Boasting the Midas touch, the planet's most successful entrepreneurs didn't waste any time making their money. On average it takes a person 21 years of hard work to become a billionaire according to OLGB, but these magnates got the job done in a fraction of that time. Click or scroll through the people who reached billionaire status in record time.
In 2007, hard-up Joe Gebbia and roommate Brian Chesky decided to rent out air beds in their San Francisco apartment to conference-goers and tourists, calling their little venture AirBed & Breakfast. Renamed Airbnb, the firm obtained its first round of funding in 2009, and by 2014 the company was valued at $10 billion (£7.8bn), and each of its co-founders were worth $1.5 billion (£1.2bn). Six years later business has been negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic due to limits on travel, but both founders have still doubled their net worth to $3.1 billion (£2.5bn) each since becoming billionaires.
Vladimir Potanin is the Russian person who's made it to billionaire status quickest. On average Russians reach the milestone before any other nation – after only 16 years – but Potanin managed it in only seven. The oligarch first became a billionaire in 1998 after acquiring a stake in Norilsk Nickel in 1995. Nowadays Potanin owns more than a third of the metal company and is sitting on a comfortable net worth of $23.5 billion (£18.8bn).
Lucking out big time, entrepreneur Wang Yue co-founded Chinese online and mobile gaming firm Kingnet in 2008 with just 100,000 yuan ($14.1k/£11.3k) and snapped up a 62.5% stake from one of the company's other co-founders in 2009 for a bargain $9,600 (£7.5k). Not long after, Kingnet experienced explosive growth and Wang achieved billionaire status in 2015 following a backdoor listing of the firm. In 2016 he was recorded as being worth $1.1 billion (£879m), but a year later had dropped off Forbes’ billionaire ranking. Things worsened for Wang in May last year when he was detained on suspicion of market manipulation three days after resigning as chair of Kingnet.
Ricardo Salinas Pliego’s fortune dates back to a small furniture manufacturing company founded by his great-grandfather in 1906. In 1950, the company moved into the media sphere by founding Elektro Group, and selling TVs and radios eventually led to Salina Pliego owning two Mexican TV broadcasters, as well as having his fingers in various financial services pies. Salinas Pliego had made his first billion by 1994, and today his net worth sits at $10.9 billion (£8.7bn).
As the heir to financial services firm Fidelity, Abigail Johnson was certainly born into money, but she did have to work hard to become the company’s CEO in 2014. Johnson became a billionaire in her own right in 1995 after graduating with an MBA from Harvard Business School and working full-time at the family business as an analyst and portfolio manager. Her net worth at the time of writing stands at $15.1 billion (£12bn).
Yusaku Maezawa founded a mail-order CD and record company in 1998 and went on to found Japan’s largest online fashion mall Zozotown in 2004. By 2005 he had made his first $1 billion and he later hit the headlines in 2017 when he splurged $110.5 million (£86m) on a 1982 Jean-Michel Basquiat painting. The business magnate stepped down as the CEO of parent company Zozo in 2019 but still has plenty to look forward to, as Elon Musk announced that he would be the first customer on the first private SpaceX voyage to the moon.
Computer whiz Sean Parker co-founded music file-sharing site Napster in 1999, but really struck gold when he joined fledgling social media network Facebook in 2004, helping to bankroll the firm and serving as its founding president. A shrewd move as Parker's 4% stake in the company had netted him $1 billion by 2011. Parker continues to sit on the Forbes rich list with a net worth of $2.7 billion (£2.2bn).
Unable to take part in sports due to a heart problem, Naruatsu Baba was a die-hard gamer at high school in Japan and turned his passion for gaming into a multi-billion-dollar business when he founded smartphone game maker Colopl in 2008. By 2014, the super-successful firm had earned its majority owner his first $1 billion, but he dropped off Forbes’ billionaires list in 2017.
Google has made a lot of money for a lot of people; not least for co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who established the company in 1998 and made it to billionaire status just six years later. The former President and former CEO respectively of Alphabet, the online giant’s parent company, used to only take an annual salaries of $1 (80p) before stepping down in 2019. But they remain on the board and it’s through owning large shares in the company that they make big money. Brin and Page are worth $62.7 billion (£50bn) and $64.3 billion (£51.4bn) respectively at the time of writing.
Joining the ranks of the world's youngest self-made billionaires is 29-year-old Irish entrepreneur John Collison (pictured), who founded online payments company Stripe with his 31-year-old brother Patrick in 2010. The pair made their first $1 billion in November 2016, when John was only 26, after a substantial investment valued their company at $9.2 billion (£7.4bn). Stripe’s value has since soared to $35 billion (£28bn), leaving the Collison brothers each having a net worth of $3.2 billion (£2.6bn)
Japanese computer whiz Yoshikazu Tanaka created social networking and gaming website Gree in 2003 as a hobby, but when he launched it to the public in February 2004 it gained 10,000 users in just a month. By October 100,000 people were using it, all through word of mouth. Making its founder his first $1 billion in 2010, the business mushroomed into one of Japan's foremost social networking and gaming firms. While Gree still exists, it has changed its focus to mobile gaming rather than competing against social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick (pictured) co-founded Uber in 2009, self-funding the seed round. By the end of 2015, the taxi app was valued at a cool $62.5 billion (£50.3bn), making billionaires of its co-founders. Kalanick left the company at the end of 2019 and sold all his shares, but he is still worth an impressive $2.6 billion (£2.1bn). Meanwhile Camp has recently switched from board director to board observer of Uber, and is worth $3 billion (£2.4bn) at the time of writing.
