California truly is the Golden State when it comes to wealth and youth. Nine of the top 10 richest entrepreneurs under 40 are from California. That shouldn't surprise anyone – packing your bags and heading to Silicon Valley (or Silicon Beach) to get venture capitalists to throw millions your way isn't a sure fire way of getting rich, but it is certainly a good way to go about it. In fact, 34 of the 40 richest under 40 made their money in the tech industry and 33 of those 34 people live in California. Of these 40 entrepreneurs, 39 are men and all have a net worth of at least $400 million. Even more impressive, 21 of the 40 are billionaires. Represented on this list are the founders of some of the hottest tech companies out there, including Airbnb, Uber, Fitbit, and Pinterest.
Eight of the members on this list made their money at or because of Facebook including the three richest. Mark Zuckerberg leads the pack with a net worth of $47.1 billion. That's more than four times the net worth of the second person on the list, his co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. Jan Koum, who immigrated to America as a young boy and grew up in subsidized housing, started the world's biggest mobile messaging service WhatsApp in 2009. In 2014, he sold it to Facebook for $22 billion in cash and stock.
The only woman on the list of the 40 wealthiest under 40 is Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. She dropped out of Stanford at 19 to start her revolutionary blood testing company. Now, 12 years later, she is facing a bit of a backlash after it was revealed that not only are her tests not as accurate as she claimed they were, but also that many of the tests are done using traditional testing methods, not her "nanotianer." Now Holmes must away FDA clearance to re-start testing.
The youngest member of the list is 23-year old Palmer Luckey. He sold his virtual reality company, Oculus, to Facebook in 2014 for $2.3 billion. Despite having a net worth of $700 million, Luckey still lives with six roommates. They like to play video games together. Six of the 40 are still in their 20s, including billionaire Snapchat founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy. The duo famously turned down a $3 billion offer from Facebook to acquire Snapchat in 2013.
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Individuals on this list had to be under the age of 40 as of November 12th. All of the entrepreneurs on this list live in and have to have substantially made their money in the U.S.
Here's a look at the 40 Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40:
- Mark Zuckerberg, 31, Facebook, $47.1 billion
- Dustin Moskovitz, 31, Facebook, $9.7 billion
- Jan Koum, 39, WhatsApp, $8.8 billion
- Garrett Camp, 37, Uber, $6 billion
- Travis Kalanick, 39, Uber, $6 billion
- Elizabeth Holmes, 31, Theranos, $4.5 billion
- Nathan Blecharczyk, 32, Airbnb, $3.3 billion
- Brian Chesky, 34, Airbnb, $3.3 billion
- Joe Gebbia, 34, Airbnb, $3.3 billion
- Sean Parker, 36, Facebook, $2.5 billion
- Jack Dorsey, 39, Twitter, $2.2 billion
- Robert Pera, 37, Ubiquiti Networks, $2.1 billion
- Evan Spiegel, 25, Snapchat, $2.1 billion
- Bobby Murphy, 27, Snapchat, $1.8 billion
- Ben Silberman, 33, Pinterest, $1.5 billion
- Ryan Graves, 32, Uber, $1.5 billion
- Adam Neumann, 36, WeWork, $1.5 billion
- Drew Houston, 32, Dropbox, $1.2 billion
- Brian Sheth, 40, Vista Equity Partners, $1.1 billion
- Evan Sharp, 33, Pinterest, $1.05 billion
- Orion Hindawi, 35, Tanium, $1 billion
- Parker Conrad, 35, Zenefits, $900 million
- John Collison, 25, Stripe, $750 million
- Patrick Collison, 27, Stripe, $750 million
- Peter Szulczewski, 34, Wish, $720 million
- Matt Cohler, 38, Facebook, Benchmark, $700 million
- Palmer Luckey, 23, Oculus, $700 million
- Tiger Woods, 39, Golf, $700 million
- Eric Friedman, 38, Fitbit, $660 million
- James Park, 39, Fitbit, $660 million
- Adam D'Angelo, 31, Quora, Facebook, $600 million
- Paul Sciarra, 34, Pinterest, $550 million
- Arash Ferdowsi, 30, Dropbox, $500 million
- Vivek Ramaswamy, 30, Axovant Sciences, $500 million
- Chris Wanstrath, 30, Github, $500 million
- Chris Hughes, 32, Facebook, $450 million
- Tom Preston-Werner, 36, Github, $440 million
- Charlie Chanaratsopon, 37, Charming Charlie, $425 million
- Joe Lonsdale, 33, Palantir, $425 million
- Apoorva Mehta, 29, Instacart, $400 million
