Businessweek profile of Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz

[BobHWS]

The story of the man behind the energy drink that funds Red Bull F1 and Torro Rosso:

Red Bull's Billionaire Maniac
Dietrich Mateschitz is making a bold move into TV, movies, and magazines. What's the visionary behind a $5 billion-a-year soft-drink empire doing in the media business? Just what he's always done: having a blast
businessweek.com
May 19,2011

Little known outside of his native Austria, Dietrich Mateschitz is one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our age, a man who single-handedly changed the landscape of the beverage industry by creating not just a new brand but a whole new category: the energy drink...

...Mateschitz owns four soccer teams: New York's Red Bulls (and their stadium), Red Bull Salzburg, Red Bull Brasil, and RB Leipzig. He also has a Nascar team and two Formula 1 racing teams. One Formula 1 team has on occasion been sufficient to cripple a billionaire's finances, but like everything at Red Bull, he finances the annual $200 million cost of his F1 teams out of the company's healthy operating income.

Mateschitz is Austria's richest man, and Red Bull is the biggest thing to come out of the place since, well, Arnold Schwarzenegger. California's former governor has an idea why Mateschitz is so successful: "He's a daring businessman, but he's also quite visionary for an Austrian, because he thinks in terms of the whole world. It's one thing to think that way in America, but it's much more rare when you come from a small country like Austria..."