Meet The World's Youngest Billionaires - Part I
By Joseph Milord
If you're, say, 25 and you think you're on good track toward being successful, you might want to check your feelings at the door. These men and women are about to blow your projections out of the water.
After Forbes released its list of the world's billionaires, of which there are over 1400, we scoured through it, found the most youthful of them and profiled the most interesting of them, in no particular order, to bring you this list of the world's most intriguing, youngest billionaires. Introducing the first batch:
1. Mark Zuckerberg (28)
Coming through at no. 1 and starting at an incredible £8.8 billion, as in British Pounds Sterling, which translates into a net worth $13.3 billion, is none other than Mr. Facebook himself: Mark Zuckerberg. Just in case you didn't see the feature film based on his rise to riches, "The Social Network," you might want to take notes.
Mark Zuckerberg is the man who spawned an instant messaging program at age 12, a year before AOL got in the game, created a spotify-esque music program in high school, then made it into Harvard only to drop out. That is, after he created the earliest incarnation of Facebook during the Spring semester of his sophomore year. In 2012, the social networking site enjoyed revenues upwards of $5 billion, while Facebook boasts over a billion users.
2. Albert von Thurn und Taxis (29)
Right, now that we've gotten past the name, we can answer the important questions. No, he did not earn his fortune as the CEO of a Dutch taxi company. In fact, he hasn't done anything special at all to earn his place among the world's richest.
Albert, let's call him, first appeared on Forbes' list of billionaires at the age of 8. That's because he's German royalty. And what, you may ask, has he received for coming out of a pair of Germany's most valuable legs? A net worth of $1.5 billion and a career as a race car driver. Not bad.
3. Jack Dorsey (36)
And in comes Dorsey to give us a hat trick of non-college graduates on the list. Even though *cough* one of them cheated. The 2012 recipient of the Wall Street Journal's "Innovator of the Year" award has racked up a net worth of $1.1 billion through his exploits: creating Twitter, which needs no introduction, and "Square," the device that makes credit card debt more accessible than ever.
4. Serra Sabanci (37)
Perhaps it would be best to explain where Sebanci comes from rather than who she is. The Sebanci family is one of Turkey's elite families, a powerful group of individuals who, despite descending from a cotton worker, control their country's most power companies.
Serra plays her part as the shareholder of Sebanci Holding and, we're guessing, is the looker of the bunch. Her title has granted her a $1.3 billion fortune.
5. Dan Gertler (39)
Gertler may not come in at no. 1 on Forbes' list of the world's richest, but he just might if they ranked villains. According to Bloomberg, "Gertler has stakes in companies that control 9.6 percent of world cobalt production. The source of his funding doesn't just stop there, but his greatest asset seems to be having Joseph Kabila, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, as a friend.
"He has political connections, so state companies sell him mines for low prices and he sells them on for huge profits. That's how he's become a billionaire," a source was quoted as saying in this piece exposing the ventures of the Israeli businessman. Just so we're perfectly clear, though, there's absolutely nothing dirty about his fortune.
Photo Credit: WENN