Every year FORBES crunches the numbers to find out which Americans
rank the richest–and each year it gets harder to join the exclusive
Forbes 400 list. But you don’t have to inherit a fortune to become a
Forbes 400 billionaire. In fact, the majority of our Forbes 400
members–273 of them–scrapped their way onto our list through their own
efforts.
The self-made differ somewhat from their Forbes 400 counterparts in
terms of how they gained their wealth. The most obvious difference
between the groups, not surprisingly, is that many of the self-made
earned fortunes through technology. A whopping 45 tycoons–nearly 25% of
the Forbes 400–made their billions in tech, making it the
second-most-popular industry overall for launching onto the Forbes 400.
Among the self-made tech-rich are Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Reid
Hoffman, Jeffrey Skoll. By contrast, only three inheritors of wealth
gained their money this way–and two of these are widows of tech titans: Laurene Powell Jobs and Dagmar Dolby, whose husband Ray Dolby passed away September 12.
After technology, real estate produced the next largest group of
self-made Forbes 400 members. These billionaires include Sheldon Solow,
who owns Manhattan’s prestigious 9 W. 57th tower, home to tenants
including Apollo Global Management and KKR, as well as Ted Lerner,
who made his fortune building shopping malls in the D.C. suburbs, and
John Arrillaga, the Silicon Valley mogul and frequent Stanford donor. A
new face among the 17 self-made real estate tycoons this year is Jeff Sutton,
who leases his Manhattan retail space to fancy retail clients including
Dolce & Gabbana and American Girl, both on Fifth Avenue.
Two industries that ranked highly among the self-made–but not among
heirs–are health care and sports, with 11 and 10 self-made billionaires,
respectively. This self-made group includes Patrick Soon-Shiong,
a South African-born doctor who earned his cash building and selling
two successful drug companies for $8.5 billion, and who is now
attempting to revolutionize patient care by bringing Big Data to
medicine. Reinhold Schmieding, a Florida medical device billionaire,
joins the Forbes 400 this year. He popped onto the list thanks to his
rapidly growing Arthrex, which makes surgical tools. Perhaps the most
colorful of the self-made sports billionaires are Frank and Lorenzo
Fertitta, known for their mixed-martial-arts league Ultimate Fighting
Championship. The sports self-made group also includes Dallas Cowboys
owner Jerry Jones. Among the heirs, only three billionaires made money
in health care, and two in sports.
Of course, the self-made and the inheritors share the Number 1 way of
getting rich, which has long been “investing”–a catch-all category that
describes hedge fund billionaires as well as others, like Warren
Buffett, who have stakes in many industries. But there are plenty of
other ways to make a fortune. Fashion and retail produced 18 self-made
Forbes 400 members, and 17 among the inheritors. The self-made in this
industry include Jin Sook & Do Won Chang, the couple behind retailer
Forever 21 , and newcomer Michael Rubin, whose retail holdings include flash sales website Rue La La and Amazon Prime competitor ShopRunner.
The category also produced a handful of billionaires who didn’t make
this year’s cut because their fortunes were under $1.3 billion, this
year’s floor for joining the Forbes 400 ranks. Retail queens Tory Burch,
who makes $200 ballet flats, and Sara Blakely, whose Spanx shapewear
keep women’s rear-ends looking good, are both too poor, at $1 billion,
to make this year’s Forbes 400.
Want to join the ranks yourself? Here’s how the self-made are doing it these days:
Top 10 Ways to Become a Billionaire
Self-made Forbes 400 billionaires
1. Investments: 77
2. Technology: 45
3. Real Estate: 22
4. Fashion and Retail: 18
5. Media: 17
6. Food and Beverage: 15
7. Energy: 12
8. Health care: 11
9. Sports: 10
10. Manufacturing: 10
Top 10 Ways to Become a Billionaire
Heirs on the Forbes 400
1. Investments: 19
2. Service: 17
2. Fashion and Retail: 17
3. Energy: 16
4. Food and Beverage: 14
5. Media: 11
6. Manufacturing: 10
7. Real Estate: 5
8. Diversified: 3
8. Technology: 3
8. Health Care: 3
www.forbes.com
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