John Paul DeJoria, the man behind brands such as Paul Mitchell, Patrón, and Rok Mobile, is certainly successful by any measure. But his billionaire status didn't come easy. DeJoria describes his rags-to-riches story, and explains why he thinks the dream is still alive.
Produced by Justin Gmoser. Additional camera by Graham Flanagan.
Follow BI Video:On Facebook
Often when people think about money they think of having it, not giving most of it away. But for these three millionaires, who were once billionaires, giving is second nature.
With the help of Wealth-X, which does research and valuations on ultra-high-net worth people, we recently published a list of the 20 most generous people in the world. Wealth-X provided us with each philanthropist's amount of lifetime donations and net worth, as well as each person's "Generosity Index."
The Generosity Index shows the amount of money they have donated in relation to their net worth. Out of the 20 people, three donated more money than they currently have, making their generosity indexes greater than 100%.
In total, Jon Huntsman Sr., Suleiman bin Abdul Aziz Al Rajhi, and Charles Francis Feeney have collectively given $13.2 billion to causes around the world. The common conviction among them: True satisfaction comes from seeing your private wealth in the hearts and hands of the public.
Scroll on to see why these philanthropists are donating a majority of their fortunes:
SEE ALSO: The 4 best charities in the world and how much you should give to each
NOW READ: The 20 most generous people in the world
Known to some as the "James Bond of philanthropy," Chuck Feeney, the creator of duty-free shopping, is on a mission to give away his entire fortune. In fact, Feeney is working overtime to donate most of his riches by the end of 2016. Today, the 84-year-old has an estimated net worth of $1.5 million, which will allow him to live comfortably in his final years.
Feeney is the founder of Atlantic Philanthropies, an organization established in 1984 that's dedicated to aiding important causes across the globe. Within two years of founding Atlantic, Feeney had donated the majority of his personal wealth to the organization to fund projects related to education, science, healthcare, and civil rights.
"I had one idea that never changed in my mind — that you should use your wealth to help people," Feeney said in a 2007 biography. At the end of last year, Feeney made one of his final donations through Atlantic Philanthropies to Northern Ireland. The $28 million grant will be used to promote shared education for Protestant and Catholic children, parenting programs, and improvements to dementia care.
After nearly three decades and over $6 billion of giving, Feeney has become one of the most generous people on the planet: "I want the last check I write to bounce."
In 1957, Sulaiman bin Abdul Aziz Al Rajhi cofounded Al Rajhi Bank with his three brothers. It grew into one of the world's largest Islamic banks and earned Al Rajhi a 10-digit net worth.
After shifting his focus to philanthropy and making the decision to give half of his riches to his children and half to charity, he's now worth just $590 million, putting his Generosity Index at 966%.
The 95-year-old is the founder of Sulaiman Bin Abdul Aziz Rajhi Charitable Foundation, which supports educational, religious, health, and social causes. The foundation has donated to the Arab Institute for Arabic Language, National Guard Health Affairs, and the Sheikh Sulaiman bin Abdul Aziz Al Rajhi Mosque in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi Arabian businessman revealed in an interview that he's no stranger to poverty, having been penniless on two separate occasions in his life. He appreciates his wealth and knows others will benefit too. "In the past, I never gave money to my children when they were young in return for nothing. When one of them approached me to give them cash, I asked them to do some work in exchange for it," he said.
NOW WATCH: Turns out 'Shark Tank' investor Robert Herjavec doesn't value advice at all
Many billionaires give some of their money to charity, but some give a lot of their money to charity.
Created by Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates, the Giving Pledge invites the wealthiest people in the world to pledge more than half of their wealth to charitable causes either during their lives or in their wills. As of June, 137 ultra-wealthy individuals and families have joined the effort, with some pledging to allocate more than 99% of their money to philanthropy.
Here are nine billionaire pledgers planning to give away most of their money, and how they plan to give.
SEE ALSO: The 20 most generous people in the world
DON'T MISS: 3 people who donated so much money they kicked themselves out of the billionaires club
Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen joined the Giving Pledge in 2010. He focuses the majority of his philanthropic efforts within the Pacific Northwest, where he lives and works, particularly in the realm of science research.
His Allen Institute for Brain Science studies the genetic causes of brain diseases and disorders, as well as the functions and malfunctions of the brain that impact humans in other ways. To date, Allen has donated $2 billion to charity, according to research firm Wealth-X, including a $100 million donation last year to combat the Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa.
