How long it took the world’s richest people to make their first $1 billion
For the average worker, a billion dollars could take over 2,000 years to earn, however the world’s richest self-made people built their fortunes in under 60 years.
For some, the journey to the billion dollar club was shorter than for others.
To find out the average time to reach a $1 billion net worth, OLBG looked at the world’s 100 wealthiest self-made billionaires, comparing their path to $1 billion.
There are currently 2,674 billionaires in the world,
which is almost ten times as many billionaires as there were 26 years ago.
In 2020, there were 2,095 billionaires in the world, with a combined $8 trillion net worth between them. By the end of 2021, there were almost 600 more billionaires in the world than in the previous year. The combined net worth of 2021’s billionaires is up $5 trillion from 2020.
This year there are a record number of new additions to the list - 493 made their first appearance on a Forbes’ billionaires list, which is equivalent to one new billionaire every 17 hours.
The average time taken to earn $1 billion for the billionaires in our sample is 20 years. Most billionaires on our list took between 11 and 20 years to build their wealth, while some took up to 60.
German businessman and art collector, Reinhold Wuerth, took the longest out of the people on our list to reach a $1 billion net worth. Taking over his father's small business in 1954 at age 19, he transformed the company and by 2014 appeared on Forbes’ Billionaire list.
One of the shortest journeys to $1 billion was taken by Pierre Omidyar, founder of e-commerce company eBay. It took Omidyar, and Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg, 4 years from the foundation of their businesses, to reach the $1 billion mark.
INDUSTRY KEY
Mining magnates and technology giants are the quickest to reach the $1 billion mark, compared to any other industry. On average, it took the mining and tech business billionaires on the list around 9 and 10 years to reach a 10 figure net worth.
Following closely behind are billionaires in the automotive and real estate industries, who took around 16 and 20 years respectively to earn $1 billion.
Billionaires in manufacturing took the longest on average to earn their first $1 billion. The estimated average time to $1 billion in the manufacturing industry is 33 years - over three times the industry average for technology.
*Industries with only one billionaire in our sample were removed from this section
by country
Billionaires from China and Russia reach a $1 billion net worth the quickest. China is the second most common country of origin of the world’s richest billionaires - 26 on our list were born in China, with most working in tech.
Billionaires from Germany take the longest to earn their riches, averaging at 48 years. Business tycoons born in Indonesia take around 43 years to reach the $1 billion mark.
Those from the United States take an estimated 18 years to build their fortunes to $1 billion, and the US is the most common country of birth among the billionaires on our list. Most from the US built their businesses in technology or finance.
*Countries with only one billionaire in our sample were removed from this section.
Below you can see exactly how long it took the world’s richest self-made people to earn their first billion from those who turned an idea to a fortune in just four years, to those who put in over half a century of hard work to hit that magic milestone.
INDUSTRY KEY
Rank |
Name |
2020 Net Worth |
Age |
Country |
Source |
Industry |
Year Started Out |
Year of First Billion |
Years Taken to |
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OLBG wanted to find out how long it has taken on average for the world’s richest people to earn their first $1 billion. Taking the top 100 richest billionaires from Forbes’ World’s Billionaires List, the industry, country and net worth of each person was sourced. Billionaires who inherited the majority of their net worth were removed from the sample.
To estimate the time it took each person to earn their first $1 billion, the year each billionaire founded their primary business or started working in their sector was recorded and compared to the year they first appeared on Forbes’ Billionaires Lists or the Forbes 400 list.