Twenty Billionaires Who Started With Nothing | Hacker News Reader

Twenty Billionaires Who Started With Nothing

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90 pointsicey80 comments

This type of thing frequently annoys me:

Larry Ellison: "There, he held odd jobs for eight years before founding a software development company in 1977"

If he started with nothing, holding odd jobs, no savings, etc. how did he found a company?

These "start from nothing" tales are like graphs: when the scale on the Y-axis is sufficiently large you lose all detail at the bottom end of the scale - the all important details that happen very early in someone's "career" that make all the difference in the long run.

The minor things like having your parents pay for you to go to college (if you live in a country that doesn't supply you with free education) or finding an angel investor or getting a scholarship to attend the right school etc. are all to do with being fortunate - and all of them classify, in my opinion, as "starting with something".

Whilst it's true that generational inheritance is not the only way to become successful and every single one of these people have worked very hard to achieve their well deserved success, there are people who have truly nothing and despite being as ready and willing to work and as bright and dilligent as the next person, just happen to never be in the right place at the right time.

And yet we re-tell these glorious stories of the tiny tiny fraction of people that enjoy stellar rags to riches stories and it reinforces the greatest lie in capitalism: that if you're poor, it's your own fault.

Poverty is very much a social problem and needs to be dealt with on a social scale - not by taunting the poor by saying "Look!? They did it, what's wrong with you? Why can't you do it?"

Really? So the success story is only valid if they start with zero dollars, crippled, and recently diagnosed with a terminal illness?

These are people who grew up in a rich country sure, and used every advantage they could. However, their daddies didn't fund their dreams. They only had the same resources that everyone on this board has. The fact that they took it, and turned it into a billion dollars is something to be respected.

No one here is taunting the poor.

I didn't say that these success stories are invalid, but I do think that they're told in a disempowering way.

The focus of the story is not "The amazing story of 20 billionaires and how they found success" but the fact that they started with nothing.

However this (and every other story I've seen like it - at least that I can remember) glosses over the true practicality of those early stages.

Larry Ellison had some odd jobs then founded a software company. My original post complains that about the "scale" of the story - because it ends at 1,000,000,000 the differences of $10,000 or even one or two million dollars sometimes that people were fortunate enough to have in order to fund their enterprise are too small to register but they're incredibly important.

Also in response to:

They only had the same resources that everyone on this board has

My guess is that the majority of people on this board aren't as poor as the people I'm referring to when I say "taunting the poor".

I don't by any means consider myself poor and I'm not complaing that I feel taunted by this, but perpetrating this rags to riches story over and over again and saying that people start "with nothing" is demoralising to the truly disempowered.

I think it would be more appropriate to tell these stories in an empowering way: where very minute practical details of day to day survival were addressed whilst telling the story of how Larry Ellison "founded a software company" after "starting with nothing" then "having odd jobs".

Maybe, maybe not. I have had many advantages in my life mostly given to me by chance. My family is fairly wealthy. I attend an extremely and prestigious and expensive college which is paid for by my parents, leaving me with no student debt. Most importantly I have won a genetic lottery purely by chance. While most studies say that there is a very large component of environment in innate intelligence, most also say that there is a significant genetic component, both of which influence my testing in the 99th percentile of most standardized tests. Bill Gates seems to have had some similar advantages.

So, if my daddy does fund my dreams, does that make my hard work worth less?

So, if my daddy does fund my dreams, does that make my hard work worth less?

Just the opposite! I'd say your hard work will be worth far more than average :)

Nope, hard work is appreciated from both rich and poor. But your advantages in life means that no one is going to write an article about how you overcomed obstacles to succeed.

It's sad, but I'd take your position and the tradeoffs any day.

According to Wiki Larry founded Oracle in 1977 with his investment being mere 1400$ (even inflation adjusted that is a small number) of his own money.

He was also aged 33 at the time, which makes it the more awesome if you compare him to the many other self-made men who managed to create sizable fortunes by their early twenties.

You picked an awful example.

You're right, Larry's is an inspiring story and it's well told on his Wikipedia page. My objection is to the style of reporting in the original article.

I see it very frequently, especially in more traditional forms of news media which have a broader audience consuming information more passively.