The founder and CEO of 5-Hour Energy pledged to give more than 90% of his wealth away to charity. Much of his philanthropy aims to alleviate human suffering. His foundation has adopted over 400 projects so far, including bettering schools and hospitals, and advancing women's career education in rural India.
Another area of interest: the environment. The foundation is trying to reduce fossil fuel emissions by 50% and clean harmful chemicals from coal.
Spanx founder Sara Blakely joined the Giving Pledge to "make the world a better place ... one woman at a time." Her efforts start with a program called Leg-UP, which gives other female entrepreneurs the opportunity to feature their products for free in the Spanx catalog.
Blakely has also helped women finance their college educations, funded entrepreneurship programs in girls' schools, and donated $1 million to Oprah's Leadership Academy for girls in South Africa.
NOW WATCH: Robert Herjavec on Ashton Kutcher's ‘Shark Tank' debut
When it comes to the end of the world, underground shelter company Vivos is betting that it's better to be safe than sorry.
The Vivos Europa One shelter in Rothenstein, Germany, claims to be the world's largest and safest underground survival bunker. It's also one of the fanciest. Available by invitation only, a spot in the bunker will set future residents back about $5 million each. Buyers can then have their chambers decorated and customized to fit their preferences.
Once it's complete, the massive bunker will be set to protect against everything from natural disasters to war.
Originally built by Soviets during the Cold War and used as a fortress for military equipment and munitions, the incredible 76-acre property was recently revealed by Vivos founder and CEO Robert Vicino.
He told Business Insider that the opportunity to buy a space in the massive Europa One bunker is being marketed exclusively to "global industrialists" and billionaires, though his company also constructs underground shelters for those on a slightly tighter budget.
"We don't know when 'the accident' is going to happen. For those who haven't secured a solution yet, it's already too late," Vicino said to Business Insider. "It's expensive, but it's an investment in your life and in real estate."
Keep scrolling down to see where billionaires could live out the end of the world.
SEE ALSO: How billionaires will survive the end of the world
DON'T FORGET: Follow Business Insider's lifestyle page on Facebook!
NOW WATCH: Try this renowned steakhouse marinade recipe for the ultimate steak
The world is a scary place, and there are lots of things that could go wrong at any minute.
Luckily, Robert Vicino has a plan for the impending end of the world.
As founder and CEO of Vivos, he plans to build a network of high-end, underground bunkers for those who can afford to pay for their assured safety.
And just how much is he asking?
For a spot in a standard bunker, Vicino says, you'll be set back about $35,000.
But if you want a spot in Vivos' ultra-luxury bunker, Europa One, it will cost you much more – and you'll have to score an invite from Vivos first.
"Individual chambers are being bought for $5 million," Vicino said to Business Insider. "You get a shell with utilities, and then you can build out the living quarters however you want."
Each family who buys in will get two stories of space to outfit to their liking. That could include swanky furnishings like plush leather couches and high-end bars, or it could mean additional amenities like swimming pools, movie theaters, and private gyms.
"Some may want their quarters to be like a high-end yacht, or others might want a more basic job," Vicino said. "We expect the average cost for outfitting a space to be $5 million. Taken in perspective of who these people are, that's a fraction of the cost of one of their yachts."
Europa One is being built in a massive Soviet bunker in Germany, originally constructed during the Cold War for the storage of missiles. The complex was purchased by a mysterious philanthropist, with whom Vivos is partnering to construct the bunker.
The space will be outfitted with enough supplies and amenities that residents could stay a year without leaving.
As for the client list, Vicino has been very discreet. He won't say anything other than that buyers are "global industrialists," many of whom are billionaires.
They're the kind of demographic who will appreciate the high-end amenities — and the privacy.
"The only way in or out is by our helicopters, which they can take from wherever their private jet lands," Vicino said. "Whether they're coming from the Middle East, Moscow, the UK, Hong Kong — everyone should be able to get there in short notice."
Vicino says they've gotten about 50,000 applications from people of all different skill sets. Most people they accept have a broad range of skills, whether they're a doctor who can also hunt or a pilot who also knows basic mechanic tasks. Anyone who makes a joke of it is immediately rejected.
"It's like an airplane," Vicino said. "We're going to make sure you're a good passenger before we take off."
Vivos can help people protect themselves from any number of global disasters, from nuclear winter to famine to a tsunami that wipes out everyone who couldn't get underground.
