Success Stories Of The Top 5 Richest Men In The World 2018

Success stories of the top 5 richest men in the world 2018

1.     Jeff Bezos

The first person to top $100billion is the Founder and CEO of Amazon.com and owner of The Washington Post. He turned down job offers from Intel and Bell Labs to join a Financial tele communications startup called Fitel and became a senior vice president after only four years at the Hudge Fund D.E. Shaw. Upon hearing that the web had grown 2,300% in one year, he decided to sell books online. He quit his job and bonus because he did not want to regret later in life for not having participated in internet as he used REGRET MINIMIZATION FRAMEWORK. In the first month of its launch, amazon sold books to people in all 50 states and in 45 different countries. He used to order one book and the nine others which were rare as the bulk order was 10. He also used to pack hundreds of books by his hands. He was threatened to shut amazon by Barns and Noble; however, he was determined to overtake the market competition from larger book retailers. Amazon went public on May 15, 1997.

During late 2002, rapid spending from Amazon caused it financial distress after revenues stagnated and the company nearly went bankrupt. He closed distribution centres and laid off 14% of the Amazon workforce. His determination helped Amazon rebound from financial instability and turned a profit of $400 million. He has announced that New Shepard, the reusable launch system would begin transporting humans into sub-orbital space by November 2018. On February 1, 2018, Amazon reported its highest ever profit with quarterly earnings of $2 billion. Barclays, has predicted that Amazon could be the first trillion-dollar company.

2.     Bill Gates

The second richest man on the Earth is 62 years old Bill Gates who has held the Forbes title of the richest person in the world from 1995 to 2017 excluding four years. At the age of 13 he enrolled in the Lakeside School and was excused from maths classes to pursue his interest in programming the GE system in BASIC. The first computer programme that he wrote was an implementation of tic-tac-toe that allowed to play games against the computer. Gates was also asked to write the school’s computer programme to schedule students in classes. He left Harvard after He found Traf-O-Data at the age of 17 with Allen which was a failure. He then founded Microsoft with Paul Allen in 1975.

He led the company as chief executive officer and stepped down in January 2001, but he remained as chairman. He owns just over 1% of shares as he has sold or given away much of his stake in Microsoft. In 2006, he announced that he would be transitioning from full time work at Microsoft to part time work and full time work at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It is the world’s largest private charitable foundation and also works to save lives and improve global health.

3.     Warren Buffet

Next richest billionaire is 88-year-old Warren Buffet who is also known as the Wizard of Omaha. From the childhood days of his life, he was interested in trading and he started making and saving money from the stock market. He whilst working at his grandfather’s grocery shop adopted many other means of income like selling cold drinks, weekly magazines, stamps, chewing gums door to door and delivering newspapers. He was just 11 years old when he purchased first share in his life.  He partnered with his friend to install a pin ball machine in the Baber’s shop by investing $25 and then they installed more machines by generating income. He wanted to work for Benjamin Graham for free but he was refused. In 1957, he had three partnerships operating in the entire year and he operated five partnerships in 1958 when his third child was born. Then the company grew into 6 partnerships and he met his future partner Charlie in 1959. In 1962, he merged all his partnerships into one and became a millionaire. He then purchased Berkeshire Hathaway that was a failing textile firm and turned into a successful company. He has pledged to donate 99.9% of his wealth and mainly through Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He is also popular as one of the best investors of his time.

4.     Mark Zukerberg

The fourth richest person in the world is 34 year-old Mark Zukerberg who was born in New York. He did not become the youngest billionaire because he wanted to get good grades in school or a job after graduation but because he followed his interest from the young age of 12 when he created messaging program ‘Zucknet’ using Atari BASIC which allowed to transfer the messages between the house and his dad’s dental office. He also developed games and communication tools for fun for his friends. He rejected offers for an acquisition or a job when he was a teenager. In 2002 after graduating Phillips Exeter, Zuckerberg entered Harvard university and by his second year in the Ivy league he gained a reputation as software developer. He then developed Facemash in 2003 which crashed due to overload and for which he faced disciplinary action. In 2004, Zukerberg registered the domain name ‘The Facebook.com which functioned only in the Harvard in the beginning and after realising that there were 4000 users registered on Facebook, the services were then introduced to Columbia University. In 2010, he was named “Person of the Year” by Times Magazine. He took Facebook public on May 18, 2012 and became 29^th richest person on earth overnight. Today over 2 billion people around the world use Facebook.

Since 2017, Facebook has faced scandal after scandal and in April 2018 was summoned to give 10 hours of testimony to Congress in regards to 2016 election and the Cambridge Analytica data harvesting scandal. Zuckerberg has defended Facebook and reiterated the company's stated mission to connect the world with projects like bringing internet access to areas without less connectivity; through his charity work, he's poured millions into education efforts and billions into initiatives for curing the world's diseases. 

5.     Amancio Ortega

The fifth richest man is Amancio Ortega who is a Spanish billionaire businessman. At the age of 14 he left his school and moved to A Coruña due to his father’s job as a railway worker and there he started working in a shop as a local shirtmaker. He founded Inditex fashion group that is best known for its chain of Zara clothing and accessories shops. In 1975 he opened his first Zara store with his wife Rosalía Mera. In 2011, he announced retirement from Inditex, the parent company of the Zara chain which has 8 brands, including Pull & Bear, and 7,500 stores around the world. Ortega typically earns more than $400 million in dividends a year. He has invested his dividends primarily into real estate in Madrid, Barcelona, London, Chicago, Miami and New York. He is an incredibly private man, and has given just a handful of interviews throughout his incredibly successful career. The surprising thing about Mr Ortega is that he wears a simple uniform of a blue blazer, white shirt, and grey trousers none of which are Zara products. He has also bought one of the tallest skyscrapers in Spain. In 2017, he donated 320 million Euros to Spain’s healthcare sector for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

The people who are billionaires today struggled in the young age and kept working hard. Never Give Up irrespective of any hurdles you face in life. Keep moving on.