Top 10 Most Famous Entrepreneurs in the world

Bill Gates Photo By Kuhlmann /MSC – Wikimedia Commons

Top 10 Most Famous Entrepreneurs in the World

The concept of entrepreneurship revolves primarily around having an idea, working on it until it is realized, facing challenges daily, competing with others in your industry, and ultimately increasing your business’s profits.

A successful entrepreneur is known not only for his or her fluctuating wealth and status but also for life-changing solutions and innovative ingenuity.

A successful entrepreneur’s focus and determination are the two key characteristics that contribute to their success. Their success in turn results in problems being solved and the world being made a better place.

Let us look at the top ten most famous entrepreneurs in the world.

1. Bill Gates

Bill Gates, full name William Henry Gates III, is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur who cofounded Microsoft Corporation, the world’s largest personal computer software company.

He was born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington, United States.

Bill Gates, along with Paul Allen, co-founded Microsoft, the world’s largest software company, and went on to become one of the world’s wealthiest individuals. With a net worth of $12.9 billion in 1995, Gates became the world’s wealthiest man.

Bill Gates owns a million-dollar stake in 24 businesses and organizations, including Berkshire Hathaway, Four Seasons Hotel and Resorts, Canadian National Railway, Caterpillar, Waste Management, Inc., Walmart Inc., UPS and FedEx.

Apart from these businesses, he still owns 3.6 per cent of Microsoft’s stock or equity rights.

Currently, he has a net worth of 133.5 billion USD.

2. Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States. His given name is Jeffrey Preston Bezos.

Jeffrey Preston Bezos is a businessman, media mogul, investor, computer engineer, and commercial astronaut from the United States.

He is the founder and executive chairman of Amazon, which has a market capitalization of $1.7 trillion and where he previously served as president and CEO. After selling more than $8.8 billion in Amazon stock, he now owns roughly 10% of the online commerce behemoth.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Bezos is worth $202.4 billion and has used a portion of his Amazon fortune to support his private rocket company Blue Origin. Blue Origin is the only rocket company that can compete with SpaceX in terms of technological achievement.

He also owns Nash Holdings LLC, a private company that bought The Washington Post for $ 250 million.

3. Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg Photo By JD Lasica – Wikimedia Commons

On May 14, 1984, Mark Zucker Berg was born in Dubs Fair, New York, to a dentist father and a psychiatrist mother. His family had three sisters and he was the sole son.

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is a media mogul, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist from the United States.

At the age of 23, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, now known as Meta, became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire.

Meta is the world’s most popular social networking website which now has a user base of over two billion people, making Zuckerberg a multibillionaire.

He’s also the co-founder and co-CEO of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which uses technology to assist tackle some of the world’s most difficult problems, such as disease eradication, education reform, and criminal justice reform.

So far, Mark Zuckerberg has purchased 94 firms during this period of rapid expansion. WhatsApp Messenger, which Facebook bought for $19 billion in February 2015, was the company’s largest acquisition.

Mark’s net worth is estimated to be $82.5 billion as of 2022, placing him 13th on Forbes’ global list of real-time billionaires.

4. Larry Ellison

Larry Ellison Picture By Oracle PR Hartmann Studios – Wikimedia Commons

Larry Ellison was born to a single mother, Florence Spellman, in the Bronx, New York, on August 17, 1944. 

Lawrence Joseph Ellison is an American businessman and investor who founded Oracle Corporation and served as its co-founder, executive chairman, chief technology officer, and former chief executive officer.

Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that, as of 2020, was the world’s second-largest software company in terms of revenue and market capitalization. Oracle’s net worth is $217.94 billion as of March 18, 2022.

He also owns investments in Tesla, NetSuite, and Leapfrog Enterprises in addition to Oracle, which he controls more than 35% of.

Almost all of Lanai is owned by Ellison. In 2012, he paid approximately $300 million buying nearly 98 per cent of the island, including 87,000 acres (35,200 hectares) of the island’s 90,000 acres (36,400 hectares).

He has a net worth of 112 billion USD.

5. Ellon Musk

Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa, to Errol and Maye Musk. Elon Reeve Musk is an American businessman and entrepreneur.

He is the founder, CEO, and Chief Engineer of SpaceX, as well as an early-stage investor, CEO, and Product Architect for Tesla, Inc., the founder of The Boring Company, and a co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI.

SpaceX is known to have assisted NASA in reducing costs through technological innovations and the tactic of providing multi-vendor options.

Tesla, on the other hand, has taken a novel approach to market penetration. Instead of attempting to create a relatively inexpensive car that could be mass-produced and marketed, it took the opposite approach, focusing instead on creating a compelling car that would generate demand for electric vehicles.

