Celebrity Biographies
The world’s youngest billionaires 2015 by Forbes
Of course, all the people presented in this list do not belong only to the technology field. The field of work of the people listed in the article includes automotive, chemical, show business and fashion. Let’s look right away at some of the richest and youngest personalities in the world.
(Please note: the list is sorted by the age of the people. The list starts with the youngest and moves in ascending order, even if a successor has less wealth than their predecessor.)
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Evan Spiegel
Alter: 25
Net worth (income and earnings) : $2.1 billion
Evan Spiegel, aged 25, has it all. He’s a multi-billionaire, has a gorgeous Spanish mansion in Los Angeles, and better yet, he’s dating smoking-hot supermodel Miranda Kerr. He himself acknowledged that he has everything. Spiegel began his rise to fame in 2011 by founding Snapchat, the temporary photo-messaging company with Bobby Murphy. He is currently the CEO of the company, which was valued at $15 billion as of March 2015. The son of a lawyer, he had a pleasant upbringing. He studied product design at Stanford University and met Murphy, who preceded him by two years and was studying mathematics, at the Kappa Sigma frat house. The two first developed an app called Picaboo. The app allows you to send photo messages to contacts with a timer that will remove them in 10 seconds or less. The app flopped spectacularly.
They rebranded the app as Snapchat and it has since been used by more than 100 million people every day and about 65% of users create content on Snapchat every day. He recently turned down an attempted acquisition by Facebook and holds around 15 percent of the company. Spiegel believes that trading with the pleasure of building an exciting business for a short-term profit is not very interesting.
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Bobby Murphy
Alter: 27
Net worth (income and earnings) : $1.8 billion
According to Forbes, Bobby Murphy’s son California State employees, one of whom emigrated from the Philippines, also have at least a 15 percent stake in the popular picture messaging app Snapchat. Raised in Berkeley, California, he worked at Evan for two years and majored in math and computer science. Compared to Spiegel’s cheeky personality, Murphy has a quiet demeanor and prefers to remain in the background while his confident boyfriend plays a more prominent role. His humble and outspoken nature was evident when he gave an interview to Forbes magazine. He claimed that he and the mirror weren’t cool, so they tried to build things to be cool. And no one can say that their idea is Snapchatisn’t cool According to reports, the company had received new financing offers with an apparent value of $19 billion. Since the company is in an early phase of the product life cycle, it will only grow in the coming years.
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Julio Mario Santo Domingo III
Alter: 30
Net worth (income and earnings) : $2.1 billion
Julio Mario Santo Domingo III is probably the luckiest guy on this list. While most of the people on this list made their fortunes, Santo Domingo III inherited from his wealthy grandfather. He is a New York disc jockey and lives in a luxurious $4 million apartment in New York. He is one of four heirs to his namesake’s Colombian beer fortune. Julio Mario Santo Domingo, who passed away in 2011, owned Bavaria Brewery. In 2005 he sold the company to SABMiller for a 15% stake. Santo Domingo reportedly left a sixth of his fortune to his grandson. He has also received a large inheritance from his father, Julio Mario Santo Domingo II, who was once an investment advisor but retired at a young age to focus on collecting unusual artifacts.
Well, although getting the inheritance from his dad won’t be too much, but it sure will make him look cool in front of his friends. The legacy includes the world’s largest collection of opium pipes, as well as 50,000 books, posters, photographs and other memorabilia documenting psychoactive drugs and their effects on people and society. However, the collection is currently on long-term loan to Harvard University.
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Mark Zuckerberg
Alter: 31
Net worth (income and earnings) : $41.4 billion
Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth has reached new heights. He is currently the 8th richest person in the world with a net worth of $41.2 billion. His greater wealth is due to increased earnings and the increased valuation of Facebook stock. In 2014, revenue, supported by a surge in mobile ads, grew 58% to $12.5 billion. Currently around 1.4 billion people are on Facebook and Instagram unit has more than 300 million users. Additionally, mobile messaging app WhatsApp, which Zuckerberg bought in 2014 for $19 billion in cash and stock, has 700 million users and is growing. Zuckerberg can’t rest on his laurels, however. He’s trying to sell virtual reality headset maker Oculus VR he bought for $2 billion in 2014 into a next-generation computing platform. It was recently announced that the Rift virtual reality headset would begin shipping to customers in early 2016.
In the personal sphere he has a lot of fun as well. He recently bought 700 acres in Hawaii on Kauai’s North Shore for $100 million. Also, he and his wife Priscilla Chan pledged $25 million to fight Ebola in October 2014 and $75 million to a new trauma center at San Francisco General Hospital in February 2015, providing affordable access to select internet services for less developed countries through increase in efficiency. It was developed by Facebook in collaboration with six companies: Samsung, Ericsson, MediaTek, Opera Software, Nokia and Qualcomm.
