William Ruane: the world’s greatest investors

William Ruane was born in October 1925 in Chicago. He graduated with a degree in engineering from the University of Minnesota and spent a brief time in the navy, followed by a short stint at General Electric. Hating life as an engineer, he decided to go to Harvard Business School, where he took a class in investing with Benjamin Graham, graduating in 1949. After two decades at investment bank Kidder Peabody he set up the Sequoia Fund in 1969, which he ran until his death in 2005.