Elon Musk co-founded PayPal, which was acquired by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion in stock, of which Musk—the largest shareholder with 11.7 per cent of shares—received more than $100 million.

He has a net worth of 245.1 billion USD.

6. Steve Jobs

On the 24th of February, 1955, Steve Jobs was born.

Steven Paul Jobs was an entrepreneur, industrial designer, media mogul, and investor from the United States.

In 1976, he co-founded Apple with Steve Wozniak to sell Wozniak’s Apple I personal computer. The Apple II, one of the first very successful mass-produced microcomputers, brought the duo fame and fortune a year later.

After leaving Apple in 1985, Steve Jobs put $5 million into Pixar Animation Studios, and when the company went public in 1995, he became the first billionaire in the world.

Jobs ultimately sold Pixar to the Walt Disney Company for nearly $7 billion in 2006, and with a 7% ownership in the company, he became the company’s largest individual shareholder.

Steve Jobs had a net worth of $10.2 billion at the time of his death.

And here’s a fun fact: Apple wasn’t responsible for the great majority of his total fortune. It is a Disney product.

7. Carlos Slim

Carlos Slim Picture By ITU Pictures from Geneva, Switzerland – Wikimedia Commons

Carlos Slim was born on 28 January 1940. Carlos Slim Hel, the son of Catholic Lebanese immigrants to Mexico, is a self-made businessman.

Slim was named the world’s richest person by Forbes magazine from 2010 to 2013.

Slim purchased a stake in Telmex, Mexico’s only phone company, in 1990 with the help of foreign telecom partners. América Móvil, owned by Carlos Slim Helu and his family, purchased Telmex fully in 2011.

He also owns 17% of The New York Times and has holdings in the Mexican construction, consumer goods, mining, and real estate industries.

Slim’s 57 per cent investment in America Movil, Latin America’s largest mobile phone company, accounts for most of his fortune. In 2019, the business made $52 billion in revenue.

His net worth is 86.6 billion USD.

8. Larry Page and Sergey Brin

They met while pursuing their Ph. D. in computer science at Stanford University, and Google was founded in 1998.

They co-invented Google’s PageRank algorithm and founded Alphabet in 2015, which comprises Google, Nest, Calico, and other businesses.

Larry Page is somewhat wealthier than Sergey because, according to Alphabet’s (Google’s parent company) most recent SEC filing, Larry owns 6% of the company, whilst Sergey owns 5%.

Both founders have sold billions of dollars worth of Google stock since 2004.

Larry Page has a net worth of 115.6 billion USD while Sergey Brin has a net worth of 111 billion USD.

9. Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey Picture By MILWAUKEE – Wikimedia Commons

Oprah Winfrey was born on 29 January 1954. Oprah Winfrey is a talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and philanthropist from the United States.

She was the first Black woman in the United States to own her own production company. Her syndicated television talk show drew 15 million viewers, making her the highest-paid entertainer on television at the time.

In 1986, Winfrey established Harpo Productions, Inc., a television production firm, and in 1990, Harpo Films, a film production company.

She co-founded the ‘Oxygen’ cable network and renamed the Discovery Health Channel to OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network, which debuted in January 2011.

Oprah has written five books and is the editor of the magazine ‘O, The Oprah Magazine.’

She now owns $2.6 billion in real estate, Weight Watchers stock, the Oprah Winfrey Network, and other assets, making her one of the wealthiest Americans, though $300 million short of the Forbes 400 criteria.

Oprah Winfrey has become the first black woman to become a billionaire. According to Forbes, media figure, Oprah Winfrey became the first black female billionaire in 2003, with a net worth of $1 billion.

She has a net worth of 2.6 billion USD.

10. Richard Branson

Richard Branson was born on 18 July 1950. Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson is a British entrepreneur and business magnate who has amassed a fortune in the billions of pounds.

Branson started his first magazine when he was 16 years old, and he now owns or has owned airlines, record labels, radio stations, hotels, and a variety of other businesses.

The Virgin Group was founded by Sir Richard Branson. Virgin is one of the world’s most enticing brands, with a presence in a wide range of industries, including travel, telecommunications, health, finance, and music and leisure.

Richard founded Virgin Records after starting Virgin as a mail-order record shop in 1970.

Virgin’s hundreds of trademarks, such as Virgin Galactic, are believed to account for the majority of his wealth. Twitter, Slack, Pinterest, and Square are among the companies in his firm’s venture capital portfolio.

He has a net worth of 5.1 billion USD.