"Vivos is life assurance for those who can afford it," Vicino said. "We don't know when 'the accident' is going to happen. For those who haven't secured a solution yet, it's already too late."
"It's expensive, but it's an investment in your life and in real estate. Think about it as an investment that they can pass down to their heirs."
But you don't have to be a billionaire to be safe from the apocalypse. Vivos offers two other private bunker services — Quantum, made for families or small groups, and Trine, for groups between 150 and 500 people.
Vicino says they can build these shelters to the group's exact specifications, and they're able to withstand any disaster for a year or longer. He says they're ramping up construction of the shelters all over the place, but especially in Argentina and Canada. In the event of a global catastrophe, discretion will be key to protecting survivors, so Vivos doesn't disclose where they're building.
They don't even hire outside contractors out of fear the secret will get out.
He added: "We're everywhere, but where we're not is where you expect us to be."
SEE ALSO: Take a tour of the luxurious bunker where billionaires can escape the apocalypse
DON'T FORGET: Follow Business Insider's Lifestyle page on Facebook!
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: Tour this mobile private island that just upped the ante on billionaire toys
I recently had a conversation with a successful billionaire money manager about personal finance.
I wanted the best money advice the investor had for someone my age.
I'm 27, so this advice will probably be useful for most millennials — anyone aged 19 to 34.
Here are the key takeaways:
Noted.
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: 'The Art Of War' holds the keys to success on Wall Street
Thirty years ago, Howard Schultz got into the coffee business with one goal in mind: to enhance the personal relationship between people and their coffee.
He's now responsible for Starbucks, one of the world's most beloved brands, and worth at least $3 billion as chairman and CEO of the Fortune 500 company. But it wasn't an easy path to the top.
How did Schultz, who came from a "working poor" family in the Brooklyn projects, overcome adversity and grow a quaint Seattle coffeehouse into the largest coffee chain on Earth?
Scroll through to learn the story behind Starbucks and its leading man.
Additional reporting by Shana Lebowitz.
NOW WATCH: 9 things you didn't know about Starbucks
SEE ALSO: Starbucks is transforming coffee shops into bars — here's what it's like to go to one
Source:Bloomberg
Source: "Pour Your Heart Into It"
Source: "Pour Your Heart Into It"
NOW WATCH: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has an interesting theory about Donald Trump
If there's one habit most super-successful people share, it's this: They read. A lot.
Many of them have shared the books that helped shape them personally and professionally. If you want to emulate these titans of industry, reading their faves seems like a good place to start.
From classic literature to business management guides, we rounded up their top picks, so you can start stocking your shelves.
Among Wall Streeters, Graham is known as the father of value investing. Billionaire investor Warren Buffett credits Graham's book with laying the foundation for his investment philosophy when he read it at age 19.
"To invest successfully over a lifetime does not require a stratospheric IQ, unusual business insights, or inside information,"Buffett said. "What's needed is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions and the ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework. This book precisely and clearly prescribes the proper framework. You must provide the emotional discipline."
This book by an environmental sciences professor focuses on the costs of increasing material consumption and the potential for dematerialization in the future.
Bill Gates, estimated to be the richest man on earth, calls Smil his favorite author and says the book gave him new insight into the materials that make modern life possible.
"It might seem mundane, but the issue of materials — how much we use and how much we need — is key to helping the world's poorest people improve their lives,"Gates writes."Think of the amazing increase in quality of life that we saw in the United States and other rich countries in the past 100 years. We want most of that miracle to take place for all of humanity over the next 50 years."
This work of science fiction helped billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk through an existential crisis during his adolescence. In the book, a supercomputer deduces the answer to a meaningful life is the number 42, though it's not clear what the original question was.
"It highlighted an important point, which is that a lot of times the question is harder than the answer," Musk said in an interview. "And if you can properly phrase the question, then the answer is the easy part. So, to the degree that we can better understand the universe, then we can better know what questions to ask."
How do the world's greatest givers stack up?
We looked to answer that question when we created a list of the 20 most generous people in the world with our partners at Wealth-X, a firm that does research and valuations on ultra-high net worth individuals.
Everybody on our list created a billion-dollar fortune during their career, including Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who started the Giving Pledge to encourage billionaires to give away half or more of their wealth. Some have donated so much that they're no longer billionaires.
We ranked them based on their total charitable giving to date. All told, these 20 philanthropists have given away nearly $110 billion.