Zhang Yiming is the founder behind Bytedance, the parent company of this year’s most downloaded app so far: TikTok. Yiming founded Bytedance in 2012 after learning his trade in positions at travel start-up Kuxun and Microsoft, and only six years later it’s landed him a spot in the billionaire’s club. The coronavirus pandemic has led to a real boom in TikTok users and, as such, Yiming’s net worth currently stands at $16.2 billion (£13bn).
One of the founders of Facebook, Dustin Moskovitz set up the social networking site in 2004 with Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin and Chris Hughes. Moskovitz served as Facebook's first chief technology officer but left the company in 2008 to set up project management app Asana. His 2.34% Facebook stake got him first place on Forbes’ youngest billionaires list in 2011, but his share of the company likely already gave him billionaire status in 2010. Today Moskovitz is worth $14 billion (£11.2bn).
Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin famously fell out with Mark Zuckerberg and was effectively pushed out of the company in 2005. The affair formed the central plot of 2010 movie The Social Network, although the real-life billionaires have complained about inaccuracies in the big-screen retelling of their lives. Still, Saverin didn't do too badly in the end. The dispute landed him with a 5% stake in Facebook, giving him an estimated net value of $1.15 billion (£926m) in 2010. He has since launched a venture capitalist fund, B Capital, and today is worth $12.9 billion (£10.3bn).
Lin Qi founded Youzu Interactive, a Chinese online and mobile gaming company, in 2009 and hasn't looked back. The firm's games include League of Angels, and they've been wildly successful worldwide. Lin, who owns millions of shares in the company, joined the billionaire club in 2014 thanks to his hard work, although he did drop off only a year later.
Jeff Bezos founded e-commerce giant Amazon in 1994 and launched the website the following year. Starting out selling books, the online shopping site went public in 1997, and majority owner Bezos entered the Forbes’ annual list of billionaires in 1999 with a net worth of $10.1 billion. Bezos is now officially the richest man in the world, and has hit the headlines after his net worth grew by almost $35 billion (£28bn) during the coronavirus pandemic, bringing his total net worth to $166.3 billion (£132.9bn) at the time of writing. Experts say Bezos is on track to be the first-ever trillionaire by 2026.
Whatsapp co-founders Jan Koum (pictured) and Brian Acton set up the popular mobile messaging service in 2009, and hit the jackpot in 2014 when the app was bought by Facebook for a final deal of $21.8 billion (£17.5bn), the equivalent of $55 (£44) per user at the time. Both Koum and Acton were given shares in Facebook as part of the deal, catapulting them onto Forbes’ World Billionaires List just half a decade after Whatsapp was born.
Formerly the youngest fastest self-made billionaire ever before Kylie Jenner took the spot (although Forbes has since disputed her billionaire status), Mark Zuckerberg's hefty Facebook holdings made him a billionaire at the tender age of 23. Zuckerberg made his first appearance on the Forbes World Billionaires List in 2008, his then-net worth totalling $1.3 billion (£1bn). Today, the social network boss turned philanthropist is worth an astronomical $85.4 billion (£68.2bn).
Colin Huang has had a meteoric rise in the billionaire stakes. Huang made his first billion dollars in 2019, four years after launching his hugely successful e-commerce business Pinduoduo (pictured). But this year Huang briefly took the title of China’s second richest person when his net worth was estimated at $45.4 billion (£36.3bn) by Forbes in June. Unlike many billionaires, the pandemic has done wonders for Huang’s net worth, and as sales on Pinduduo increased the ex-Googler and Microsoft intern saw his wealth grow by $18 billion (£14.5bn) between March and May this year alone.
The owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team and 'shark investor' on ABC's Shark Tank show, Mark Cuban achieved a 10-figure net worth back in 1999 when he sold Broadcast.com, the internet radio company he helped to set up in 1995, to Yahoo for a very tidy $4.3 billion (£3.4bn). The basketball-loving billionaire is worth $4.3 billion (£3.5bn) at the time of writing.
Early in 1994, Stanford University students Jerry Yang and David Filo created a website called Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web, which was rechristened Yahoo! later that year. The web portal went public in a frantic day of Nasdaq trading in 1996 and by 1998 it had made its savvy co-founders billionaires. Both founders have sinced moved on to other projects. Yang founded AME Cloud Ventures, which focuses on funding data-led start-ups, and is now worth $2.4 billion (£1.9bn), while Filo is not far behind with a net worth of $2.1 billion (£1.7bn).
Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel came up with the idea for a disappearing photo sharing app during a class at Stanford University in 2011, and Snapchat was born later that year with classmates Reggie Brown and Bobby Murphy. Brown was ousted in the early days, but Spiegel and Murphy made a success of the idea and made their first billion dollars from the app in 2014, hitting the Forbes World Billionaires list in 2015. Spiegel is currently worth $4.8 billion (£3.9bn), while Murphy has a current wealth of $5 billion (£4bn).
In 1997, financier Gary Winnick founded Global Crossing, the company that laid the first privately-funded transatlantic fibre-optic cable network, with a $15 million investment. Money well spent, the investment paid off in a big way when Global Crossing went public in 1998, rewarding Winnick with a multi-billion-dollar windfall. Another victim of the bursting of the dotcom bubble, however, Global Crossing filed for bankruptcy in 2002, causing Winnick to tumble from the billionaire rankings.
Joining the billionaire's club at breakneck speed, entrepreneur and inventor Jay Walker had a net worth of $1.8 billion in the early part of 2000, just a year after he founded discount offers website Priceline.com. Then the dotcom bubble burst. The crash hammered the Priceline.com share price and Walker found himself sitting on a fortune of just $333 million by October 2000 – a hefty sum for most but not enough to keep him in the exclusive club of the world’s richest.
Now read about the pandemic's billionaire winners and losers