We are all striving for success, but many of us need those, whose experience and example will inspire us to achieve the same results. Sometimes, when you feel frustrated, when it seems that you will never succeed and everything has been missed, when you are running out of patience and about to give up, you just need to look at those who were in the same situation, but didn’t quit and managed to fulfil their dreams. You will learn about the life stories of billionaires, who managed to reach their goals without higher education, who earned their capitals being at the age of over 40, about the youngest self-made billionaires and philanthropists.
The article covers the following subjects:
Everybody wants to be successful and find their place in life, but not everyone manages to do it. Some people underestimate the risks and lose their money, some people lack patience, some choose a wrong way. There are many reasons for failures, but there is one remarkable fact: many people tend to charge the others with their own failures, rather than take the responsibility themselves. It is the analysis of your own mistakes that is the key to success. The examples of those, who managed to succeed, prove this.
Part I – Top 10 richest people without higher education
Each of the people, included in this rating, has a particularly striking life story. Somebody thought studies to be boring and was dreaming to create their own business right away. Some had a tough childhood and their parents couldn’t afford to send them to the university. Somebody dropped out of the university in the middle of the course; somebody didn’t even finish school (let alone higher education). According to statistics, about 37% of billionaires didn’t graduate from the university; about 24% of them don’t have any certificates about education at all. Anyway, that didn’t prevent them from being successful and entering the Top-list of the richest people in the world. They are good examples to follow, aren’t they?
1. Joe Lewis (born 1937) (net worth $5 billion)
Can Lewis be called a lazybones? It is an interesting question. Lewis quitted school when he was 15 to help his father to run their family catering business. When he became the owner the business, there was no point in getting a degree as he had quite good experience in entrepreneurship. Later, he sold the business to move into currency trading and investing. He even had to move to the Bahamas where he is now as a tax exile. Nowadays, he owns over 120 restaurants and Tottenham Hotspur football club. The billionaire is also famous for cooperating with George Soros in attacking the Bank of England.
2. Richard Branson (born 1950) ($5.1 billion)
A famous British billionaire couldn’t read or write until the age of 8 as he has dyslexia.
Branson expressed that he didn’t have a desire to study at a young age. He attended school until the age of sixteen and quitted. On his last day at school, his headmaster told him he would either end up in prison or become a millionaire. Having dropped out of school, he founded his first business venture, a magazine called Student. To attract readers, he published free articles by John Lennon, Mick Jagger and other celebrities there. Next, he opened a record company and called it Virgin Records. Now, Virgin is the brand that includes about 400 companies of different industries, from airlines and telecommunications to space tourism and the creation of video games.
By the way, I should mention another rich citizen of the UK, Roman Abramovich whose net worth was $11.5 billion in 2018. He also has no higher education as he wasn’t willing to study. But he made his fortune mostly due to his relations with the Russian oligarchs and political leaders, and some illegal business schemes.
3. Paul Allen (1953-2018) (net worth $20.1 billion)
Allen came from a family of a teacher and a military man and became interested in mechanical and technical devices at a young age. When he was in the sixth grade, he began studying programming. Allen attended a private school in Seattle, where he met Bill Gates with whom he shared his enthusiasm for computers. Allen went to Washington University; two years later, however, he dropped out in order to work as a programmer and alongside with Bill Gates he co-founded Microsoft.
4. Michael Dell (born 1965) ($24 billion)
He discovered his entrepreneurial talent at 12. He was selling subscriptions in the summer and noted that the new residents of the area were most likely to purchase subscriptions. After that he created a kind of a network of informants, his friends, who informed him about the newcomers. He became a freshman pre-med student at the University of Texas, but he left the university and started a small business putting together and selling upgrade kits for personal computers. Nowadays, the Dell Computer Corporation, he founded once, is one of the leading companies among PC makers.
5. Li Ka-shing (born 1928) ($33 billion)
In March 2018, Li retired at the age of 89, being one of the richest people in Asia. And he really has much to be proud of. He was born in a poor family. When he was 14, his father died, he was forced to leave school and found a job. He was working for a plastic-manufacturing company and, after 7 years, he earned the money sufficient to start his own small company. From manufacturing plastics, Li developed his company into a leading real estate investment company in Hong Kong. Nowadays, Li’s two major companies make up about 15% of the Hong Kong stock market capitalization. Li also invests in logistics, retail trading, bio-technologies, machinery, and telecommunication.
