10 Richest people in the world who are an inspiration to be successful

10 Richest people in the world who are an inspiration to be successful

1. Bill Gates

William Henry Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, author, philanthropist, and co-founder of the Microsoft Corporation along with Paul Allen.

In 1975, Gates and Allen launched Microsoft, which became the world's largest PC software company. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, CEO and chief software architect, while also being the largest individual shareholder until May 2014. Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in January 2000, but he remained as chairman and created the position of chief software architect for himself. In June 2006, Gates announced that he would be transitioning from full-time work at Microsoft to part-time work and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He gradually transferred his duties to Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie. He stepped down as chairman of Microsoft in February 2014 and assumed a new post as technology adviser to support the newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella.

Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. He has been criticized for his business tactics, which have been considered anti-competitive. This opinion has been upheld by numerous court rulings. Later in his career, Gates pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors. He donated large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which was established in 2000.
Since 1987, Gates has been included in the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest people. As of September 2017, he is the richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$84.8 billion.

2. Warren Buffett

Warren Edward Buffett is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. Buffett serves as the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. He is considered by some to be one of the most successful investors in the world, and as of October 2017 is the second wealthiest person in the United States, and the fourth wealthiest in the world, with a total net worth of $80.6 billion.

Born in Omaha, Buffett developed an interest in business and investing in his youth, eventually entering the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1947 before transferring and graduating from University of Nebraska–Lincoln at the age of 19. Buffett went on to enroll and graduate from Columbia University where he learned and eventually molded his investment philosophy around a concept pioneered by Benjamin Graham–value investing. He attended New York Institute of Finance to specialize his economics background and soon after began various business partnerships, including one with Graham. After meeting Charlie Munger, Buffett created the Buffett Partnership. His firm would eventually acquire a textile manufacturing firm called Berkshire Hathaway and assume its name to create a diversified holding company.

Buffett has been the chairman and largest shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway since 1970, and his business exploits have had him referred to as the "Wizard", "Oracle" or "Sage" of Omaha by global media outlets. He is noted for his adherence to value investing and for his personal frugality despite his immense wealth.

3. Jeff Bezos

Jeffrey Preston Bezos is an American technology and retail entrepreneur, investor, computer scientist, and philanthropist, best known as the founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Amazon.com, the world's largest online shopping retailer. The company began as an Internet merchant of books and expanded to a wide variety of products and services, most recently video streaming and audio streaming. Amazon.com is currently the world's largest Internet sales company on the World Wide Web, as well as the world's largest provider of cloud infrastructure services, which is available through its Amazon Web Services arm.

Bezos' other diversified business interests include aerospace and newspapers. He is the founder and manufacturer of Blue Origin (founded in 2000) with test flights to space which started in 2015, and plans for commercial suborbital human spaceflight beginning in 2018. In 2013, Bezos purchased The Washington Post newspaper. A number of other business investments are managed through Bezos Expeditions.

When the financial markets opened on July 27, 2017, Bezos briefly surpassed Bill Gates to become the world's richest person, with an estimated net worth of just over $90 billion. He lost the title later in the day when Amazon's stock dropped, returning him to second place with a net worth just below $90 billion. On 27 October, 2017, he surpassed Bill Gates as the richest person in the world.

4. Amancio Ortega

Amancio Ortega Gaona is a Spanish business tycoon. He is the founder and former chairman of Inditex fashion group, best known for its chain of Zara clothing and accessories retail shops.

In 1975, he opened his first Zara store with his wife Rosalía Mera. Today, Zara is part of the Inditex group (Industrias de Diseño Textil Sociedad Anónima), of which Ortega owns 59.29%, and aside from over 6,000 stores includes the brands Zara, Massimo Dutti, Oysho, Zara Home, Kiddy's Class, Tempe, Stradivarius, Pull and Bear, Bershka and has more than 92,000 employees. Amancio Ortega net worth is 77.9 billion US dollars.

5. Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is an American computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur. He is a co-founder of Facebook, and currently operates as its chairman and chief executive officer. His net worth is estimated to be US $74.2 billion as of November 2017, and in 2016 was ranked by Forbes as the fifth richest person in the world.

Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his Harvard University dormitory room on February 4, 2004. He was assisted by his college roommates and fellow Harvard students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. The group then introduced Facebook to other college campuses. Facebook expanded rapidly, reaching one billion users by 2012. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg was involved in various legal disputes brought by others in the group, who claimed a share of the company based upon their involvement during the development phase of Facebook.
In December 2012, Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced that over the course of their lives they would give the majority of their wealth to "advancing human potential and promoting equality" in the spirit of The Giving Pledge. On December 1, 2015, they announced they would eventually give 99 percent of their Facebook shares (worth about US$45 billion at the time) to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Since 2010, Time magazine has named Zuckerberg among the 100 wealthiest and most influential people in the world as a part of its Person of the Year award. In December 2016, Zuckerberg was ranked 10th on Forbes list of The World's Most Powerful People.

6. Carlos Slim Helu

Carlos Slim Helú is a Mexican business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. From 2010 to 2013, Slim was ranked as the richest person in the world. He derived his fortune from his extensive holdings in a considerable number of Mexican companies through his conglomerate, Grupo Carso. As of 27 October 2017, he is the sixth-richest person in the world according to Forbes' listing of The World's Billionaires with a net worth estimated at $64.3 billion.

His conglomerate includes education, health care, industrial manufacturing, transportation, real estate, media, energy, hospitality, entertainment, high-technology, retail, sports, and financial services. He accounts for 40% of the listings on the Mexican Stock Exchange, while his net worth is equivalent to about 6 percent of Mexico’s gross domestic product.

