in the world.
Thanks to the technology revolution and hyper-connectivity, the world is experiencing an unprecedented phenomenon: the rise of young billionaires. A decade ago, it was a rarity to find a young self-made millionaire or billionaire in the lists of rich people worldwide. But the technology startup revolution that started in the U.S. has caused a domino effect across the world. According to data by WealthX, tech billionaires are doing better than the billionaires in other industries. The data suggest that there are 143 tech billionaires in the world, with an average worth of $6 billion each. Billionaires outside the tech sector have an average worth of $3 billion. What’s the reason of this big difference? The answer is given by legendary investor and PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel in his bestseller “Zero To One.” Thiel believes that tech companies have an edge over other industries because technology products are easier to scale and grow and they also have big profit margins and low operations costs.
The Rise of Tech Billionaires
There were about 71 self-made billionaires aged below 40 in Forbes’ 2019 list of the world’s richest, a record. Out of these 71, 30 were from the technology industry, while 7 made a fortune in fashion and 7 were from the real estate sector. A cursory glance at the list would show you names of young tech billionaires like Stripe cofounder John Collison, Snapchat cofounder Evan Spiegel and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. Also on the list was Jihan Wu, 35, a Chinese tech billionaire who cofounded Bitmain, one of the largest computer chip companies for Bitcoin mining.
The rise of young tech billioanires is not only limited to the developed world. Developing nations in Southeast Asia, Africa, South America and Eastern Europe are also contributing their fair share to the lists of the young and wealthy. Some notable examples from India include Ankit Bhati, cofounder of ride-sharing company Ola Cabs; Ritesh Agarwal, cofounder of hospitality company Oyo Rooms; Sriharsha Majety, cofounder of online food ordering company Swiggy; and Flipkart’s Binny Bansal.
The 21st century has brought with itself an unprecedented amount of wealth and innovation While millennials are still left out in dealing with their financial dilemmas, boomers are still holding on to their wealth that is mainly incorporated in the form of investments and real estate.
In this article, we are going to discuss 15 youngest tech billionaires. But first, let’s see our criteria of ranking.
Age
Age is the most important factor that we are taking into account for our ranking.
Market Value of Company/Startup
Although net worth is an important factor, we have laid a greater emphasis on the market caps of the companies started by the billionaires on our list. Market value is a more pragmatic and prudent factor when compared with a billionaire’s wealth as it highlights the value they created.
Social Impact
Social impact gauges the impact a billionaire had on the society with their product or service. A billionaire who can create a radical new idea or product that adds value and solves problems will get a higher ranking on our list of 15 youngest tech billionaires.
Self-made billionaires
Inheriting wealth from one’s parents does not have any weightage in our criteria. We chose only those individuals who started everything from scratch.
With this ranking criteria in mind, let’s start our list of 15 youngest tech billionaires.
15) Melanie Perkins ($1.3 billion)
Melanie Perkins ranks 15th on our list of 15 youngest tech billionaires. She is an Australia-based entrepreneur and founder of Canva, a graphic design platform for students, professionals, and businesses alike. She founded the company in 2012 along with her husband and attained a billionaire status at the age of 32.
14) Bill Liu ($1.7 billion)
With an increasing demand for foldable and new generation designed smartphones, companies such as Lenovo (HKG: 0992) and LG (KRX: 003550) are looking for ways to make mobile screens bendable and flexible. That is where Bill Liu comes in, a Chinese entrepreneur and billionaire who founded Royole Corp, a competitor of Samsung (KRX: SSNHY) and other screen manufacturing giants. He holds a doctorate degree from Stanford. He is 37 years old and his company is valued at $8 billion.
13) Ben Silbermann ($1.6 billion)
Ben Silbermann is an American entrepreneur and billionaire who is the co-founder and CEO of Pinterest (NYSE: PINS), a social media app that lets you organize images, recipes, trends, clothing and infrographics. Pinterest has over 300 million active users. It has a total value of $12.3 billion. Ben Silbermann became a billionaire at the age of 34.
12) Binny Bansal ($2 billion)
Binny Bansal is an Indian entrepreneur and tech billionaire who is the co-founder and former CEO of Flipkart, an Indian e-commerce giant founded in 2007. Flipkart was sold to Walmart (NYSE: WMT) in 2018 for $16 billion, and a sizable portion went to him and Sachin Bansal, Binny’s partner in founding Flipkart. Flipkart today employs more than 30,000 people.
