Curious how to become a billionaire? It's a question that got me thinking...
Earlier this year, I was browsing social media and came across an interesting post. Someone asked a pointed question, which seemed particularly relevant as I was in Las Vegas at the time. “What do you need to do to become a billionaire?”
With all of my personal finance and business knowledge, I began to ponder what my top advice would be. I came up with two answers pretty quickly. Here are my thoughts on how to become a billionaire.
Paths To Becoming A Billionaire
I was a little late to the party but was making my way through the show Succession when I was presented with the question of how to become a billionaire. Considering the show's theme, the question seemed even more interesting, as I had a fictional billionaire family, loosely based on the Murdoch family, on my mind.
I’ve been lucky enough to rub elbows with a billionaire a few times in my life, and my business school education was primarily focused on making as much money as possible in finance. So, with all that knowledge and experience, what was my answer to the social media question?
I figure you have two choices:
- Marry a billionaire
- Start a multi-billion dollar company
As much as we’d like to think that hard work and budgeting can lead to a massive payoff for our finances (they can, by the way), those steps are unlikely to make you billionaire rich. Making your way up the ladder in a lucrative career while mindfully managing your money is a realistic route to becoming a millionaire, even a few times over. But to get a thousand million, you’ll probably need to do one of two things.
Note: There is a third way - inheritance. However, 90% of family wealth disappears by the third generation. If you have billionaire parents or grandparents, you'll likely be a millionaire (or multi-millionaire). But it will be hard to keep that billionaire status after dividing up an estate with siblings, paying taxes, and more.
Marry A Billionaire
Marrying a billionaire isn't impossible if you run in the right social circles. If you go to the right university, like Harvard, Oxford, or King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, you may befriend a billionaire and find yourself in a whirlwind romance. After all, it worked for Kate Middleton – though her family was already solidly in the tens-of-millions club when she met her Prince Charming at university.
Outside of college, making massive donations to nonprofits with annual charity galas or making your way to other exclusive events could bring you into the orbit of billionaires. The annual Davos conference is chock-full of people with a 10-figure net worth. Or maybe you can meet the son or daughter of a billionaire family at The Masters Tournament featuring top golfers.
Remember, you’re setting your sights on a billionaire, so some shlub actor or musician like a child of Jerry Seinfeld (net worth around $950 million) or Tom Cruise (net worth around $600 million) won’t do. Even Taylor Swift just barely makes the cut with a net worth of around $1.1 billion.
At the end of 2023, Forbes listed 2,640 billionaires worldwide. If you can snag a date with one of them or their heirs, you could be on track for that private jet and yacht lifestyle before you know it!
Start A Multi-Billion Dollar Company
Of those who achieved billionaire status without walking down the aisle or inheriting $1,000,000,000, hard work combined with a bit of luck is the most common route to billionaire status. But when you work for someone else, they get most of the profits. If you want to join the world’s wealthiest elite, you’ll need to start your own business and propel it to a multi-billion dollar valuation.
In the last generation or so, some of the most successful billionaires came from Silicon Valley startups. The founders of companies like Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Google, Facebook, Uber, Airbnb, Snapchat, Pinterest, Dropbox, and other tech companies earned their B Card by creating companies worth billions of dollars and maintaining a stake of at least a billion.
Most companies worth billions of dollars took funds from investors during fundraising rounds before offering shares in the public stock market. Every time an angel investor, venture capitalist, or investment fund injected funds into the companies, they took a cut of ownership. So, just founding a company worth a billion dollars isn’t likely enough to make yourself a billionaire. Your best bet is to make a company worth tens of billions, and hopefully, your stake makes you a billionaire.
Related: How To Be A Millionaire By 25
Is Billionaire Status Overrated?
Billionaires make up some of the world's most admired and loathed people. But it’s probably easy to brush off the haters when you’re taking your helicopter to land on your private yacht for a little R&R.
But in reality, you don’t have to join the top 0.00000037037037% of the world’s population for financial stability and happiness. Most of us start as thousandaires and are lucky to reach the millions.
If you manage your career and finances well, or marry someone with a high net worth, you may still find yourself with enough wealth to live a comfortable life.
Eric Rosenberg is a financial writer, speaker, and consultant based in Ventura, California. He holds an undergraduate finance degree from the University of Colorado and an MBA in finance from the University of Denver. After working as a bank manager and then nearly a decade in corporate finance and accounting, Eric left the corporate world for full-time online self-employment.
His work has been featured in online publications including Business Insider, Nerdwallet, Investopedia, The Balance, Huffington Post, and other financial publications. When away from the computer, he enjoys spending time with his wife and three children, traveling the world, and tinkering with technology. Connect with him and learn more at EricRosenberg.com.
Editor: Ashley Barnett Reviewed by: Robert Farrington