6. Francoise Pinault (born 1936) ($33.8 billion)
This French billionaire has just a single certificate of education - his driving license. He didn’t like to study at a young age; in addition, he suffered from teasing and bullying by his classmates due to his humble origin. The father of the future billionaire was the owner of the farm and a small sawmill, and Francoise also took up wood-processing. When he was 27, he successfully married (though the marriage didn’t last for long) and founded his first company. At that time, he met future French President Jacques Chirac, who would help him later. In addition to wood and paper production, Pinault was engaged in the supply of cars and medicines to Africa. Today, he also owns Christie’s auction house and Stade Rennais football club.
7. Larry Ellison (born 1944) ($57.4 billion)
Allison has tried to get higher education twice and hasn’t graduated both times. First, he had to quit the University of Illinois after two years of studies. Next, he studied for a semester at the University of Chicago. Both times, he was forced to leave the university by circumstances. But still he managed to found a successful database vendor that we know as Oracle.
8. Mark Zuckerberg (born in 1984) ($77.6 billion).
Since the advent of the Internet age in the early 2000s, hundreds of technological startups began appearing. However, they could provide nothing except for a beautiful colour; and so, most of them disappeared after the dotcom crash in 2000. Mark Zuckerberg, an American technology entrepreneur, wasn’t discouraged by that. The idea of developing a social networking service became the dream of a future billionaire. To bring it to reality, Zuckerberg had to quit Harvard University, but in just 2 years, the network became accessible for every Internet user.
9. Amancio Ortega (born in 1936) (net worth is $96.4 billion)
Amancio Ortega is a Spanish billionaire businessman. The future billionaire had a difficult childhood. His father was a railway worker, his mother was a maid in a rich house, and the family desperately needed money. Ortega left school and found a job at the age of 14. He started working as a shop hand for a local shirt-maker and studied the experience of making wear and selling it. Later, he opened a small company manufacturing and selling bathrobes and women’s underwear, but nearly went bankrupt after a major customer refused a consignment of goods. Then, Ortega decided to sell the clothes through his own clothing chain and founded what we know as Zara today. Nowadays, Amancio also invests in real estate.
10. Bill Gates (born 1955) ($93.3 billion)
Like Paul Allen, Bill Gates decided to quit Harvard University in order to work in Microsoft. He was especially bad at some subject and after two years of study he was expelled from the university. It turned out that it was to his advantage.
This list should also include Kirk Kerkorian (1917-2015), an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist of Armenian origin. He was born to immigrant parents and had to drop out of school in eighth grade and became auto mechanic. During World War II, he was ferrying Canadian-built aircraft to the British Isles and earned his first initial capital. His first large business was trading aircraft and an air-charter service, which was quite rare at that time.
Part II - Top 10 richest people who became billionaires after reaching age 40
I go on this inspiring rating with the list of people who earned their first billion being over 40. Not everything comes right away. It is often patience, persistence and commitment that yield the results, which seem to be the aim of life. Someone from this top list found their place in life and got the ride of success at the age of 40. Someone was building their business empire for half of life, systematically translating their ideas into reality. The examples of these people prove that it is never too late to start doing something that you really like.
1. Ray Kroc (1902-1984).
The father of the future billionaire died quite early, according to one of the versions, he did not survive a nervous shock after he lost everything with the stock market crash during the Great Depression. Ray himself hardly thought he would become rich and famous. By the age of 50, he had diabetes and arthritis, the thyroid gland and the gall bladder were partially removed, and the work of a travelling salesman (selling paper cups and milkshake mixers) did not foreshadow any progress. In 1955, he met the McDonald brothers, running a fast-food restaurant, and was impressed by the idea to develop this industry. In 1955, Kroc opened the first McDonald's franchised under his partnership with the McDonald brothers. In 1961, he bought the company and founded the world-famous fast-food chain.
2. Henry Ford (1863-1947).
His Ford Motor Company initially produced the cheapest cars at the beginning of the auto industry. Although Ford did not invent the automobile or the assembly line, he developed and manufactured the first automobile that many middle-class Americans could afford. But his start was not that easy. In 1879, Ford designed a car project that wasn’t manufactured. In 1903, a copyright infringement lawsuit was filed against Ford Motor Co. The trial spanned 8 years and finished with Ford’s victory. Ford Motor Company became successful only in 1908 when the Model T was launched.
