How do people become billionaires?

As in, self-made billionaires, not people who were born into that kind of wealth.

What makes them in particular so successful? Are they always entrepreneurs? :colone:

Reply 1

Rascacielos

19

Have a great idea, or exploit someone else's.

Reply 2

shawn_o1

21

They are psychopaths. They crave the money. If you are kind you would give it all away :wink:

Reply 3

Rakas21

21

Original post by Alpha brah

As in, self-made billionaires, not people who were born into that kind of wealth.

What makes them in particular so successful? Are they always entrepreneurs? :colone:

There are plenty of inherited millionaires but few billionaires come from inheritance, the vast majority have earnt it.

..

Two great billionaires i admire are Warren Buffet (also because with Gates he uses it for good) and Elon Musk (a man of unlimited ambition).

In the case of both these people you need a work ethic which goes above and beyond the ordinary, you need to devote yourself to your goals.

In the case of Warren Buffet he has made his money through investments from a starting point of around $10k, he never takes a massive risk (he's always only leveraged about 60% of his company's worth) and he invests in companies where he trusts the management. In addition, he looks for companies that are cheap rather than the latest fad per say. In short, he has a plan and he sticks to it.

Now Elon Musk on the other hand is one of the few people i honestly admire. He is innovative and ambitious. To start with he moved from South Africa to the USA for university. Then he created Paypal and sold it to Ebay for i think $1.5bn (he'd be much richer had he held on), his share being worth a few hundred million. Not content with living the high life he then created Tesla, now one of the leading electric vehicle companies and the company which Ford admits is responsible for it competing in the electric vehicle sphere. He has also created Solar City and plans to have the charging stations powered by solar power and to provide Tesla customers the electricity for free. That is an incredible and revolutionary idea. Incredibly however he also launched SpaceX, at the third attempt the rocket was successful and he now has a contract from NASA for $1.5bn to go to the ISS with supplies.

Future ambitions include a hyperloop which is kind of a subway in a vacuum so speeds comparable to air travel can be achieved. He also intends to go to Mars.

...

Finally a saying from a show called Las Vegas comes to mind (watch, it's great).. "Normal people don't become billionaires".

Reply 4

Rakas21

21

Original post by shawn_o1

They are psychopaths. They crave the money. If you are kind you would give it all away :wink:

Buffet and Gates have probably done more for Africa than any government.

Reply 5

uberteknik

21

When I'm a billionaire I will find you and tell you personally!

Reply 6

Rakas21

21

I should have mentioned their net worth's.

Buffet: $58.5bn
Musk: $6.7bn

Reply 7

Plantagenet Crown

20

Sometimes they just get lucky.

Reply 8

Alfissti

20

Lots of hard work, loads of determination and generally a "can do" & "never give up" attitude.

I believe everyone can be billionaire and my late maternal grandfather is prove of it. He was a brick-layer from southern China, as a 20 year old he arrived in Singapore with nothing more than the clothes he wore, he died almost a billionaire in networth in 2003 aged 87 and if you had been to Singapore chances are you would have been into a building where either the bricks, steel rebars or the concrete foundation work was done by a company he founded. One thing for sure, it was very rare to see him drive his car and he would rather take the bus or the MRT. He'd give you a major sounding if ever you asked him to eat at a McDonalds as he scoffed at the idea of paying so much just for a piece of bread with a small piece of meat in it.

Reply 9

johnh1983

Original post by Alpha brah

As in, self-made billionaires, not people who were born into that kind of wealth.

What makes them in particular so successful? Are they always entrepreneurs? :colone:

They create a company like microsoft or facebook or walmart. Then, they get hooked up with a venture capital firm and they get a 10% stake in a corporation which ends up worth $200+ billion plus millions of stock options. Easy enough right? :wink:

Reply 10

johnh1983

Original post by shawn_o1

They are psychopaths. They crave the money. If you are kind you would give it all away :wink:

Many of them are philanthropists who've pledge the majority of their wealth to charity. Do your due diligence before you post.

Luck

Luck, drive, ambition, ruthlessness

Reply 13

Triple-Sod

6

Original post by shawn_o1

They are psychopaths. They crave the money. If you are kind you would give it all away :wink:

Ah that's just sour grapes.....the stereotypical 'evil capitalist' :rolleyes:

Yet when actually you look at psychopaths and narcissists though, they're incredibly lazy and think the world owes them a living. So when things don't go their way they just wallow in self pity and blame everybody around them, even for the most trivial crap most of us take in our stride. Often they'll formulate these grand conspiracies about who and what's keeping them down, anything to deflect responsibility away from themselves.

Then they're just so arrogant, they always think they're being really clever and manipulative, that they're playing these really subtle sneaky little games....that to most half intelligent people stand out like a dogs *******s, they just can't be bothered calling them out on it or figure give them enough rope and they'll hang themselves....which they usually do.

Thus they end up pretty much failing at life....or go into politics.

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 14

SoftPunch

3

Motivation is all that is required. :sexface:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=AuqemytQ5QA

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 15

Silver Arrows

13

Luck. Complete luck. Nothing more, nothing less.

Reply 16

davidtyoember

9

Original post by Alpha brah

As in, self-made billionaires, not people who were born into that kind of wealth.

What makes them in particular so successful? Are they always entrepreneurs? :colone:

IMO, by facilitating the rendering of great service to the masses.

Reply 17

davidtyoember

9

Original post by Rakas21

There are plenty of inherited millionaires but few billionaires come from inheritance, the vast majority have earnt it.

..

Two great billionaires i admire are Warren Buffet (also because with Gates he uses it for good) and Elon Musk (a man of unlimited ambition).

In the case of both these people you need a work ethic which goes above and beyond the ordinary, you need to devote yourself to your goals.

In the case of Warren Buffet he has made his money through investments from a starting point of around $10k, he never takes a massive risk (he's always only leveraged about 60% of his company's worth) and he invests in companies where he trusts the management. In addition, he looks for companies that are cheap rather than the latest fad per say. In short, he has a plan and he sticks to it.

Now Elon Musk on the other hand is one of the few people i honestly admire. He is innovative and ambitious. To start with he moved from South Africa to the USA for university. Then he created Paypal and sold it to Ebay for i think $1.5bn (he'd be much richer had he held on), his share being worth a few hundred million. Not content with living the high life he then created Tesla, now one of the leading electric vehicle companies and the company which Ford admits is responsible for it competing in the electric vehicle sphere. He has also created Solar City and plans to have the charging stations powered by solar power and to provide Tesla customers the electricity for free. That is an incredible and revolutionary idea. Incredibly however he also launched SpaceX, at the third attempt the rocket was successful and he now has a contract from NASA for $1.5bn to go to the ISS with supplies.

Future ambitions include a hyperloop which is kind of a subway in a vacuum so speeds comparable to air travel can be achieved. He also intends to go to Mars.

...

Finally a saying from a show called Las Vegas comes to mind (watch, it's great).. "Normal people don't become billionaires".

more or less accurate, may I just say, before he got involved with paypal he was involved with a company called zip2 from which he got around 22M. The whole SpaceX rocket thing, the rocket launches failed 3 times, though they intended to do only 3 launches. But after the 3rd launch, they figured out what was wrong and then the 4th launch was successful.