SEE ALSO: 9 billionaires who plan to give away the majority of their fortunes
SEE ALSO: The wealthiest people in the world under 35
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: The richest billionaires under 35 and how they got their money
With a net worth of approximately $79.4 billion, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates is the wealthiest person in the world.
Gates has been a public fixture ever since he and Paul Allen started a computer revolution in the 1980s. He has all of the toys you would expect from the world's richest man, from a private jet to a 66,000-square-foot home he nicknamed Xanadu 2.0.
Yet as his wealth has grown, Gates has done more philanthropy work, donating billions of dollars to charity projects through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
In honor of his 60th birthday Wednesday, we're taking a look back at his incredible life thus far.
SEE ALSO: How billionaires will survive the end of the world
Source: Wall Street Journal
Source: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Source: NPR
In 2012, Spanx founder Sara Blakely became the youngest self-made female billionaire at age 41, according to Forbes.
As the company's sole owner, Blakely's ingenious invention has made her rich.
Forbes currently estimates her net worth at $1.01 billion.
Though she's far less extravagant than other billionaires, she's still making the most of her success.
Source: Forbes
Source: Business Insider, Forbes
Source: Business Insider
Jorge Lemann is behind some of America's most iconic consumer brands.
The Brazilian billionaire's investment company 3G Capital has invested in or backed takeovers of Kraft, Heinz, Burger King and Anheuser Busch.
Now, Anheuser Busch InBev –which counts Lemann among its controlling shareholders – has sealed a deal to merge with SABMiller.
The deal puts a huge chunk of the world's beer market in the hands of one company.
AB Inbev owns Budweiser, Corona, Stella Artois and Becks, among others. SABMiller owns Fosters, Blue Moon, Grolsch and Peroni.
As part of the deal announced Wednesday November 11, SABMiller will sell its stake in US joint venture MillerCoors and the global rights to the Miller Brand in a bid to get the deal past anti-trust regulators.
Combinations of large consumer companies are Lemann's signature: 3G created the world's fifth-largest food company by investing $10 billion into a merger of Kraft and Heinz, and engineered a fast-food giant after buying Burger King in 2010 for $3.3 billion and putting it together with Tim Hortons for another $11.3 billion.
"I think above all you must always be building something," he says in this video interview with Falconi Consultants posted on YouTube last year. "We always want to arrive somewhere, to improve, and we are always trying to get there by making things better around us... these are the things that guide me."
AB InBev itself is a company that took decades, and billions in acquisitions, to build — the largest of which was the $52 billion purchase of Anheuser Busch in 2008.
The Harvard graduate has gone from journalist to national tennis champion to banker and now billionaire investor with a net worth of over $24 billion, according to Bloomberg. Here's his story:
This is an updated version of a article published earlier this month about Jorge Lemann.
SEE ALSO: See the 33 richest hedge fund managers in America
His mother was from a family of cocoa merchants in Bahia, who were more ambitious, Lemann said during the interview with Falconi. That was where he got his drive.
Now he has a great relationship with Harvard, setting up scholarships for Brazilian students.
Though now, he regrets not taking more advantage of the faculty at Harvard, for example speaking with Henry Kissinger or Paul Samuelson, according to a speech Lemann made to his foundation, Estudar, translated by Forbes.
Whether you want to launch an empire or become the best in your field, who better to consult than those who've achieved the peak of professional and financial success?
That's why we've rounded up 21 books by self-made billionaires. From the business insights of Bill Gates to the leadership lessons of Richard Branson, the wisdom collected in these pages extends far beyond the classroom.
Learn how these masters of industry achieved the impossible, in their own words.
SEE ALSO: 9 books to read if you want to be a billionaire
DON'T MISS: The 27 jobs that are most damaging to your health
Although Branson confesses he's never read a book on leadership, his nearly 50-year entrepreneurial career has taught him a thing or two about building a business.
In "The Virgin Way," the billionaire founder of Virgin Group offers lessons on management and entrepreneurialism, including the importance of listening to others and hiring the right people. Branson is honest about his successes as well as his failures, such as underestimating Coke's influence when he tried to launch Virgin Cola in the 1990s.
Overall, the book is a compelling glimpse into the life of someone who's never shied away from a challenge.
After resigning as Starbucks CEO in 2000, Schultz returned to the post in 2008, just as the company was struggling through a financial crisis. "Onward" details how the billionaire brought the global coffee chain back to life.
