The 10 Youngest Self-made Billionaires of All Time

by kalyani10
  1. Mark Zuckerberg

    Feted as one of the youngest billionaire on the planet, Mark Zuckerberg at 27 was worth $13.5 billion according to Forbes 2011 list of the super-rich. In 2012, at 28 he added another feather to his cap by becoming the youngest CEO of a Fortune 1000 company to go public. He is the co-founder and current CEO of the immensely popular social networking site Facebook. Zuckerberg began Facebook from his Harvard dormitory room on February 4, 2004 and then with the help of roommate Dustin Moskovitz, decided to spread it to other schools which had social contacts with Harvard like Stanford, Dartmouth, Columbia, New York University, Cornell, Penn, Brown and Yale. Eventually Zuckerberg and his associates moved to Palo Alto, thus leaving Harvard without a degree but moving onto a path of now-legendary success.
     
  2. Dustin Muscowitz

    Younger to Zuckerberg by a mere eight days, Muscowitz is probably the world’s youngest self-made billionaire according to Forbes. At twenty-eight years of age, he is already worth $3.5 billion based on his 7.6% share in Facebook. In 2004, Muscowitz founded the social networking website Facebook along with Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin and Chris Hughes but four years later in 2008, he left hugely popular social networking site to co-found Asana[4] with Justin Rosenstein. Apart from his internet ventures, Muscowitz remains busy with charity; in 2011 he co-founded the philanthropic organization Good Ventures with his partner Cari Tuna.

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  3. Sergei Brin

    Another of the computer billionaires, Sergei Brin owes his place on the America’s richest men to the world’s most famous internet search engine Google which he famously started with partner Larry Page in a friend’s garage. At just 37 years old, this former immigrant from Russia is one of the world’s youngest billionaires. According to Forbes, Brin enjoys a net worth of $18.7 billion as of March 2012. The story of Google’s launch is now legendary with enthusiasts recounting how Page and Brin dropped out of their computer science PhD program in 1998 and started the world’s most famous web search engine out of a friend’s garage.

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  4. Lawrence Page

    Former partner of Brin and co-founder of Google, Lawrence or Larry as he is popularly known Page, is the current CEO of the search giant Google and the youngest chief executive officer, and the only one under age 40, currently running one of the 500 biggest U.S. companies by revenue. Like his erstwhile partner, Page currently enjoys a net worth of $18.7 billion as of March 2012. Neither Page nor Brin completed their Ph.D. Studies after they found success with the search engine and advertising behemoth, which had revenue of $37.9 billion in 2011 and was ranked No. 73 on the Fortune 500 list.
     
  5. Yusaka Maezwa

    However not all young self-made billionaires are made at the computer lab. One shining example who has bucked the trend of internet millionaires is Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese entrepreneur who at just 36 years of age has net worth of $1.0 billion. As of per Forbes list 2011, he is the 1,140th richest person in the world and 25th richest person in Japan. Yusaku Maezawa is started out as a former rock musician, selling CDs and band t-shirts online back in the early 1990's. He then founded a company called Start Today, along with a wildly-successful e-commerce site called Zozotown. The company has doubled its value every year since it was established in 2005, and Zozotown currently has over 3 million subscribers.
     
  6. Yoshikazu Tanaka

    Among the young Japanese to have made good in the World Wide Web is Yoshikazu Tanaka. He is the Founder of Japan's largest social networking site, GREE, a name which is a play on the expression, "Six degrees of separation. At just 34 years of age, Tanaka is already worth over $2.2 billion. Currently Tanaka has plans for global expansion and will soon establish a California office for GREE.  In 2010, the 33 year old was ranked as “Asia's Youngest Self-Made Billionaire” under the age of 35 and was selected as the “World's Second-Youngest Self-Made Billionaire” after Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg.
     
  7. Oleg Bakhmatyuk

    From another part of the world, Ukrainian businessman Oleg Bakhmatyuk joins the club of youngest self-made billionaires in the world with a net worth of $1 billion. Previously an employee of the state oil and gas company Naftogaz Ukraine, he left the job to found his own poultry business. Eventually the founder and head of egg producer Avangardco Investments Public joined the billionaires list after floating a 20% stake in the company in June as Stock price up 35% since going public. His Sister, Nataliya, is CEO of the company.
     
  8. Andrey Verevskiy

    Yet another name from Ukraine to figure among the world’s youngest self-made billionaires is that of Andrey Verevskiy. The thirty-sex year old from has a current net worth of $1 billion according to Forbes list of 2012 Billionaires. Andrey Verevskiy started as a grains trader when he was just 20; over the next several years he actively acquired farms to build agribusiness conglomerate Kernel Holding. In 2007, he took the company public on Warsaw stock exchange. Currently Verevskiy is diversifying his investments and towards the purpose has purchased Ukrainian real estate developer KDD Group. He also acts as the parliamentary deputy of his country, having smoothly switched parties from Yulia Tymoshenko's bloc to new president Victor Yanukovich's bloc when the political winds shifted.
     
  9. Xiaofeng Peng

    At only 36 years of age, Chinese businessman Xiaofeng Peng is Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer of LDK Solar Co., Ltd. He founded the company in July 2005 and it went public in 2007 and is now worth over $1.8 billion. Peng’s personal fortune is pegged at around $1.5 billion, thanks to his enterprise in the area of renewable solar energy. Peng started off with another company Suzhou Liouxin in March 1997 which manufactured personal protective equipment products like gloves and employed 12,000. He considered adding solar cell wafers to its product line when he realized that no Chinese company was producing them. In 2005, Peng invested $30 million of his own money and $80 million of venture financing into building factories and soon was on his way to becoming one of the youngest self-made billionaires in China.
     
  10. Sarah Blakely

    Forty one year old Sara Blakely is believed to be the world's youngest female self-made billionaire with a net worth of $1 billion as of March 2012 according to Forbes list of 2012 Billionaires. She owes this position as the inventor of Spanx, the stretchy, shaping thighs and legs of nylons, but without the attached stockings. After graduating from Florida State University in 1993, she had an unremarkable  career as a seller of fax machines. During this time though she had an idea of a material that would help women achieve a slimmer, streamlined look. However she didn't tell anyone about her billion dollar idea for a year after it first occurred to her as she suspected that it would be dismissed by critics – in fact when she approached a patent attorney, he asked her if he was on Candid Camera. It took her two years to convince a factory to manufacture a run of her shapewear which is now hugely popular and available in 35 countries and in 200 varieties.
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