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Something for 2012 Inspiration: 100 Richest Internet Entrepreneurs
Josh Dunlop
This has been a very revealing list to put together, because the majority of these companies have a lot in common, and almost all of them are run by men. The men vs. women argument has been around on this site for a while, usually whenever we put up top lists of people, and the women are noticeably absent. There’s no arguing with the facts in this post though; there are a few brilliant women here, but the list is dominated by men.
One thing that stands out from my findings is that the biggest websites have a lot of very rich people involved. This tells me two things, firstly, it takes a lot of people, and a lot of investment to succeed, and that when a site does take off, it takes a lot of people with it. The exception to this rule is number 1 in our list, and that’s Jeff Bezos. He’s made a remarkable amount of money, and remained the only person from Amazon on the list. He’s the richest person on this list, but that’s only because Google was a partnership between Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and if they had been a single person, they would blown everyone else out of the water.
The asian market have brought some really heavy hitters in the form of Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, Rakuten. Rakuten in particular are experiencing a huge international growth as they try to expand into the e-commerce market around the world with the purchase of website such as play.com and the French priceminister.com.
Having researched every single person on this list, I feel like I know most of them pretty well now, and one thing I will say is that, for the most part, a good education has played a big part in their success. A lot of the people here went to very prestigious schools, or were naturally gifted from a very young age. That’s especially true for the younger people on the list, as the wealth of some of the people under the age of 30 in this list is really quite staggering.
To create a list of the definitive top 100 richest internet entrepreneurs would be almost impossible, as that sort of information just isn’t readily available, so this list is more of a selection of the richest public figures on the internet. There’s a lot to be learnt by comparing the ways, and the speed in which these entrepreneurs have made their immense wealth, so have a look look at the trivia section for more details.
| Rank | Photo | Name | Age | Worth | Website | Trivia |
| 1 |  | Jeff Bezos | 47 | $19,100,000,000 | Amazon | Amazon.com started out as an online bookstore back in 1995, which is why their logo has an arrow going from the A to the Z. After surviving the burst of the .com bubble, Amazon finally went on to turn a profit in 2001 on the sale of over 1 billion dollars worth of goods. It currently has a revenue of more than $1000 a second, making Jeff Bezos one of the richest men in the world. |
| 2 |  | Mark Zuckerberg | 27 | $17,500,000,000 | Facebook | Mark is the most public face of Facebook, which currently hosts over 750 million active users, with 500 million of those accessing the site daily. His personal wealth has skyrocketed in the past few years as Facebook has torn through the competition such as Myspace, and taken its place as the number 1 social network in the world. With the release of 'The Social Network' in recent years, it's hard to not know who Mark is. |
| 3 |  | Larry Page | 38 | $16,700,000,000 | Google | Larry co-founded Google with Sergey Brin in 1996 and it's since become the most visited website in the world, worth more than any other site on this list. Google's reach has extended far beyond search engines these days, which has provided Larry with the freedom to explore other interests such as green energy, while making him the 11th richest man in the United States. |
| 4 |  | Sergey Brin | 38 | $16,700,000,000 | Google | Sergey emigrated from Russia when he was just 6 years old, and it's fair to say that he's done pretty well for himself since then. Since co-founding Google with Larry Page in a garage, Sergey has gone on to be one of the richest and most successful internet entrepreneurs in the world. |
| 5 |  | Robin Li | 42 | $9,400,000,000 | Baidu | Robin co-founded Baidu, which is China's most popular search engine, and has always been quite special. He was born to poor factory worker parents with 4 sisters, but always excelled in education, earning a Master of Science degree in 1994 before go on to found Baidu in 2000. |
| 6 |  | Eric Schmidt | 56 | $7,000,000,000 | Google | Schmidt landed the job of CEO at Google in 2001, with a $250,000 salary, and stock options. Schmidt is actually one of only a very few number of people who became a billionaire through the stock options received as an employee to a company of which he has no relation to the founders. He's now the 136th richest person in the world. Not bad. |
| 7 |  | Pierre Omidyar | 44 | $6,200,000,000 | eBay | Pierre launched eBay in 1995 after writing the code that the site is based on, during a long holiday weekend. The rest, as they say, is history. He's now also a well known philanthropist with his own network that's committed over $290 million to different companies and organizations. |
| 8 |  | Hiroshi Mikitani | 46 | $5,600,000,000 | Rakuten | Hiroshi is the CEO of Rakuten, which is the largest online shopping mall in Japan with over 72 million users. The site has grown recently by branching out, buying other e-commerce sites such as buy.com, priceminister and play.com, all in an effort to increase its global competitiveness. |