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Dustin Moskovitz
Alter: 31
Net worth (income and earnings) : $9.7 billion
Dustin Moskovitz was Facebook’s third employee, and helped start it with roommate Mark Zuckerberg from her Harvard dorm. Two years later, he left college to build the social networking site at Zuckerberg in Palo Alto. However, he didn’t stay with the company long and left the social network in 2008 to found the software company Asana. However, he retained around 5 percent of the company’s shares. He is married to former Wall Street Journal reporter Cari Tuna. And together, they’ve dedicated some of their time and effort to building a philanthropic foundation for Good Enterprises, which has given millions of dollars to causes ranging from malaria eradication to marriage equality. The organization recently announced a $25 million donation to GiveDirectly, which gives money to the poorest in East Africa. A member of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, Moskovitz is known for his humble and down-to-earth lifestyle. Dustin cycles to work every day and prefers to fly commercially.
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Tom Persson
Alter: 31
Net worth (income and earnings) : $3 billion
Tom Persson is Europe’s youngest billionaire and the third generation in the H&M clan. Including his father, brother, sister Charlotte Söderström and aunt Lottie Tham, his family has five billionaires. His grandfather, Erlin Persson, founded the global cheap-chic retailer H&M in 1947. His brother Karl-Johan is the CEO and his father, the richest Swede Stefan Persson, is the chairman of the company. The company has grown over the years into a global retail powerhouse, with more than 3500 stores in 53 countries. However, Tom, a graduate of the Met Film School in London, has preferred to stay away from the family business. He lives in Stockholm and has founded several small film production companies.
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Anton Kathrein Jr.
Alter: 31
Net worth (income and earnings) : $1.7 billion
Anton Kathrein Jr. is the third generation of his family to run the Kathrein works, which pioneered automotive antennas in the 20th century. The company makes cables, antennas and receivers that allow cellphone signals to bounce around the world and had a net worth of more than $1.6 billion in traffic and users in 2013. Other activities of the company include the manufacture of radio and television antennas, satellite and terrestrial receiving systems and equipment for high-speed multimedia transmission by cable television operators. It’s a long way from the company that Kathrein’s grandfather started in a basement in Rosenheim, Germany, just after World War I. Anton became CEO of the company in 2012 at the age of 28,
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Elizabeth Holmes
Alter: 31
Net worth (income and earnings) : $4.5 billion
This year, Elizabeth Holmes made her debut in the Billionaires Reputation as the Youngest Self-Made Billionaire. Her uncle’s death from cancer spurred her to find a way to detect disease earlier. In 2003, she dropped out of her sophomore year at Stanford University to start a blood testing company. TheranosWith money she was saving for college. She pioneered the blood testing industry with cheaper, easier-to-use blood tests. Their labs only require a virtually painless finger prick and a few drops of blood to perform various tests at a fraction of the price of commercial labs. 2014 in particular was a great year for Holmes and her company raised $400 million from venture capitalists. Theranos is currently valued at $9 billion and Holmes is valued at $4.5 billion with a 50% stake. In addition, the company will enter into an agreement with Walgreens, the largest US pharmacy retail chain with more than 8,100 Theranos wellness centersWalgreens pharmacies have already moved in. The only way for Holmes seems to be up.
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Tatiana Casiraghi
Alter: 31
Net worth (income and earnings) : $2.1 billion
In 2013, after the marriage of Andrea Casiraghi, who is Tatiana Casiraghi, allegedly second in line to the throne, became a member of the royal family of Monaco. However, her position in this list is not due to her royal marriage. Even before her marriage, she was a billionaire heiress. Like her brother Julio Mario Santo Domingo III, already included in the list, she inherited one sixth of her grandfather’s fortune. Her uncles Alejandro and Andres Santo Domingo each inherited a third of the fortune. Known for her unique fashion sense that ranges from elegant to vintage, boho-chic and hippie, Tatiana has her own fashion label Muzungu Sisters, which she did in 2011 in collaboration with Dana Alikhani. The fashion company supports local artisans by buying handmade garments at a fair price and then selling them to the general public. She also supports several charities, including the Motrice Foundation , which funds research into cerebral palsy.
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Nathan Blecharczyk
Alter: 33
Net worth (income and earnings) : $3.3 billion
Nathan Blecharczyk is Airbnb’s co-founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) who completely revolutionized the rental system. There are currently more than 1,500,000 apartments (or rooms in private houses or apartments) listed for rental stays on the site. Since its inception in 2008, 30 million guests have used the service, including 20 million in 2014 alone. After raising $1.5 billion in June, the company is now valued at over $25 billion U.S. dollar. And according to Forbes, Blecharczyk owns a 13% stake in Airbnb. The company also benefited from the sale of employee shares in October 2014.
Nathan Blecharczyk, who attended Harvard University and received a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science is located in San Francisco, California. Blecharczyk and his wife recently welcomed their first child, a daughter he brings to his office twice a week.