Jay Walker – 1 year
Jay Walker is one of the most famous inventors of modern times with over seven hundred unique patents to his name.
Joining the billionaires club at breakneck speed, entrepreneur and inventor Jay Walker had a net worth of $1.8 billion in early 2000, just a year after he founded the service website Priceline.com discounts.
However, the burst of the dotcom bubble (a high-tech stock market bubble) hit Priceline.com’s stock price and caused the billionaire’s fortune to drop to just $333 million by May. 10 year 2000. This is not a small number, but it is not enough to keep Jay Walker in the power club of the richest people in the world.
Gary Winnick – 1.5 years
In 1997, financier Gary Winnick founded Global Crossing, the company that laid the first privately funded transatlantic fiber optic cable network with an investment of up to $15 million. And then, the investment paid off when Global Crossing went public in 1998, bringing Winnick a billion dollars in revenue.
However, this billionaire was also a victim of the dotcom bubble burst, Global Crossing filed for bankruptcy in 2002, causing Winnick to drop out of the world’s billionaire rankings.
Eric Lefkofsky – 2.5 years
Eric Lefkofsky founded several companies before co-founding Groupon with Andrew Mason in 2008. The two quickly rose to billionaire status when Groupon went public for the first time just three years later, and stock prices skyrocketed.
However, by 2012, Groupon’s shares plummeted, causing Mason to go from a rich billionaire to a multi-millionaire. Meanwhile, Lefkofsky still holds onto his billionaire “chair” with a net worth of $2.7 billion.
Cheng Wei – 3 years
In 2012, former Alibaba CEO Cheng Wei launched Didi Dache – the forerunner of the taxi-hailing app Didi Chuxing. Thanks to this app, he earned his first billion dollars in 2015.
In 2019, Didi Dache reached 550 million users and is considered the Uber of China. This business even acquired all of Uber’s assets and operations in China. In 2020, Cheng Wei owns a fortune of $1.2 billion.
Mark Zuckerberg – 4 years
Mark Zuckerberg was the youngest and fastest self-made billionaire ever before Kylie Jenner took over the spot. The number of shares of Facebook made Mark Zuckerberg a billionaire at the age of 23.
Zuckerberg first appeared on the world’s billionaires list in 2008, the CEO’s total net worth at that time was $1.3 billion (£1 billion). As of 2020, the owner of the social network Facebook has become a major philanthropist with a huge fortune of 85.4 billion USD.
Jeff Bezos – 4 years
Jeff Bezos founded e-commerce giant Amazon in 1994 and launched the website a year later. Starting from selling books, this online shopping site quickly rose to fame in 1997, helping Bezos make it to Forbes’ annual billionaire list in 1999 with a net worth of $10.1 billion.
In 2020, Bezos was the richest man in the world as his net worth increased by nearly $35 billion (£28 billion) during the COVID-19 pandemic, bringing his total net worth to 166, $3 billion (£132.9 billion) at the time written about. Experts say Bezos is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire by 2026.
Mark Cuban – 4 years
The owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team and a ‘shark investor’ on ABC’s Shark Tank, Mark Cuban achieved a 10-figure net worth in 1999 when he and his partner Todd Wagner sold Broadcast.com, an Internet radio business, to Yahoo for $5.7 billion.
As of 2020, the fortune of this American businessman is estimated at 4.2 billion USD. In addition to owning a majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, Cuban also holds stakes in Magnolia Pictures, AXS TV and a host of other startups.
According to lovemoney.com
Source: Vietnam Insider