Readers will learn how Schultz made tough decisions — like temporarily shutting down more than 7,000 US stores — in order to help Starbucks grow without neglecting its core values. They'll learn, too, about Schultz as a person, as he weaves together his unique business strategy with anecdotes about growing up in Brooklyn, New York. It's an honest and passionate recounting that will inspire entrepreneurs and everyone else to be brave in the face of adversity.
In "How to Win at the Sport of Business," Dallas Mavericks owner and "Shark Tank" investor Cuban fleshes out his best insights on entrepreneurialism from his personal blog.
He writes candidly about how he progressed from sleeping on his friends' couches in his 20s to owning his own company and becoming a multibillionaire. It's a story of commitment and perseverance — Cuban writes that even though he didn't know much about computers, he beat his competition because he spent so much time learning about the software his company sold.
Atherton, a small town in Silicon Valley, has been named America's most expensive zip code for the third year in a row, according to Forbes.
To determine the rankings, Mountain View-based firm Altos Research calculated the median home listing prices for 28,500 zip codes across the country. Co-ops were excluded, and calculations were adjusted based on the makeup of the housing stock in each particular market.
In Atherton, the median listing price was a whopping $10.6 million, landing it at the top of the list. The median listing price was $9.03 million at the time Forbes compiled its list for 2014.
The town itself is quiet and secluded, and building codes prohibit commercial development. Still, it's not far from the bustling tech-centric towns of Palo Alto and Menlo Park.
Several noted tech billionaires, including Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, Google chairman Eric Schmidt, and HP CEO Meg Whitman, currently own homes here. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg also lived in Atherton before she moved into her new waterfall-equipped home in nearby Menlo Park in 2013.
Here are the top 10 zip codes on Forbes' list:
1. Atherton, California (94027) — $10.6 million
2. Sagaponack, New York (11962) — $7.4 million
3. New York, New York (10012) — $7.3 million
4. Woody Creek, Colorado (81656) — $7 million
5. New York, New York (10013) — $6.1 million
6. Miami Beach, Florida (33109) — $5.6 million
7. Woodside, California (94062) — $5.5 million
8. Hidden Hills, California (91302) — $5.1 million
9. Aspen, Colorado (81611) — $5 million
10. Hillsborough, California (94010) — $4.9 million
SEE ALSO: Here's what a four-bedroom home looks like in America's most expensive markets
It isn't just wealth. And it isn't just control over people or resources. No, true power is a potent combination of money and influence that enables people to help shape the world. But only a select group of people really possess the economic and political clout to effect global change. For better or worse, their decisions affect millions, shake industries, and change nations.
Business Insider has compiled the following list of the world's most powerful people — heads of state, billionaires, CEOs, and entertainers. To determine the ranking, we considered more than 100 of the most influential players in business, politics, and entertainment, and we evaluated their influence by using metrics in four major areas: economic power, command, newsworthiness, and impact— a subjective measure that captures how important they are in their respective spheres.
Because the majority of these people span several industries, we took the logarithm of each and mapped those logarithms to a standardized scale, which allowed us to combine the metrics. (See our full methodology here.)
US President Barack Obama, leader of the world's chief superpower, takes top honors, followed by Chinese President Xi Jinping, ruler of the a country making a serious challenge to US supremacy. Read on to see the full list of the world's 50 most powerful people right now:
Editing by Alex Morrell with additional research by Andy Kiersz.
SEE ALSO: The 50 most powerful companies in America
SEE ALSO: The 25 richest self-made billionaires
Titles: Singer (Beyoncé), rapper and entrepreneur (Jay Z)
Country: US
Age: 34 (Beyoncé), 45 (Jay Z)
Music's biggest power couple, Beyoncé and Jay Z turn nearly everything they touch into gold, which has helped them mint a combined fortune of $950 million.
Beyoncé shocked the music industry in 2013 when she released an album on iTunes without promotion — it went on to sell over 5 million copies thanks to hits like "Drunk in Love" and "Partition."
Jay Z is consistently one of the highest earners in music, reportedly raking in $56 million last year through his many ventures, including his Roc Nation music label and its sports division. Though his streaming service, Tidal, encountered some turbulence— the hip-hop mogul himself forgot he owned it— Jay Z is still just about everywhere in the entertainment industry.
Title: Chairman, managing director of Reliance Industries
Country: India
Age: 58
Mukesh Ambani took over as the chairman of Reliance Industries when his father, the company's founder, Dhirubhai Ambani, died in 2002. The enormous industrial conglomerate generates $61 billion in annual sales from its interests in energy, petrochemicals, textiles, natural resources, retail, and, more recently, telecommunications.
