Meet 9 of tech's newest billionaires
Patrick, left, and John Collison, the co-founders of Stripe.Stripe
You've almost certainly heard of Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk.
But have you heard of Patrick Collison, David Zalik, or Lucy Peng?
As I'm sure you know, the first group of men were startup founders who went on to become tech billionaires. What you may not know is the second group of people have also joined the tech billionaires club.
We're taking a look at some of that club's new members. To compile this list, we pulled from Forbes wealth rankings and the Bloomberg Billionaires index. To narrow it down, we limited it to people who have made the bulk of their wealth in the past three years.
Combined, these nine men and women have a net worth in the trillions of dollars, come from different countries and continents, and have companies in a range of tech industry sectors. Here are nine of the newest tech billionaires:
Rishi Shah, CEO of Outcome Health
Age: 31
Net worth: $3.6 billion
Company: Health technology firm Outcome Health
Position: CEO, Founder
The son of a doctor, Shah dropped out of Northwestern to launch Outcome Health with Shradha Agarwal, now the company's president. Outcome Health sells tablets and large touchscreen devices to doctor's offices and other healthcare providers and provides software for them that's designed to help them communicate with patients about health conditions, treatments, and other matters. The devices can also display advertising.
Outcome Health was valued at $5.6 billion in May 2017. Shah owns 80% of the company.
Source: Forbes
Frank Wang, CEO of DJI Technology
Age: 37
Net Worth: $3.2 Billion
Company: Chinese drone maker DJI Technology
Position: Founder, CEO
Wang's company, DJI Technology, has been selling drones since before they were cool. Now, though, they're big business. Between 2016 and 2020, the total amount spent on the robotic aircraft will total $100 billion, Goldman Sachs has estimated. DJI's sales accounted for some 70% of the consumer and commercial portions of the drone market last year, according to Goldman Sachs.
Wang started DJI in 2006 out of his dorm room at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and his company was one of the first to market a ready-to-fly drone that actually flew. He's been riding the industry's wave ever since and became Asia's youngest tech billionaire in 2017.
Jan Koum, CEO of WhatsApp
Age: 41
Net Worth: $9.7 billion
Company: Messaging app developer WhatsApp
Position: CEO, Cofounder
Koum moved from Ukraine to Mountain View, California, with his mother when he was 16 and taught himself computer technology in high school. He grew up poor, living off food stamps, before landing a job as an engineer at Yahoo. After leaving Yahoo and spending time in South America, he applied for a job at Facebook but was rejected.
Koum and his cofounder Brian Acton then launched WhatsApp. The app started as a service that allowed users to share their status updates with friends but soon morphed into the messaging service it is today.
In 2014, WhatsApp caught the attention of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Koum and Zuckerberg talked shop for two years before Facebook offered to buy WhatsApp in 2014 for $22 billion in cash and stock. As Facebook's stock value rose, so did Koum's net worth.
Sources: Forbes and Business Insider
Brian Acton, Cofounder of WhatsApp
Age: 45
Net worth: $6.7 billion
Company: WhatsApp
Position: Cofounder (has since left)
Much of Acton's career has been lived out in tandem with Koum's. He worked alongside Koum at Yahoo then traveled with Koum in South America for a year after they left the internet giant.
When they returned from South America, Acton applied and was rejected for a job at Facebook. He then cofounded WhatsApp with Koum and stayed on with him at the company after Facebook acquired it.
But Acton just parted ways from Koum. He left Facebook and WhatsApp in September to start a non-profit that will be "at the intersection of nonprofit, technology, and communication," he wrote in a Facebook post.
Sources: Forbes and TechCrunch
Adam Neumann, CEO of WeWork
Age: 38
Net Worth: $2.6 billion
Company: Coworking space provider WeWork
Position: CEO, Cofounder
Neumann moved to the US from Israel in 2001 after serving as an officer in the Israeli military. He got the idea for what eventually became WeWork while running his previous business, a baby clothing company in Brooklyn.
He noticed that a nearby warehouse building was empty and convinced its owner to let him manage and rent out the space. That was the basis of coworking company GreenDesk. Neumann and cofounder Miguel McKelvey sold their stakes in GreenDesk in 2010 to found WeWork.
Today, WeWork has offices in 40 cities across the country. It was recently valued at $21 billion after scoring a $3 billion investment from Softbank.
Sources: Business Insider and Forbes
David Zalik, CEO of GreenSky
Age: 43
Net Worth: $2 billion
Company: Financial technology provider GreenSky
Position: CEO, Cofounder
Another Israel native, Zalik moved to Alabama with his family when he was four. He was a whiz kid, acing the SAT college entrance exam at 13. Instead of going to high school, he enrolled in Auburn University.
Zalik left Auburn without graduating to pursue his first business, MicroTech, a computer assembly company. He sold MicroTech in 1996. After a few less-successful ventures, he started GreenSky, which helps home improvement contractors, healthcare providers, and other small businesses allow their customers to pay for their services on credit.
Capital One cofounder Nigel Morris invested an unknown seven-figure amount in GreenSky in 2014. That fall, venture investors, including TPG, bought a 17% stake in GreenSky at a $1.8 billion valuation. By 2016, when Fifth Third invested in the company, GreenSky's valuation had doubled.
Source: Forbes
John and Patrick Collison, President and CEO of Stripe
Ages: John is 27, and Patrick is 29
Net worth: $1.1 billion each
Company: Online payment processor Stripe
Positions: John, President and Cofounder; Patrick, CEO and Cofounder
The Collison brothers grew up in a small village in central Ireland, teaching themselves to code at a young age and competing with each other. Patrick graduated from secondary school at 16 and then enrolled at MIT. John followed him to the US a few years later, enrolling at Harvard. They both dropped out of college in 2009 to head to Silicon Valley to start what would become Stripe.
Today Stripe counts Lyft, Best Buy, and Google as customers. In November 2016, the company raised $150 million at a $9.2 billion valuation, making the Collison brother instant billionaires.
Lucy Peng, Executive Chair of Ant Financial
Age: 44
Net worth: $1.14 billion
Company: Mobile payments provider Ant Financial
Position: Executive chair
Peng was one of Alibaba's 18 cofounders and held numerous positions at the company, including CEO of AliPay, its mobile payments service. When Alibaba spun off AliPay, which eventually became Ant Financial, she remained as its head.
Ant was recently valued at $74.5 billion, and Peng now serves as its Executive Chair. She first cracked the Forbes billionaire list in March 2017.
Satoshi Nakamoto, Creator of bitcoin
Age: Unknown
Net worth: Unknown
Company: Unknown
Position: Unknown
Nakamoto is likely the pseudonym of the mysterious creator (or creators) of Bitcoin. There's been a lot of speculation about Nakamoto's actual identity, but nothing has ever been confirmed.
In 2013, bitcoin developer Sergio Lerner estimated that Nakamoto owned nearly $1 million worth of bitcoin. With bitcoin's price having risen exponentially since then, Nakamoto could have a fortune in the millions or billions of dollars.
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