From Jeff Besoz to Bill Gates, from Mark Zuckemberg to Bernard Arnualt. Every year, the American magazine Forbes compiles a ranking of the richest men on the Planet. At the top is confirmed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos ($112 billion), followed by Microsoft patron Bill Gates (90), third place for the king of investors Warren Buffett (83), fourth the French luxury king Bernard Arnault (72), fifth the 34-year-old founder of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg (71), sixth Spaniard Amancio Ortega founder of Zara (66), seventh Mexican Carlos Slim (67), eighth Charles Koch (60), ninth David Koch, co-owner with his brother of Koch Industries (60), tenth Larry Ellison, co-founder and Cto of Oracle (58).
BILLIONAIRES ON THE RISE
The numbers are impressive: there are 2,208 billionaires in the world, totaling $9 trillion, (up 18% from the previous year). The richest 1% hold more money than the remaining 99% (Oxfam report).
But beyond the numbers, the reasons are of interest. Where do the super-wealthy come from? What path did they take to earn so much? What are their studies?
HOW MUCH IS A COLLEGE DEGREE WORTH?
All these questions were answered by the British recruiting firm Aaron Wallis, which conducted a survey of the studies and first occupations of the 100 nabobs of the earth.
First fact: 25 % of the sample (a quarter) do not have a college degree. Among others, Mark Zuckerberg did not graduate: he dropped out of Harvard University to launch Facebook. Harvard did graduate, but only 34 years later and honoris causa, Bill Gates. “Congratulations,” he had said in his address to the graduates, “you have achieved something that I have not been able to achieve”. Humble beginnings for Amancio Ortega, who started working at age 14 as an errand boy in a tailor’s shop (of the degree, then, not a word).
On the other hand, Jeff Bezos (at Princeton, in electrical engineering and computer science) and Warren Buffett (but he started in the field, too: he made his first investment at age 11), for example, graduated.
The top two Italians in the Forbes ranking are Giovanni Ferrero (23 billion, college graduate) and Leonardo Del Vecchio (22, no degree).
The billionaires who graduated did so, in almost all cases, in science and economics. In fact, 22 studied engineering, 16 business, 11 economics and finance, 6 law and 4 computer science. This was followed by art history (3); philosophy, political science, humanities, mathematics and history (2); and medicine, physics and psychology (1).
Leading faculties at the moment are engineering (Bezos and Google co-founder Larry Page, among others, are engineers) and computer science.
EXPERIENCE TO SELL
Let’s turn to the employment aspect. More than half (53%) started by working in someone else’s company, 30% in the family business (could we call them “daddy’s boys”?), while 17% started their own company.
Of the billionaires who started out working in another company, ten started out as salespeople, 9 as stock traders, 5 as software developers, as many as engineers, 4 as business analysts, as many in a financial role, and 3 as point-of-sale assistants. Two billionaires started in marketing roles, as legal assistants, mechanics, bricklayers or military personnel. Finally, one as a politician, another as a laborer, and one as a translator.
Does starting out as marketers give one a better chance of becoming a billionaire? Apparently so, at least looking at the story of George Soros, in 29th place: a Hungarian Jew who escaped Nazi persecution and started out working as a salesman at a wholesaler. Or that of Michael Dell, who started out selling newspaper subscriptions and went on to found Dell, among the world leaders in Pc hardware. Certainly, the sales profession allows one to exercise many essential qualities for doing business (and money): tenacity, empathy, customer orientation.