11) Chris Wanstrath ($2.3 billion)
The founder of GitHub, a social network for software developers, Chris Wanstrath became a billionaire when Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) announced that they would buy GitHub for $7.5 billion in 2018. Chris is 35 years old and serves as a technical fellow in Microsoft for their strategic software initiatives.
10) Drew Houston ($2.2 billion)
You may be familiar with Dropbox (NASDAQ: DBX) which lets you create backups of your favorite videos and images. Well, you have Drew Houston to thank. An MIT graduate and the founder of Dropbox, Drew Houston is 37 years old.
9) Pavel Durov ($3 billion)
Known as a libertarian and rebellious tech entrepreneur from Russia, Pavel Durov is often dubbed as the Mark Zuckerberg of Russia. He founded VK, the Facebook version of Russia at the mere age of 22. At its peak, VK stood at $3 billion in value. After falling out with Russian authorities, Pavel left VK and went to Berlin to found Telegram, a messaging app that went on to rival WhatsApp.
8) Austin Russel ($3.4 billion)
Austin Russel ranks 8th on our list of 15 youngest tech billionaires. Currently holding the title of youngest self-made billionaire, Austin Russel is 25 years old. He founded Luminar (NASDAQ: LAZR), a LIDAR (Light detection and ranging) sensor manufacturer that develops high-tech sensors for enabling self-driving cars to visualize and identify their surroundings. Russel is also a college dropout from Stanford. His company Luminar technologies is currently valued at $10.5 billion and is competing with other Lidar sensor manufacturers like Velodyne (NASDAQ: VLDR) and Aeva.
7) Evan Spiegel ($4 billion)
The founder of the famous messaging app Snapchat (NYSE: SNAP), Evan Spiegel is an American businessman and entrepreneur. He founded Snap Inc, the parent company of Snapchat, with his friends Bobby Murphy and Reggie Brown (who are also billionaires) when they were studying at Stanford University. Even Spiegel joined the ranks of the youngest tech billionaires in the world at the age of 25. Today Snap Inc is listed on the New York stock exchange and is valued at $22 billion.
6) Frank Wang ($4.8 billion)
Another tech billionaire from China, Frank Wang is the founder and CEO of DJI (INDEXDJX: DJI), the Shenzhen-based company which is the largest manufacturer of commercial drones in the world. Founded in 2006, Frank ran his business out of a dormitory of Hong Kong University where he was studying engineering. In 2017, Wang became the youngest self-made billionaire in Asia. DJI has a market share of 70% in global drone manufacturing and supply and rakes in more than $3 billion as annual revenue.
5) John Collision ($3.2 billion)
John Collision is an Irish billionaire and entrepreneur who co-founded Stripe with his brother Patrick Collision. Stripe lets businesses and individuals accept payments over the internet. Stripe is headquartered both in California and Dublin.
4) Daniel Ek ($5 billion)
Daniel Ek is the co-founder and CEO of Spotify (NYSE: SPOT), an online music streaming service that he founded with Martin Lorentzon in 2006. Spotify has over 140 million paid subscribers. Daniel Ek is a Swedish billionaire with a net worth of $5 billion and the total value of Spotify stands roughly at $60 billion.
3) Brian Chesky ($14.2 billion)
Who in their wildest imagination would have ever thought that renting three air mattresses to make ends meet would result in a $100 billion idea? That is what happened with Airbnb (NASDAQ: ABNB) and its founders. Brian Chesky is the current CEO and the co-founder of Airbnb, a peer-to-peer house renting company that operates in a manner similar to Uber (NYSE: UBER). Brian along with Joe Gebbia started Airbnb in 2007 with Nathan Blecharczyk joining in the next year. They obtained seed funding from the Y combinator and then grew all across the world. Brian Chesky is 39 years old.
2) Zhang Yiming ($22 billion)
Yiming is behind the addictive app TikTok, which has over 800 million users worldwide. Zhang Yiming has a net worth of $22.6 billion, making him the ninth richest person in China. Also the founder of ByteDance, Zhang Yiming became a billionaire at the age of 35 in 2018.
1) Mark Zuckerberg ($98 billion)
Topping the list of 15 youngest tech billionaires is Mark Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook. Facebook is used by over 2.4 billion users worldwide. Mark was dethroned a year earlier in the list of billionaires by Kylie Jenner of the Kardashian family, who became a billionaire at an age of 22. Her source of income remained to be Kylie cosmetics (NYSE: COTY). Today Zuckerberg is estimated to have amassed a total net worth of $98.3 billion. Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) is valued at $750 billion making it one of the most influential and profitable companies in the world.
You can also take a peek at the 11 biggest telecom companies in the world and the 15 biggest cloud companies
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This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.