Inside the mind of a crazy (rich) entrepreneur

Scott Jones thinks up more ideas in a month than most folks do in a lifetime. Find out how he makes them pay. Photographs by Chris Mueller/Redux.

Jones (at his Indiana estate) works out new ideas, including one for the web.
Most folks in the Indianapolis suburb of Carmel know Scott Jones as "the guy who invented voicemail." In the early '90s Jones made about $50 million on his company, which created the predominate form of voicemail, and he "retired" at age 31. Over the past two decades this driven inventor has been generating ideas for new products and companies - some were successful, others hit the scrap heap - at a pace that would make Thomas Edison's head spin.

Jones's latest company, ChaCha, is developing a potential rival to Google - a search engine assisted by human experts who will help you find your answer.

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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.