Ambani is the richest person in India with a personal fortune of over $23 billion. He owns a 27-story Mumbai mansion that cost $1 billion to build.
And if Ambani's projections for India's economy prove correct, expect that net worth to soar. Four years ago, Ambani predicted that India would grow from a $1.4 trillion economy in 2011 to a $30 trillion economy by 2030 — a bullish estimate considering that India's GDP today stands at $2.2 trillion.
Title: Sinaloa Cartel leader
Country: Mexico
Age: 60
Mexican drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán is perhaps the wealthiest and most notorious gangster on the planet, with a net worth of $1.1 billion. The leader of the infamous Sinaloa Cartel, El Chapo has been accused of importing over 180,000 kilos of cocaine into the US. Drug-enforcement experts estimate his cartel's annual revenues at greater than $3 billion.
Cunning and evasive, El Chapo escaped from a Mexican prison in July (not for the first time) by way of a labyrinthine tunnel he may have paid $50 million in bribes and construction costs to have built. The US State Department is offering a reward of up to $5 million to anyone with information leading to his arrest.
When it comes to age, wealth doesn't discriminate — billionaires can be found in every phase of life.
Wealth-X, a firm that researches and maintains a database of ultra-wealthy people, compiled a list of the richest person in every decade, from their 20s through their 90s.
From tech billionaires to retail moguls and a secretive heiress, here are the people with more money than anyone else in their age group.
SEE ALSO: The 25 richest self-made billionaires
DON'T MISS: The 20 most generous people in the world
Net worth: $2 billion
Age: 25
Industry: Tech
Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel may be the least wealthy person on this list, but he's also the youngest — and at 25, his net worth of $2 billion has plenty of time to grow. Spiegel began developing his now-you-see-it photo-sharing app in 2011 while still a student at Stanford. Barely two years later, he was getting offers from the likes of Facebook ($3 billion) and Google ($4 billion) to buy him out, both of which CEO Spiegel turned down.
Snapchat's value has continued to soar as the company has branched into news and other media and acquired some companies of its own, coughing up $150 million for app-development company Looksery. Considering Spiegel and company raised $530 million in equity at a $16 billion valuation in May, rejecting Facebook and Google might have been the smartest business move the young billionaire has made yet.
Source: Wealth-X
Net worth: $47.2 billion
Age: 31
Industry: Tech
At just 31, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is already one of the richest people in the world with a net worth of $47.2 billion. Facebook continues to thrive, attracting more than a billion users daily in September — a 17% increase in traffic from the previous year. The company stock hit all-time highs in November after reporting $4.5 billion in quarterly earnings.
Zuckerberg has made some high-profile purchases of late. He reportedly spent $22 million on a new 3,200-square-foot home in New York City's West Village this year, and in 2014 he spent $100 million for 750 acres of secluded land on the North Shore of Kauai.
Zuck and his wife, Priscilla, are also incredibly generous with their wealth. The social media mogul has signed The Giving Pledge, promising to donate at least half of his wealth to charitable causes within his lifetime. The couple donated $25 million in the fight against Ebola last year, and gave $100 million worth of Facebook shares towards improving a New Jersey public-school system.
Source: Wealth-X
Net worth: $41.7 billion
Age: 42
Industry: Tech
Larry Page became a billionaire when Google went public in 2004 with a valuation of about $23 billion; 11 years later, the company is worth more than $500 billion.
Page and cofounder Sergey Brin — exceedingly wealthy in his own right with a net worth of $38 billion— have been shaking their company up lately. In August, Google announced that it would be forming a new parent company, Alphabet, to allow its different businesses to operate independently and move faster. Page and Brin still control the overarching entity as CEO and president, respectively.
Page doesn't make a lot of splashy purchases, but the alternative-energy advocate does own an eco-friendly mansion in Palo Alto that utilizes geothermal energy and rainwater capture. He's also an avid kiteboarder.
Source: Wealth-X
Business Insider recently published its ranking of the 50 most powerful people in the world— a select group whose decisions affect millions, shake industries, and change nations. Global heads of state featured prominently, with 14 presidents, prime ministers, and even royalty cracking the list.
To determine the ranking, we evaluated more than 100 of the most influential players in business, politics, entertainment, and tech, judging their influence by economic power, command, newsworthiness, and impact — a subjective measure that captures how important they are in their respective spheres (see our full methodology here).
