Everyone aspires to be rich someday – to be able to be debt-free and live a life of comfort and luxury. Though realistically most of us never make it, there are some young turks who break barriers, change things for the better and become the world’s richest citizens in the process. Here are the world’s youngest self-made billionaires.
1. Evan Spiegel
Social media may have begun with Facebook, but being able to share images with the whole world took a whole new meaning when Evan Spiegel decided to drop out of Stanford and start Snapchat. Today, the 25-year-old CEO of one of the largest mobile apps in the world is said to be worth a cool $2.1 billion dollars.
2. John Collison
When you hear the story of this young billionaire, you will be surprised at how much he resembles any college kid, though with the brain of a genius. He and his brother, Patrick together formed Stripe, an online payment portal for individuals and businesses, while he was still in school. Even though he received $5 million as start-up money at the age of 17, he still completed his education back home in Ireland. Stripe has received support from the likes of Elon Musk and Sequoia Capital and has made John worth an estimated $1 billion.
3. Mark Zuckerberg
There is no great list of the modern world that is complete without having to name Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. At age 23 he earned his first billion and is now estimated to be worth more than $45 billion, though he and wife Priscilla Chan are determined to use more than 90% of that amount for philanthropic purposes. Since Facebook is basically the go-to for every Internet connected human being, it looks like his net worth isn’t dropping any time soon.
4. Elizabeth Holmes
She is considered one of the most eligible bachelorettes and that’s because the Theranos Founder & CEO is estimated to be worth more than $3.5 billion. Another Stanford alumnus who made it big, Elizabeth’s company made blood testing much simpler for patients, due to her personal fear of needles. Though her company has faced a lot of criticism for its authenticity and practices, Elizabeth Holmes is still a prominent name on Forbes.
5. Dustin Moskovitz
It seems that being a part of Facebook has its benefits. We may only know the face of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, but there was another co-founder who still owns a stake in the company – Dustin Moskovitz. He left Facebook and created another platform used widely by businesses for streamlining their activities – Asana and all of these ventures earned him an approximate net worth of $9 billion!
6. Nathan Blecharczyk
Traveling with cheap stay has become much easier thanks to AirBnB. In fact, even celebrities like Beyonce have used these services to get the temporary home of their dreams. CTO of AirBnB, Nathan Blecharczyk is someone who grew up privileged but is like any other hardworking young executive looking to make life better for the rest of us. The Harvard graduate now heads the company’s Cuba initiative.
7. Eduardo Saverin
If you watched The Social Network, you would have felt bad for the Andrew Garfield character – Eduardo Saverin. Though it depicts that he was cheated by Mark Zuckerberg, he still remains a co-founder of the social media giant. His stake was diluted to 0.4% and he had to sign a non-disclosure agreement to keep himself from getting sued as well as renounced his US citizenship, but Saverin is still worth around $7.2 billion. He now resides in Singapore and has started the online charitable organization, Aporta as well as 99 – a Chinese property site.
8. Sachin Bansal
Amazon may have been the first to do it, but in the sub-continent of India, it was pioneer Sachin Bansal who co-founded online book retailing through Flipkart. Though the online portal has now extended its delivery services for millions of products, the company remains one of the top online retailers till date. He is the alumnus of the prestigious Indian Institute Of Technology (Delhi) and is said to be worth $1.3 billion.
9. Joe Gebbia
We spoke earlier of Nathan Blecharczyk. His co-founder was Joe Gebbia. As a young person living with a roommate in San Francisco, they ran out of money to pay rent and decided to rent their own air mattresses in their apartment for those going to a local conference. This is how they initially started AirBed & Breakfast that later turned into the phenomenal AirBnb. Today Joe is worth $1.9 billion.
10. Scott Duncan
Sometimes, no all the time, it is great to be born with a silver spoon. This is the case with Scott Duncan who is heir to the Duncan family estate and is co-founder of Enterprise Products. He inherited a fortune after the death of his father and now invests in other firms. Not much is known about this billionaire, except that he is one of the world’s most eligible bachelors and is worth $6.3 billion.
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