In this context it's obvious that one can use the story above to then go and look up each individual story to see the details but as a "news meme" I think this type of story needs to die.

It's curious that so many of them are 70+ years old, which means they were the right age to benefit from the huge economic boom that occurred in the United States after World War II.

Seems to support the hypothesis that success is equal parts smarts, hard work and timing.

And compound interest.

What about luck?

Average age = 72.25

    Sheldon Adelson      77
    Carl Berg            73
    Stephen Bisciotti    50
    Leon Charney         72
    John Paul DeJoria    66
    Larry Ellison        66
    Alan Gerry           81
    Alec Gores           57
    Harold Hamm          64
    George Joseph        89
    Kirk Kerkorian       93
    Ken Langone          75
    Ralph Lauren         71
    Carl Lindner Jr      91
    David Murdock        87
    Thomas Peterffy      65
    Howard Schultz       57
    Kenny Troutt         62
    Albert Ueltschi      93
    Oprah Winfrey        56

Or maybe it just takes time to become a billionaire when you start out with nothing.

... a more interesting story than "200 M people who started with nothing, and ended up with nothing."

Also, it's more or equally probable to win the lottery, casino, poker?

A few of them are even pretty similar in the mechanics. The first person the article profiles is Harold Hamm, a wildcat driller who struck a huge well in 1971, more or less by luck (he doesn't appear to have used any of the geological-formation analysis that modern drilling uses). Gold-prospecting had some similar success stories.

Also, it's more or equally probable to win the lottery, casino, poker?

One of those is not like the others. In the long run poker is almost entirely a game of skill.

If you're talking about the US this is a popular misconception. The number of rich and poor people does stay the same from generation to generation. But the people themselves move very fluidly through these brackets. One of the best predictors of income bracket is age. Young people are much more likely to be poor but they seldom remain poor. As they gain more experience they become more valuable and pull themselves out of poverty. Likewise many people with medium and large amounts of money lose it and become poor. Saying, "In 1990 10% of the US is poor and in 2010 10% are still poor" is pretty silly if most of 1990's poor are different people than 2010's poor.

Tracking flesh and blood people through time using tax returns from the IRS yields dramatically different conclusions than tracking buckets of people using Census data. I'd like to do a visualization of income bracket churn in the US. From what I've read I imagine it would look roughly like this:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/02/23/movies/2008022...

Also Thomas Sowell has written extensively on this exact subject. Here is an article about this misconception that is a lot more elegant than this comment:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/11/income_con...

Krugman, among many others, disagrees. See: http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-mobility.htm and http://www.bnet.com/blog/financial-business/as-income-mobili...

Tracking flesh and blood people is a poor methodology as all but a handful of trust fund kids start at the bottom and work up.

Krugman thinks that Social Security is on financially sound footing...

prove him wrong?

This'll do: http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=5530&type=0

No it won't. There's no context there.

CBO = Govt's Auditer, That graph = range of outlays they predict (best/worst), if CBO is unbiased OR biased towards govt AND best_case_outlays > revenue -> social security will blow up under current laws. $: True

I know what the CBO is and I know how to read outlays. The economic impact is far more complex than the simplistic analysis that you have presented.

The Social Security Administration also projects that the situation will stabilize. They suggest that, instead of complete Social Security reform, the payroll tax simply go through a graduated increase ending in 2081. Krugman's main criticism with this math is that GDP growth projections are needlessly pessimistic, meaning that the revenue projections are also pessimistic.

Either way, he is not arguing against all change to Social Security, he is arguing against the loudest voices that are constantly screaming that Social Security is a giant disaster that will tear the govt down in flames.

When I asked for context I wasn't asking for what the CBO is, I was asking for what the economic assumptions (of which there must be many) the CBO made. I was also asking for the context of the outlay in respect to the rest of the government debt and budget.

Since even the govt orgs and economists have no good ideas on GDP growth to 2081 (!) - I'd suggest to look instead at the interests these groups represent: Krugman loves govt safety nets, SSA wants SS to look viable long term, the CBO looks at problems that may or may be occurring.

To say "GDP is obviously growing more than that" (especially while the world is in a deep structural recession) is a similar argument to Republicans pointing to sunspot activity and saying ("so theres no CO2 problem!") while ignoring all other data on climate change.