3.Michael Bloomberg (born 1942).
At the age of 24, the future billionaire and the Mayor of the New York City started working for Solomon Brothers, where he worked as a trader for 15 years. When the company was bought by another owner, Bloomberg was laid off from the investment bank. But he didn’t give up and founded Bloomberg information agency in 1981. It was presenting online analysis of the financial markets. The agency’s advantage was the use of computer technologies, which were not common at that time, and it took the vacant place.
4.Sam Walton (1918-1992).
Walton hardly expected he would become an entrepreneur. Before 1942, he had worked various odd jobs, including selling subscriptions, growing rabbits for sale, and working as a management trainee. In 1943, he joined the US military. After leaving the army in 1945, Walton understood that the world had become completely different and decided to try himself in retail sales. He took over management of his first variety store. He developed and started to utilize his own selling technologies: wholesale direct (without intermediaries) purchase of goods, promotional discounts, working at the weekends. In 1962, Walton opened his first store at the age of 42. In 1978, he already owned over 200 stores. Nowadays this chain, called Walmart, is well-know all over the world.
5.Reid Hoffman (born 1967).
He was greatly enthusiastic about the Internet. At the beginning of the Internet age, when Hoffman was 30, he createdSicialNet.com, a dating site, which was an analogue, a prototype of social networks. Only in 2002, he managed to implement his idea of the social networking service. He was two years ahead of Mark Zuckerberg and later he became one of Facebook investors at its early stages of development. Nowadays, this project is known as one of the first business social networks LinkedIn.
6.George Soros (born 1930).
One may criticize George Soros, a US investor and philanthropist, but the fact that he has achieved incredible results can’t be denied. It is another matter what means he used to achieve his success (remember, for example, the attack on the Bank of England).
Soros entered the area of investment relatively late, at the age of 26. But already then he could offer an interesting idea of making money on international arbitration. Only when he was 39, Soros became a fund manager and founded his own fund, Quantum Fund, only in 1973. Nowadays, he is one of the richest people in the world.
7.“Colonel” Harland Sanders (1890-1980).
Colonel Harland Sanders was an American businessman, best known for founding fast-food chicken restaurant chain Kentucky Fried Chicken (now known as KFC). Sanders had everything as a child, but he preferred to become a volunteer in the army. Before the age of 40, Sanders had held numerous jobs such as a steam engine stoker, insurance salesman and filling station operator. Only when he was 40, he started selling his fried chicken from his roadside restaurant. Sanders’s "secret recipe" of cooking chicken faster than in a frying pan introduced him into the world of big finance. In 1950, he made his famous image: a posh white suit, his famous small beard and moustache. This image became the symbol of his KFC company, that successfully got through all the challenges.
8.Momofuku Ando (1910-2007).
According to one of the versions, there was a social survey in Japan in 2000. People were asked to name the most important Japanese invention of the 20th century. You will be surprised, but the first position was taken by...Instant noodles. And that was Ando who invented and developed the production of instant noodles.
9 Amancio Ortega (born 1936).
I have already mentioned this billionaire in the first part. He earned his first big capital when he was over 40. He had a very difficult childhood, so it was hard to raise the initial capital. Running wear production, he didn’t have any competitive advantage and couldn’t expand his business. He opened his first factory only when he was 37 (in 1972). And only in 1975, he became successful when he developed his own retail chain, which was a new idea at that time.
10.Mary Kathlyn Wagner (Ash) (1918-2001).
Mary Kay Ash, born Mary Kathlyn Wagner, was an American businesswoman and founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics. One of the few female entrepreneurs who built a real business empire. Mary became a sails manger (sails rep) in 1939. She was hosting parties to encourage people to buy household items. Being tired of the traditional workplace, Ash decided to create her own business at the age of 45 and bought the formulas for skin lotions. Her business philosophy focused on the client, the idea of testers and original marketing techniques helped her expand her business in a huge corporation. Nowadays, Mary Kay is more than 200 product items and over 1200 only at the company headquarters.
Part III – Ten youngest self-made billionaires
Many billionaires became rich owing to their parents, who left them the money under a will or gave them a share in the business. Those people mainly continue the business, started by their parents, but for few exceptions (for example, Tom Persson, who chose film industry, or Julio Mario Santo Domingo, III, a DJ). But there are also people who managed to earn their first billion on their own, being under 40. And their experience deserves real respect.
