Business F1 Top 20 Petrolheads: Jon Shirley, The Luckiest Manager

Jon Shirley could have been an ordinary accountant that no one would have ever heard of, if he had not joined Microsoft in 1983 at the age of 45 to give organizational structure to a company run by three guys in their early 20s. The three boys Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Steve Ballmer were running the startup they had started seven years earlier in college in a typically chaotic way and made it grow amazingly.

With the prospect of going public, they urgently needed fiscal order and Jon Shirley, who was 18 years older, was selected to make it happen. It took him three years to meet the stringent goals of the listing, which took place on Nasdaq with a value of $750 million in March 1986. Shirley had done his job and was rewarded with shares that Business F1 estimates to be worth about $30 million at the time. Eighteen years later, when he retired from Microsoft's board at age 70, those shares were worth $600 million.

When he retired, Steve Ballmer said, "We are grateful for his incredible leadership and dedication." Those who know Shirley know that words were never more accurate. At that point classic car collecting completely replaced his job and gave rationality to a journey that took him through automotive history. Although today he has begun selling some of the cars in his collection, he is still ranked as the 33rd most important collector in the world in the 2023 edition of "The Key" published by the Classic Car Trust, run by Fritz Kaiser.