Nope, sorry, your method of analysis is a logical fallacy (circumstantial ad hominem).

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/circumstantial-ad-h...

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/adhomine.html

They started as white guys, besides Oprah of course.

EDIT: Perhaps I should have been clearer. Given the average age, they were significantly advantaged by the color of their skin and patriarchal state of society, so they didn't start with "nothing." They took advantage of the many opportunities afforded to white males at the time. I'm not saying they were lazy or don't deserve their wealth, but Bloomberg seems to be painting them in the best possible light.

Would downvote if I could.

Care to explain? Clearly there is a correlation here. Do you believe it's just coincidence that there is one non-white person and one non-male in the entire group?

Perhaps they thought you were insinuating that it's more difficult/impossible for people that aren't white and male to become millionaires. Given their age, however, perhaps it was more that, when they were growing up, it was easier to become great, as societal pressures, presumptions and restrictions were very different. I would hope that in another 70 years, the collection of previously less-privileged trillion/quadrillionaires (read: inflation) is more representative of society as a whole.

I agree with you. Edited my comment above to reflect my full opinion.

The average age of these men is 70+. They would have been starting their businesses or making important contacts before the Civil Rights Act of 1966, an era with limited opportunities for non-whites.

True, but why do we always, always, always have to turn everything into a race issue. I'm tired of "he's white" being the first thing anyone mentions.

Forget about hard work or good ideas...it's all about being white right?

It's only a race issue because it started out that way. Nobody is turning it into anything that it wasn't already. The whole "turning everything into a race issue" is a copout used by those who'd rather forget the past and justify their ignorance. People too quickly forget that it was only two generations ago that non-whites were mostly deprived of civil liberties. The massive disadvantages of minorities and their families will continue to ripple through US society for decades, possibly centuries to come.

Despite having 403 billionaires, there is only one black billionaire in the US, even though blacks make up 12.4% of the population. Do you think this is a coincidence?

This is hacker news, if I wanted discussions like that I'd go to CNN or the Huffington Post.

Why can't we focus on the good that these men/women did instead of their race? Of all the white people in the world, very few are rags to riches billionaires...why can't we talk about that?

You make it sound like it's not possible to talk about both the good they did and the effect race has on their success.

Of course it's possible, it's just not helpful to the discussion. It's like reading Outliers and then expecting a solution other than saying: put in 10,000 hours and then hope you're in the right place at the right time.

Focusing on what they've done, rather than their race, gives others a chance to disassemble and possibly, duplicate what they've done. Race is used as a disqualifier, rather than a single factor...that's what I have a problem with.

agree, nobody starts with "nothing". Being raised in the woods by wolves is close, though.

Romulus: the entrepreneur's entrepreneur.

Also note the progress of their dozens of millions of white-guy contemporaries. I think that being a white guy, even in the pre-civil-rights era, is probably not especially significant to the financial success of these people. If it were, I think many more white guys would be billionaires, right?

I'm sure what they did was easier because they were white males, but it definitely feels like a cop-out to bring that up like it was a major factor and not just another in the myriad of advantages anyone has to have to reach such financial excellence. You might as well complain that "but they all have entrepreneurial dispositions and personalities!", like their success was unfair or diminished because they had certain inclinations.

We're all born into different circumstances and we're born with different gifts; some make certain things harder and some make certain things easier. I don't see the point in whining about it all the time.

Oh please. How else can you explain that despite being 12% of the US population, only one out of the 403 US billionaires is black? That's more than a small advantage, it's practically a requirement. I'm not saying they didn't try hard or they weren't significantly gifted, but success comes much easier when the odds aren't totally stacked against you by the proud human tradition of racism.

Your comparisons of race to personality traits are particularly curious. Being born white (and male) isn't a "gift" unless patriarchal white society enforces it. This isn't sports -- there is no significant correlation between genetic advantages and being rich.

Being born white and male is, however, a circumstance.

Shall we remember the mantra "correlation is not causation"? A high incidence of white male billionaires does not necessarily make white maleness "practically a requirement" for billionaireship.

>This isn't sports -- there is no significant correlation between genetic advantages and being rich.