US President Barack Obama headlines the list, followed by Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Here are the rest of the world's most powerful world leaders.
Editing by Alex Morrell with additional research by Andy Kiersz.
NOW CHECK OUT THE FULL LIST: The 50 most powerful people in the world
SEE ALSO: The 50 most powerful companies in America
Title: Israeli prime minister
Country: Israel
Age: 66
Reelected this year as the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu recently compared the Middle East to "Game of Thrones." It isn't a game he's always played well — disputes over the Iran deal and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have left US-Israeli relations at a crisis point. But Israel has remained relatively stable during a time of turmoil throughout the Middle East, and Netanyahu has dominated his country's politics like few Israeli leaders.
Overall, many say that Netanyahu has done a good job of boosting Israel's economy and putting the country at the forefront of technological and medical advances. Even so, the fallout over the Iran nuclear deal, and his strained relations with Washington, don't bode well for his legacy.
Title: President of South Korea
Country: South Korea
Age: 63
South Korean President Park Geun-hye is the first female leader of her country — an especially impressive accomplishment considering South Korea has the highest level of gender inequality in the developed world. Her election generated the nation’s highest turnout rate in 15 years.
Park has the difficult but critical responsibility of diffusing threats from the ever combative North Korea. Last year, she tried to get her mercurial neighbors to the north to abandon their nuclear-weapons program by promising humanitarian aid and an investment in its weak industries, but to no avail. Park has flexed her muscles by testing missiles that can reach all of North Korea, but Kim Jong Un hasn't blinked, and hasn't quashed any nuclear ambitions.
Title: Supreme Leader of Iran
Country: Iran
Age: 76
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has been the ultimate authority in Iran since 1989, is openly opposed to Western influence in both his country and the broader Middle East. A hardliner even within Iran's clerical regime, Khamenei has long championed the slogan"Death to America," and he has sought to position Tehran as both a geopolitical and ideological enemy of the US and Israel.
After more than 18 months of negotiations, Khamenei conditionally agreed to a landmark nuclear deal reached with six world powers this past July. The deal outlines Iran's promise to curb its nuclear program in exchange for the US and its partners lifting economic sanctions. The agreement is set to open Iran's economy to outside investment and has generally raised the prestige of Khamenei's government, which is quickly shaking its status as one of the world's pariah states.
Forbes has released its first ever list of the richest American entrepreneurs under 40 years old, and it's completely dominated by the tech industry in California.
Of the 40 entrepreneurs they looked at, a full 34 made their money in tech, with 33 living in California. They included those who were either born in the US or who built their companies here.
When we narrowed the focus to only those who had made over $1 billion, the list dropped to 21, and every single one had made their fortune in tech.
These mostly self-made billionaires include founders of some of the most iconic tech companies of the past few years, like Airbnb, Facebook, Twitter, and Uber.
Here are the 21 youngest billionaires in the country, who prove that tech is now ground zero for the American Dream.
Additional reporting by Tess Danielson and Tanza Loudenback.
Net Worth: $1 billion
Age: 35
Orion Hindawi made his fortune through the security startup Tanium, where he is CTO. Tanium was valued at $3.5 billion after raising $120 million in September. Hindawi works with his father, David, who was one of the founders of the startup, and the two previously worked together at David's last company, BigFix, which IBM bought for a reported $400 million in 2007.
Net Worth: $1.05 billion
Age: 32
Evan Sharp is a cofounder of Pinterest, which he helped start as a side project with friends while at architecture school back in 2009. What started as a fun project has now boomed into a site with 47.66 million unique monthly visitors in the US, and which is now valued at $11 billion.
Brian Sheth showing off Vista Equity's snazzy fashion sense at #Buyouts Texas pic.twitter.com/ya4TIKxJte
— Luisa Beltran (@LuisaRBeltran) December 10, 2013Net Worth: $1.1 billion
Age: 39
Sheth is cofounder and president of Vista Equity, the technology-focused private equity firm founded in 2000. He is actively involved in his company’s investments and sits on 16 separate boards of businesses funded by Vista Equity. Sheth additionally serves as a director at Waterfall Mobile, MarVista Entertainment, and Global Wildlife Conservation.
As a student at Harvard in the 1970s, Bill Gates impressed more than one faculty member with his mathematical brilliance.
He proposed an elegant solution to what's known as "pancake sorting," and his insights were published in the journal Discrete Mathematics in 1979, in a paper co-bylined with then-Harvard professor Christos Papadimitriou.
