimage / iStock Editorial via Getty Images

Many of America’s largest and most famous companies were led by their founders for years and even decades. The most well-known of these is Ford Motor Company, founded by Henry Ford, who ran it from 1903 until 1945, when he was forced out by his family. The family continues to control the automaker.

Some of America’s newer companies were run by their founders for years. Bill Gates of Microsoft was CEO from 1975 until 2000. He remains a large shareholder. Some of his contemporaries continue to run the companies they started. Larry Ellison started Oracle in 1983. He remains the company’s board chair.

Some of the largest companies in America are also run by their founders. Mark Zuckerberg is still the head of Facebook, which he founded in 2004. Jeff Bezos remains the chair of Amazon, which he founded in 1994. These companies have grown large enough that these founders are among the richest people in the world.

To determine the largest founder-led company in the Fortune 500, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed data on Fortune’s website. Fortune ranks public companies by their total revenue per respective fiscal year. Each company on our list was founded by its current CEO and was ranked based on annual revenue.
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According to Fidelity Investments, some investors believe that companies led by their founders have a competitive advantage. They believe founders have greater experience running the companies they have established, a stronger drive for success and an “incentive to take the long-view for the business.”

This perception that founder-led companies have an advantage may stem from the fact that these companies tend to be newer and more exciting, capitalizing on the latest innovations. The oldest existing U.S. company, Bank of New York Mellon, which was founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1784, is a stuffy stalwart compared to Tesla, the maker of high-tech electric cars at the vanguard of modern automobile electrification.

The largest founder-run company in the Fortune 500 is Amazon. Here are the details:

CEO (now chair): Jeff Bezos
Revenue: $386.1 billion
Fortune 500 rank: number two
Employees: 1,298,000

Click here to see all the largest Fortune 500 companies still led by their founders.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.