7. Larry Ellison

Lawrence Joseph Ellison is an American businessman, entrepreneur, and philanthropist who is co-founder, executive chairman and chief technology officer of Oracle Corporation. As of August 2017, he was listed by Forbes magazine as the fifth-wealthiest person in America and as the seventh-wealthiest in the world, with a fortune of $61.8 billion.

Ellison was born in New York City and grew up in Chicago. He studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and the University of Chicago without graduating before moving to California in 1966. While working at Ampex in the early 1970s, he became influenced by Edgar F. Codd's research on relational database design, which led in 1977 to the formation of what became Oracle. Oracle became a successful database vendor to mid- and low-range systems, competing with Sybase and Microsoft SQL Server, which led to Ellison being listed by Forbes as one of the richest men in the world.

Ellison has donated up to 1% of his wealth to charity and has signed The Giving Pledge. In addition to his work at Oracle, Ellison has had success in yachting, through Oracle Team USA. He is a licensed aircraft pilot who owns two military jets.

8. Charles Koch

Charles de Ganahl Koch is an American businessman, political donor and philanthropist. In 2017 Forbes ranked him 8th in The World’s Billionaires list with an estimated net worth of $48.3 billion.

He is co-owner, chairman of the board, and chief executive officer of Koch Industries since 1967, while his brother David Koch serves as Executive Vice President. Charles and David each own 42% of the conglomerate. The brothers inherited the business from their father, Fred C. Koch, then expanded the business. Originally involved exclusively in oil refining and chemicals, Koch Industries now includes process and pollution control equipment and technologies; polymers and fibers; minerals; fertilizers; commodity trading and services; forest and consumer products; and ranching. The businesses produce a wide variety of well-known brands, such as Stainmaster carpet, the Lycra brand of spandex fiber, Quilted Northern tissue and Dixie Cup.

Koch Industries is the second-largest privately held company by revenue in the United States according to a 2010 Forbes survey. In February 2014, Koch was ranked 9th richest person in the world by Hurun Report with an estimated net worth of $36 billion. Previously, in October 2012 he was ranked the 6th richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $34 billion—according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index—and was ranked 18th on Forbes World's Billionaires list of 2011 (and 4th on the Forbes 400), with an estimated net worth of $25 billion, deriving from his 42% stake in Koch Industries. Koch has published three books detailing his business philosophy, The Science of Success, Market Based Management, and Good Profit.

Koch supports a number of free market-oriented educational organizations, including the Institute for Humane Studies, the Ayn Rand Institute, and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He also contributes to the Republican Party and candidates, libertarian groups, and various charitable and cultural institutions. He co-founded the Washington, DC-based Cato Institute. Through the Koch Cultural Trust, founded by Charles Koch's wife, Elizabeth, the Koch family has also funded artistic projects and creative artists.

9. David Koch

David Hamilton Koch is an American businessman, philanthropist, political activist, and chemical engineer. He joined the family business Koch Industries, a conglomerate that is the second-largest privately held company in the United States, in 1970. He became president of the subsidiary Koch Engineering in 1979, and became a co-owner of Koch Industries, with older brother Charles, in 1983. He is now an executive vice president. Koch is an influential libertarian. He was the 1980 candidate for Vice President of the United States from the United States Libertarian Party and helped finance the campaign. He founded Citizens for a Sound Economy. He and his brother Charles have donated to political advocacy groups and to political campaigns, almost entirely Republican.

Condé Nast Portfolio described him as "one of the most generous but low-key philanthropists in America". Koch has contributed to several charities including Lincoln Center, Sloan Kettering, New York-Presbyterian Hospital and the Dinosaur Wing at the American Museum of Natural History. The New York State Theater at Lincoln Center, home of the New York City Ballet was renamed the David H. Koch Theater in 2008 following a gift of 100 million dollars for the renovation of the theater. Koch is the fourth richest person in America as of 2012, and the wealthiest resident of New York City as of 2013. He is the ninth-wealthiest person in the world, as of 2014. He is a survivor of the USAir Flight 1493 crash in 1991.

10. Michael Bloomberg

Michael Rubens Bloomberg is an American businessman, author, politician, and philanthropist. His net worth is estimated at US$ 47.8 billion, as of October 2017, ranking him as the 8th richest person in the United States and the 10th richest person in the world. He has joined The Giving Pledge, whereby billionaires pledge to give away at least half of their wealth.

Bloomberg is the founder, CEO, and owner of Bloomberg L.P., a global financial services, mass media, and software company that bears his name, and is notable for its Bloomberg Terminal, a computer software system providing financial data widely used in the global financial services industry. He began his career at the securities brokerage Salomon Brothers, before forming his own company in 1981 and spending the next twenty years as its chairman and CEO. Bloomberg also served as chairman of the board of trustees at his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, from 1996 to 2002.

Bloomberg served as the 108th Mayor of New York City, holding office for three consecutive terms, beginning with his first election in 2001. A Democrat before seeking elective office, Bloomberg switched his party registration in 2001 to run for mayor as a Republican. He defeated opponent Mark Green in a close election held just weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks. He won a second term in 2005, and left the Republican Party two years later. Bloomberg campaigned to change the city's term limits law, and was elected to his third term in 2009 as an Independent candidate on the Republican ballot line.

Bloomberg was frequently mentioned as a possible candidate for the U.S. Presidential elections in 2008, and 2012, as well as for Governor of New York in 2010. He declined to seek either office, opting to continue serving as the Mayor of New York City.

On January 1, 2014, Bill de Blasio succeeded Bloomberg as the Mayor of New York City. After a brief stint as a full-time philanthropist, Bloomberg re-assumed the position of CEO at Bloomberg L.P. by the end of 2014. On March 7, 2016, Bloomberg announced that he would not run as a third party candidate in the 2016 U.S. presidential election despite widespread speculation that he would, and later endorsed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for president.