A few years ago, Papadimitriou, now a professor of computer science at the University of California at Berkeley, shared an anecdote about working with Gates in a publication of the Association for Computing Machinery. The anecdote resurfaced in a recent answer on the Quora thread, "How intelligent is Bill Gates?"
The story serves as a reminder that the wealthiest and most successful people among us may have been exceptional from the start.
Here's Papadimitriou:
When I was an assistant professor at Harvard, Bill was a junior. My girlfriend back then said that I had told her: "There's this undergrad at school who is the smartest person I've ever met."
That semester, Gates was fascinated with a math problem called pancake sorting: How can you sort a list of numbers, say 3-4-2-1-5, by flipping prefixes of the list? You can flip the first two numbers to get 4-3-2-1-5, and the first four to finish it off: 1-2-3-4-5. Just two flips. But for a list of n numbers, nobody knew how to do it with fewer than 2n flips. Bill came to me with an idea for doing it with only 1.67n flips. We proved his algorithm correct, and we proved a lower bound—it cannot be done faster than 1.06n flips. We held the record in pancake sorting for decades. It was a silly problem back then, but it became important, because human chromosomes mutate this way.
Two years later, I called to tell him our paper had been accepted to a fine math journal. He sounded eminently disinterested. He had moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico to run a small company writing code for microprocessors, of all things. I remember thinking: "Such a brilliant kid. What a waste."
Thirty years later, other researchers found a sorting strategy that's 1% faster. But according to an NPR interview with Harry Lewis, another Harvard professor who taught Gates in the 1970s, those researchers had the help of powerful computers. The young Gates, on the other hand, relied solely on his own cognitive resources (and in fact he helped develop the computers that would find a faster solution).
It's easy to dismiss these reminiscences as exceptions to the rule — the rule that anyone can make it big without being a genius at age 20.
But a growing body of research suggests that intelligence is a remarkably good predictor of wealth and success later in life.
In 2013, Jonathan Wai, a professor at Duke University's Talent Identification Program, published a study that found the majority of Fortune 500 CEOs and billionaires had attended an elite academic institution either as an undergraduate or graduate student, putting them in the top 1% of cognitive ability. Even among the top 0.0000001% of wealth, Wai reported, those who earned more were generally better educated.
More recent research by Wai has found that about 40% of a sample of 1,991 CEOs attended elite schools, which presumably means they were in the top 1% of cognitive ability. Moreover, Wai found that companies run by more highly educated CEOs tended to perform better. Wai equates admission to an elite institution with smarts because those schools admit only students with top SAT scores and SAT scores are generally related to intelligence.
Wai's methodology and conclusions have been criticized, for example by Steve Siebold, author of "How Rich People Think," and Wai admits that he would have preferred to gain access to people's SAT scores if that were possible. In an article on Business Insider, Wai acknowledged, "It might be that the power of the networks, brand name, and quality of education that come with elite-school attendance is why so many of these people ended up in such positions of influence."
Another small study, conducted by researchers at Vanderbilt University, found that 320 students who had scored above the 1-in-10,000 level on the SAT before age 13 held more prestigious jobs at more prestigious companies by age 38 than the rest of the population on average.
Bill Gates himself has acknowledged the potential link between intelligence and professional success. In 2005, he told Forbes: "Microsoft must win the IQ war, or we won't have a future."
The idea that intelligence might play more than a minimal role in individual success is an uncomfortable one to consider. But the takeaway from these studies and anecdotes isn't that, if you aren't off-the-charts intelligent (at least by standard measures of intelligence), you can't or won't get anywhere. It just seems to be statistically less likely you'll become the next Bill Gates.
SEE ALSO: 7 surprising downsides of being extremely intelligent
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: How Microsoft will radically transform the medical industry
WhatsApp cofounder Jan Koum just disposed of a lot of Facebook stock.
Earlier this week, he sold shares amounting to nearly $300 million.
Although the sale wasn't discretionary and was just meant to pay off the taxes on stock Koum received after selling his company, that's a lot of money (and makes the ~$160 million Marc Andreessen just sold look like small potatoes).
But it's even more interesting in light of Koum's rags-to-riches history.
Here's how Koum got where he is today:
SEE ALSO: Marc Andreessen has sold nearly 75% of his Facebook stock in two weeks
Source: Forbes
Source: Forbes.
Source: Wired
