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Comment by waboremo | Hacker News Reader

This level of fame paranoia is commonly talked about, but is also extremely hard to reach without actually trying and spending resources in regularly keeping your name in people's mouths. You can achieve a great level of wealth without anybody caring: see extremely wealthy families in most countries who 99% of people won't even recognize even if you show them a picture with their name under.

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This phenomenon is extremely interesting. I other words, the billionaires we know of may be almost drama queens, who might (might!) have paid marketing agencies to capitalize on their personal name and image. They fell into the LinkedIn trap, which is certainly a side effect of having to climb the social ladder yourself. You could be Facebook’s anonymous CEO if you had attracted attention on the board’s characters instead of yourself, but you would have dissolved your power; Unless, of course, your family were already in the business and you had been able to rise collectively.

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to recognise the CEO of most companies.

Facebook's one just turned into a meme because of how unlikeable he is

Agree.

There's plenty of wealthy stealthy people around, who put a lot of effort into their business and not necessarily into themselves.

They'd fly right under the radar.

The following may not be a perfect example of the above, but just read up on the late Thomas Murphy and Daniel Burke ("Tom & Dan") of ABC. I find their no-nonsense no-bullshit down-to-earth frugal approach to business inspiring.

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