I'm pretty sure that it's impossible to make this statement definitively, and that it's also untrue. Those with "genetic" predispositions that lend toward perseverance, independence of thought and action, etc., are much more likely to become rich than those who don't have or eventually acquire such traits.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG4f9zR5yzY

1) At least two are middle eastern.

2) Several are Jewish

3) Both the above groups encountered more discrimination than the regular WASP. Obviously not to the level of being black though.

4) White males represented probably 40% of the population at this time. These individuals landed in the top 0.001% of their group; I think we can agree something far more significant occurred than just being a white male.

The subtext of your comment was ambiguous until I stumbled upon this little gem on your website: http://rickbranson.com/ptw/

Your unfunny, offensive, 'parody' page, full of 'n-bombs' and a picture that is nothing if not racist, tidily explains your summarily trollish and unintelligent comment.

On the flip side, white guys individually are ALSO seen as the biggest threat to the existing white-guy corporate power structure.

Being either non-white or non-male can be an advantage to a certain point, because the power structure doesn't see you as a threat to "go all the way". Thus it can be easier to rise to a high level, even if the glass ceiling is there just below the top.

You can see the same behavior in other species. The direct threat to a dominant, territorial male is another male of the same type who is encroaching on his territory. They will tolerate or even befriend animals of other species.

For every beachmaster elephant seal with a harem of 20 females, there are 19 other bachelor seals.

The great thing about advancing technology is that our results will depend less and less on being "allowed" to do things by other people.

And what are you comparing? Just dollar amounts? Better to be a middle-class college student now than a king in medieval Europe. Better to be YOUNG than a 93-year-old billionaire. You have more access to source code and opportunity now than the whitest of white people did even 20 years ago. It is very easy to have less worry and to sleep better than these billionaires.

The dollar metric is very misleading. There are Buddhist monks who are far happier than these billionaires. How much more enjoyment can you really get from a billion than 100 million? 10 million? Doesn't it imply a very poor enjoyment function if it requires ENORMOUS resources to enjoy life?

One funny thing about a lot of rock stars and movie stars is that they tend to be miserable. It looks glamorous, but that's an image they are selling. Really it's quite common for them to be complete emotional wrecks.

"Successful" businessmen often live with enormous stress and ill health. If you are driven to keep on accumulating wealth endlessly, odds are you don't even have the psychological capacity to enjoy the fruits of it. There are various mushy real-life examples I could use, but perhaps this is more straightforward: People who play certain online games because they are addicted, and don't enjoy it anymore (EverCrack, WoW, FarmVille, etc.).

White people have certainly never had a monopoly on psychological well-being (Eastern philosophies were already way ahead thousands of years ago) or physical health (the typical Western diet; hackers' physical condition?)

Just some things to consider.

It's interesting how many of them dropped out of school.

Don't tell Peter Thiel.

Also interesting is how many of them grew up without a father.

Related: Steve Blank's hypothesis that dysfunctional families breed people for the chaotic world of startups: http://steveblank.com/2009/05/18/founders-and-dysfunctional-...

I find Gene Simmons' talks on this to be rather telling. Summary: With no father, his mother was working 2 jobs and was rarely home while he was asleep as a child. He said he'd wake up from a nightmare crying for his mom but she didn't come. He'd then be crying out of fear as he was helpless and alone. Then he'd cry himself out with anger because she wasn't there.

He said that was the thing he hated most growing up, the feeling of helplessness. He knew money brought security, so he's spent his life making sure he has security through money.

To say KISS isn't exceptionally talented, that I can list a few dozen bands off the top of my head that are far more talented... but barely any of them are as widely known, with as big a fan club, and with as much financial success.

Simply put; to say The Beatles are reputed to have sold a billion records (IE 10 times KISS' sales figures) it shows how little their company is marketed to say that the band's members net worths are estimated in the $600M range, but Simmons' is actually reported in the $300M range.

... 50 years ago that is (check their age).

That's what I am considering now.

I wonder if a lack of tolerance for bullshit has something to do with it?

I'm fascinated with how many of these guys suffered the death of a parent at a young age. I suppose nothing provides you with an all-encompassing motivation to build security and wealth like being raised by a single lower middle class parent.