In 2015, Theranos net worth was about $4.5 billion. Elizabeth Holmes, the founder and the former CEO of Theranos, was 31 at that time. She was engaged in medical developments. Nobody knows how long her company would exist, but soon after Holmes had been named as the youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire by Forbes, it was revealed that most of the company’s technology claims had been a fraud. SEC barred her from serving as an officer or director of a public company for ten years. And Theranos is now nearly bankrupt. Other people, included in the top list are far more successful.
1. John Collison(born 1990, net worth $1.1 billion).
Collison is called “Irish Genius”. At the age of 17, he earned $5 million, having sold Auctomatic, a software company that built tools for the eBay platform. In 2010, Collison co-founded Stripe, which received backing from Elon Musk, Peter Thiel. The company develops software that allows individuals and businesses to receive payments over the Internet. In 2016, Collison was called the youngest self-made billionaire in the world.
2. Bobby Murphy (born 1988, $3 billion).
He is another young billionaire, an American entrepreneur and engineer. He gained the experience of small startups while studying at the university. Murphy, together with Evan Spiegel (net worth is about $2.1 billion), co-founded Snapchat. It is a multimedia messaging application. One of its main features is that pictures and messages are usually only available for a short time before they are automatically deleted. The idea soon became popular. Later the company was renamed Snap Inc. and launched its first hardware product, smart glasses Spectacles.
3. Drew Houston (born 1983; $3.2 billion).
Again, a young billionaire, who, at the peak of the popularity of platforms, services and applications, creates a unique product that instantly becomes popular. In 2007, Houston developed Dropbox, a file hosting service that helps to optimize the information and quickly find needed files.
4. Nathan Blecharczyk (born 1983), Joe Gebbia (born 1981), Brian Chesky (born 1981) – net worth $3.8, each.
These guys can be called an exception in this top list. In 2008, they came up with the idea of a platform that operates an online marketplace and hospitality serves for the users all around the world and called it Airbnb. The idea was immediately appreciated by the tourists and those who travel a lot on business and have to look for accommodation in other cities and foreign countries. The billionaires have raised about $3.4 of invested funds for 10 years of operating. During the same time, the website has been visited by over 150 million people. About 30 million have used its services. The database includes about 1.5 million offers of lodging, primarily homestays or tourism experiences.
5. Jack Dorsey(born 1976, net worth $4.8 billion)
He got the idea of creating Twitter while he was studying at the University of Missouri. While working on dispatching as a programmer, Dorsey realized the need in instant messaging. In 2000, Dorsey created a platform to dispatch couriers, taxis, and emergency services over the Internet. In 2008, his major service, Twitter, started operating. It is remarkable that Dorsey originally wanted to make jeans wear and was thought to be a reckless and irresponsible person at a young age.
6. Robert Pera(born 1978; net worth $5.1 billion).
Pera once compared his ambitions to Apple success and said he wanted to achieve greater success in a shorter time. Owing to his working experience with Apple, Pera quickly realized the prospects of wireless technologies. In 2009, he started selling his model of utilizing WiFi technology to wirelessly deliver the Internet to underserved areas. Nowadays, his company Ubiquiti is one of the leading companies, selling wireless equipment. It features an original approach to sales management. Robert aims at making his company as successful as Cisco and Huawei.
7. Travis Kalanick(born 1976; $6.3 billion).
Kalanick dropped out of the University of California to co-found a file sharing service. In 2000, there was a number of lawsuits, brought against Scour, alleging copyright infringement, and the company filed bankruptcy. In 2001, he started a new peer-to-peer file-sharing company and sold it in 2007. In 2009, he started his third big project, Uber, which brought him fame. However, due to a series of internal conflicts, Kalanick resigned as a CEO, but the target had been reached: he became a billionaire.
8.Jan Koum(born 1976; net worth US$7.5 billion).
A future billionaire was born in Kyiv, Soviet Union. In 1992, he moved with his parents to the USA. He dropped out of the university and got a job with Yahoo, where he was working from 2000 to 2007. In 2009, he developed one of the most popular now messaging apps, WhatsApp that was bought by Facebook for $19 billion in 2014. Jan Koum had been developing the messenger till April 2018. Then he left WhatsApp and stepped down from Facebook's board of directors due to disputes with Facebook.