| 9 |  | Andrew Mason | 30 | $4,750,000,000 | Groupon | Andrew actually has a degree in music, but chose to go into web design, where he would meet his first investor, which eventually led to Groupon. Founded in November 2008, the site has experienced rapid growth, and huge revenues from taking 50% of every sale made through the site. There have been plenty of imitators since, but Groupon still remains on top, even turning down a $6 billion dollar acquisition bid from Google at the end of 2010. |
| 10 |  | Ma Huateng | 39 | $4,300,000,000 | Tencent | Huateng is the founder of Tencent, which started out as China's answer to AOL. Their services offer a wide variety of virtual products, from online games to instant messaging and social networking. This has made Ma Huateng one of Time's most powerful people in China. |
| 11 |  | Xavier Niel | 43 | $3,700,000,000 | Iliad | Xavier founded France's first internet provider, WorldNet in 1993, and sold it for $50 million just before the dot com bubble burst. Three years later he launched Iliad, which went public in 2004; it's a Freebox service, which bundles internet, phone and TV via ADSL. Niel now holds over 62% of the company. |
| 12 |  | Dustin Moskovitz | 27 | $3,500,000,000 | Facebook | Dustin is just 8 days younger than Mark Zuckerberg, making him the youngest billionaire in the world. Dustin founded the site with Mark back at Harvard and holds on to a 6% stake of the company, which has made him incredibly rich, in fact, in the past year alone, Forbes has estimated his worth to have more than doubled. He left Facebook in 2008 to work on his own ventures, such as a mobile photo-sharing site. |
| 13 |  | Ron Burkle | 58 | $3,200,000,000 | Yahoo! | Ron Burkle was at the head of the board of directors for Yahoo! for nine years, and as well has his internet ventures, he also has investments in supermarkets, sports teams and even clothing lines. |
| 14 |  | Neal Shenoy | 33 | $2,800,000,000 | 212MEDIA | Neal helped to launch [212]MEDIA and manage its portfolio companies across children's publishing, online gaming and social networking. He has developed business development and marketing relationships with major media companies including Amazon, MTV, Rogers. Digital and Time Inc. |
| 15 |  | Jeffrey Skoll | 46 | $2,700,000,000 | eBay | Jeffrey was eBay's first employee and president in 1996 where he wrote the business plan that eBay followed from its emergence as a start-up to the great success it is today. He cashed out a large amount of his stock, netting him $2 billion. |
| 16 |  | Mark Cuban | 53 | $2,300,000,000 | Broadcast.com | Mark is a serial entrepreneur who started the audio and video portal Broadcast.com with college pal Todd Wagner, which he eventually sold to Yahoo for $5.7 billion 1999. He also owns the Dallas Mavericks and various entertainment companies such as the cable channel HDNet, Landmark Theatres and filmmaker Magnolia Pictures. |
| 17 |  | Andreas von Bechtolsheim | 55 | $2,300,000,000 | Google | Andreas was one of the people bright enough to get behind Google in the beginning, with an initial investment of $100,000 which is now worth $2 billion. He also co-founded various tech companies such as Sun Microsystems and Kealia, which have added to his fortune. |
| 18 |  | Yoshikazu Tanaka | 34 | $2,200,000,000 | Gree | Tanaka is the founder of Gree, which is Japan's largest social networking website. The site started in 2004, but has diversified recently into mobile gaming to better compete with rivals. He's not finished just yet though as he's been working on global expansion with working with Tencent, the largest Internet service portal in China. |
| 19 |  | Terry Jones | 54 | $2,200,000,000 | Travelocity | Terry started his career as a travel agent, before creating a website that would later help to destroy the industry in which he started in. It's currently the second largest online travel agency, and in addition to the site, they also own other travel related sites around the world, such as lastminute.com and Allhotels. |
| 20 |  | Sean Parker | 31 | $2,100,000,000 | Facebook | Sean is well known across the internet for his various online ventures, such as his part in Napster and Facebook, the latter of which made him the majority of the money he has today. He has since invested $15 million in Spotify which rivals Napster, and he says is the answer to piracy. |
| 21 |  | Mark Pincus | 45 | $2,000,000,000 | Zynga | Mark is the reason we all get annoying invites to games such as FarmVille on Facebook. He owns Zynga, which was founded in 2007 and he is currently serving as the CEO. There are currently over 265 million monthly active users, across a network of games, which makes them one of the largest social gaming networks on the internet. |
| 22 |  | Eduardo Saverin | 29 | $2,000,000,000 | Facebook | Eduardo Saverin is yet another person who got rich through Facebook, with a 5% stake in the company that he got when he went to Harvard with Mark Zuckerberg. If you've seen The Social Network, you'll know that their relationship went sour, but it still didn't hold Eduardo back from becoming a very rich man. |
| 23 |  | Jung-Ju Kim | 43 | $2,000,000,000 | Nexon | Jung-Ju Kim was somewhat of a pioneer in online gaming, by creating the world's very first online game, way back in 1994. He now owns Korea's biggest games producer with an anual revenue of around $900 million. |
| 24 |  | Zhang Zhidong | 39 | $2,000,000,000 | Tencent | Zhang is the co-founder of Tencent, which is China's largest Internet company that provides users with "one-stop online lifestyle services". They have their hands in most pies, from online gaming to social networking, and is one of the top 3 most powerful websites in China. |
Josh helps to run a bunch of websites. He is a master with a camera and great at driving traffic!
See all the 100 Richest Internet Entrepreneurs
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