As the saying goes, some people are born with silver spoons in their mouths, but not all are born with all the advantages, however, this does not mean that they never gets a taste of that. While this advantageous “silver spoon” factor has determined the course of many millionaires’ life, there a few super rich whose stories of not-so-sudden success compels us to look into their lives before they were billionaires. So, here’s a list of 10 of the world’s richest men, who were born poor.
Name: Bill Gates
Net worth: $53 Billion
Source: Microsoft
Citizenship: United States
Billionaire Story:
William Henry “Bill” Gates III is an American business magnate, philanthropist, and popularly known as chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen. Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. His family was upper middle class; his father was a prominent lawyer, his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way. Early on in his life, Gates’ parents had a law career in mind for him.
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Name: Lakshmi Mittal
Net Worth: $28.7 billion
Source: Steel
Citizenship: India
Billionaire Story:
The CEO and founder of ArcelorMittal, Lakshmi Niwas Mittal was born on June 15, 1950 at Sadulpur, in Churu district of Rajasthan, in a poor family. Laxmi Mittal belongs to Marwari Aggarwal caste and his grandfather worked for the Tarachand Ghanshyam Das firm, one of the leading Marwari industrial firms of pre-independence India. Laxmi Mittal lived with the extended family of 20 members on bare concrete floors, slept on rope beds and cooked on an open fire in the brickyard in a house built by his grandfather.
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Name: Larry Ellison
Net Worth: $27 billion
Source: Oracle
Citizenship: United States
Billionaire Story:
He was adopted by a middle class family in Chicago nine months after he was born to an unwed Jewish lady. Larry Ellison, co-founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation was a bright student, showed a good aptitude for math and science. But he left the University of Illinois at the end of his second year, after his mother died.
He later studied computer designing. He moved to California, where he did several odd jobs for about eight years. Finally, as a programmer at Ampex, he participated in building the first IBM-compatible mainframe system. In 1977, Ellison and two of his Ampex colleagues, Robert Miner and Ed Oates, founded their own company, Software Development Labs, with just $1400 from his savings. The company was later renamed Oracle Corporation.
He is currently listed on the Forbes list of billionaires as the fourth richest person in the world. Ellison is the third richest American, the 65-year old Ellison is known for his extravagant lifestyle, races sailboats and flies planes.
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Name: Amancio Ortega Gaona
Net Worth: $25 Billion
Source: Zara
Citizenship: Spain
Billionaire story:
Amancio Ortega Gaona is a Spanish fashion entrepreneur. Ranked by Forbes as Spain’s richest man and the 10th richest man in the World in 2009. He is the founder, with his then-wife Rosalía Mera, and chairman of the Inditex Group. He currently lives with his second wife in a discreet apartment building in the center of A Coruña. Ortega arrived at A Coruña, Spain, at the age of 14, due to the job of his father, a railway worker. Starting as a gofer in various shirt stores in A Coruña, Galicia, he founded Confecciones Goa, which made bathrobes, but in 1975 he opened the first store in what would grow into the enormously popular chain of fashion stores called Zara.
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Name: Karl Albrecht
Net Worth: $23.5 billion
Source: Aldi
Citizenship: Germay
Billionaire story:
Karl and Theo Albrecht were raised in modest circumstances in Essen. Their father was employed as a miner and later as a baker’s assistant. Their mother had a small grocery store in the worker’s quarter of Schonnebeck. Theo completed an apprenticeship in his mother’s store, while Karl worked in a delicatessen shop. Karl also served in the German Army during World War II. After the end of World War II, the brothers took over their mother’s business (1946). The first Aldi (Albrecht-Discount) was opened in 1961.
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Name: Ingvar Kamprad
Net Worth: $23 Billion
Source: Ikea
Citizenship: Sweden
Billionaire Story:
Ingvar Feodor Kamprad is a Swedish entrepreneur who is the founder of the home furnishing retail chain IKEA. As of 2010, he is the eleventh wealthiest person in the world, according to Forbes magazine, with an estimated net worth of around $23 billion in 2010. Kamprad began to develop a business as a young boy, selling matches to neighbors from his bicycle. He found that he could buy matches in bulk very cheaply from Stockholm, sell them individually at a low price, and still make a good profit. From matches, he expanded to selling fish, Christmas tree decorations, seeds and later ballpoint pens and pencils. When Kamprad was 17, his father gave him a cash reward for succeeding in his studies. He used that money to establish what has grown into IKEA.
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Name: Roman Abramovich
Net Worth: $18.8 billion
Source: Steel, Investments
Citizenship: Russia
Billionaire Story:
Started his multi-billion-dollar business during his army service where he sold stolen gasoline to some of the commissioned officers of his unit. Also worked as a street-trader and then as a mechanic at a local factory. But it all got going for him by 1996, at the age of 30, Abramovich had become so rich and politically well-connected that he had become close to President Boris Yeltsin, and had moved into an apartment in the Kremlin at the invitation of the Yeltsin family. In 1999, and now a tycoon, Abramovich was elected governor of Russia’s remote, far eastern province of Chukotka, and has since lavished £112 million (€ 132 million) on charity to rebuild the impoverished region.
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Name: Mikhail Prokhorov
Net Worth: $9.5 billion
Source: Investments
Citizenship: Russia
Billionaire Story:
Mikhail Prokhorov is a self-made Russian billionaire entrepreneur. After graduating from the Moscow Finance Institute, he made his name in the financial sector and went on to become one of Russia’s leading industrialists in the precious metals sector. While he was running Norilsk Nickel, the company became the world’s largest producer of nickel and palladium. He is currently the chairman of Polyus Gold, Russia’s largest gold producer, and President of Onexim Group. Prokhorov is currently the richest man in Russia and the 40th richest man in the world according to the 2009 Forbes list.
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Name: Sheldon Adelson
Net Worth: $9Billion
Source: Casino
Citizenship: United States
Billionaire Story:
Sheldon Gary Adelson is an American businessman. He is a property developer and public company CEO based in Las Vegas, Nevada. Born to Jewish parents, Adelson grew up in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, a rough-and-tumble section of Boston, where his father drove a taxicab. He worked at a young age selling newspapers on local street corners and owned his first business by the time he was 12. In the years that followed, he worked as a mortgage broker, investment adviser and financial consultant. He started a business selling toiletry kits, and in the 1960s he started a charter tours business with two friends. He went to college at City College of New York but did not complete a degree there.
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Name: Steve Jobs
Net Worth: $5.5 Billion
Source: Apple, Pixar
Citizenship: United States
Billionaire Story:
Steven Paul “Steve” Jobs is an American businessman, and the co-founder and chief executive officer of Apple Inc. Jobs previously served as CEO of Pixar Animation Studios and is now a member of the Walt Disney Company’s Board of Directors. Jobs was born in San Francisco and was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs of Mountain View, Santa Clara County, California who named him Steven Paul. Paul and Clara later adopted a daughter, who they named Patty. Steve grew up in the apricot orchards which later became known as Silicon Valley, and still lives there with his family.