There's a pretty explicit selection bias here. They compiled a list of people who "started with nothing". Among the set of all billionaires, I doubt you would see a very high incidence of being raised by a widow(er).

There are 1,011 names on Forbes' Billionaires List. Of those, how many do you imagine were born poor? My bet is that this list represents a fairly large selection of billionaires who "came from nothing."

I believe the parent post was saying that, having one parent would more make you more likely to be poor. So when looking at the list of billionaires who are poor the majority would have one parent.

Much higher than you think. Take the list of billionaires and all of those who are not from the US or Europe and who do not have 'Sultan' in their title likely started with nothing.

I'm interested in seeing a mini-timeline of their rise to success. As in, at what age did they start their successful venture and how many failures preceded it. Humanizing these success stories is almost essential to fully appreciate their accomplishments but to also put everything in context.

Although just a fluff piece, it could be so much more with that additional information.

As one example, if you read The Snowball (the biography about Warren Buffett), it's a really interesting look at the individual, specific decisions he made throughout his life. It's narrated as a timeline, so you can see how each decision he made impacted him 10 or 20 years down the road.

Interesting article about Thomas Peterffy, number 16 on the list (pdf):

http://www.iinews.com/site/pdfs/IIMag_InteractiveBrokers_Nov...

From the Business Week piece on him:

"According to a November 2005 profile in Institutional Investor, Peterffy wrote computer code in his head while trading during the day, then went back to the office to apply computer models to trading. The early use of computers made him a pioneer in the field."

Bullshit. Yet another fluff piece attempting to keep the American Dream alive. Even the briefest encounter with demographic statistics shows that poor stay poor, rich stay rich. In fact, in just today's Globe and Mail (Canada): http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-rich-really...

> poor stay poor, rich stay rich

Sure, but I've always thought about the American Dream as opportunity. Whether an individual takes an opportunity before them is a personal choice but it's still there for the taking. That can't be said everywhere in the world.

Nothing about the "American Dream" guarantees success and no one says it's easy.

Can you explain how the statistics cited in your link support your argument? All I see are comparisons of income distributions at various points in time - without any discussion of whether people are moving between different parts of the distribution.

the title of the article is "Twenty Billionaires Who Started with Nothing"

given that this is just a collection of photos and facts, how is this piece bullshit?

Started with: While most of the world's richest people earned their money, some had farther to climb. Neither Bill Gates nor Warren Buffett inherited wealth, <- that's wrong, buffet had a significant trust fund from dead relatives.

Even most of the world's richest people earned their money is somewhat debatable, years of compound interest + a solid nest egg helped many billionaires along. And plenty of them benefited from more from less than ethical behavior and or luck than hard work.

PS: If you want to look for patterns look a little closer to the bell curve. Start talking about 1 person out of 6 million and patterns are next to meaningless.

You'll note that neither Bill Gates nor Warren Buffet is among the 20.

That particular statement may be wrong -- but it's actually unrelated to the thrust of the article. In fact with Bill Gates and Warren Buffet the author was giving examples of people who did not start with nothing. (The rest of the sentence you half-quoted: "but they were raised in affluent homes so they didn't have to worry about keeping their families fed.")

The title and list are fine, but the full article starts with the following phrase, which clearly has a political agenda: Anyone who doubts that America is the land of opportunity just needs to...

How many of them are Jewish?

Only 6 have college degrees, and only one anything more than that (and MBA).

More than anything, I think that shows how massively out of touch the education system is. It truly is designed for turning out as many drones as possible.

You're kidding, right? How can you draw such a conclusion from a list of twenty billionaires?

Billionaires from nothing. Exactly the type of people that an education system is supposed to help succeed.

For an in depth look at famous business billionaires lives, how the made their decisions, and really just the details of their rise, I cannot recommend enough H.W. Brand's Masters of Enterprise: http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Enterprise-American-Business-W...

He is a great historian as well, but this is one of my favorite books.

Doesn't everyone start with nothing?

Connections? Inherited wealth?

A country that encourages entrepreneurship? Free access to high school education? Genes that drive you forward instead of slouching on the couch? A home? Food on the table?

Another "you suck for being poor" story ... [update] really? 4 neg points, nice.

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