David Sarnoff: High Tech Business Guru or SOB?
David Sarnoff’s rags to riches story reads like something straight out of a Horatio Alger novel. Starting as an impoverished immigrant from a Russian shtetl, Sarnoff grew RCA and NBC into the first high tech media empire.
Sarnoff’s family immigrated to America in 1900 when he was just nine years old. He learned English, hawked Yiddish newspapers, and completed the eighth grade. Instead of going to a college preparatory school as he aspired, he was forced to go to work to help support his family. He set out to get a job with a major newspaper, but through a series of accidents ended up working for Marconi America.
Sarnoff soon demonstrated the moxie that would take him all the way to the top…