9. Dustin Moskovitz (born 1984; $15.6 billion)
He made his fortune participating in Facebook development, where he was working till 2008. In 2008, Moskovitz left Facebook (though he retained a small share of its stocks) and started a new company called Asana, working on the development of applications designed to help teams organize, track, and manage their work.
10.Mark Zuckerberg (born in 1984) ($77.6 billion).
I have written the story of this man in the previous part. Having bet on the development of social networking services and dropped out the university, Zuckerberg was paid off. Though Facebook is being shaken in 2018, and the competitors are catching up, Zuckerberg is still a billionaire.
Part IV - List of most charitable Billionaires-Philanthropists
What does a person, who has got everything they want, need? What does a person, who already has got billions of dollars, real estate, yachts, own islands and even spare time, need? For people, managing billion-capitals doesn’t really matter whether they have 5 billion more or less; they need fame, honouring and respect. Everyone wants their good deeds to be remembered, everyone wants to be socially beneficial.
1.Gordon and Betty Moore (donation amount about $289 million).
The founder of Intel Corporation and his wife have been funding the development of various scientific fields. They have been donating approximately the same amount (with an adjustment to inflation) for over 15 years. According to the total amount of donations, the Moore couple is included in the top list of ten most charitable investors in the world. The Moores support science, environmental conservation, staff education. They also fund the construction of the biggest telescope in the world.
2.James Simons ($293 million donated).
He is an American mathematician, self-made billionaire, hedge fund manager, and philanthropist. At the age of 80, he is still donating to educational and medical projects in different countries. He is rarely included in top lists, preferring certain interesting projects.
3. Paul Allen ($341 million)
Co-founder of Microsoft has been included in top lists of philanthropists since 2011. He mainly funds scientific research and above all neurology. He created the Allen Institute for Brain Science. In total, Allen has donated $500 million to the institute, making it his single largest philanthropic recipient.
4. The Walton family ($454 million).
The Walton Family Foundation focuses on a certain funding area. In 2011, owing to them, a museum of American art appeared where only $1.3 billion was invested at the start.
5. Charles (Chuck) Feeney ($482 million).
A co-founder of Duty-Free Shoppers is often called a “billionaire without a billion”. Chuck Feeney is one of the few who has given away his fortune to charity during his lifetime. According to him, he needs so much money that he is able to spend. To choose his philanthropic recipients, he travels around the world and gets personally acquainted with each project, asking for a grant.
6. George Soros ($531 million donated)
His philanthropic agency, Open Society Foundation, is an grantmaking network. It supports education, scientific researches, public health. The foundation also funds civil society organizations (CSO) around the world. Soros is often criticized for providing financial support to the media. He justifies himself with the freedom of expression and transparency, but, in fact, he often employs them.
7. Michael Bloomberg ($600 million).
A former Mayor of the City of New York has donated huge amounts of money to more than 850 organizations, preferring the projects, developing healthcare and environment protection.
8.Bill and Melinda Gates ($2.142 billion).
Now, they fund healthcare, the developments to reduce extreme poverty in developing countries (humanitarian aid), and so on. In 2010, together with Buffet, he started the Giving Pledge. It is a campaign to encourage wealthy people to contribute a majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes
9. Warren Buffett ($2.861 billion)
He is a friend and partner of the Gates family, supporting their foundation. He has already given away more than $30 billion for charity. He wrote a will in which he promised to leave charity foundations 99% of his wealth.
A remarkable fact. Not all billionaires are willing to join the Giving Pledge. Not every billionaire wants to give away a part of their wealth. Mark Zuckerberg, Carlos Slim and some other billionaires were occasionally included in top lists of the most charitable philanthropists; but each year, the list of the most generous billionaires hardly changes.
In conclusion, I’d like to remind a general truth: millionaires and billionaires are not born, they are made. So, go ahead!
Although it is important to have some entrepreneurial skills to get to the top of business Olympus, the key features are still determination, flexibility and ability to make contacts.
It sometimes takes not a single decade to find one’s place in life. But the business, started by one person, can be run on by their children. A family business developed into a huge corporation over time, but there is also a different way. Sometimes you only need to be a few steps ahead: to see the promising spheres, not be afraid to take reasonable risk and to be able to find something that will be interesting for people. I sincerely wish you to find your place in life, to find an enjoyable activity that will yield you real profits. If you have already succeeded in something, please share your experience in the comments!
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