The [United] State[s] of Billionaires

There’s been a lot of talk about United States billionaires recently, mostly about their money, taxes and giving — should they be taxed differently? and how? Are they philanthropic enough? And so on.

I was interested in something else — how did they acquire their wealth?

Billionaires in US

1. ~600 billionaires in the United States [Forbes, Bloomberg]
2. 43 new additions in 2018 [Forbes]

Macro Stats

• How did they become a billionaire?

• For those that founded companies: what was the industry?

• For those that got through Investment, what types?

New Billionaires in 2018

• How did the 2018 additions become a billionaire?

• For those that founded companies: what was the industry?

Anything Surprising?

A few items stood out to me:

VCs

• There were only 9 venture capitals on the list. They generally got billions because they were smart (or lucky?) enough to have invested early on very large winner, like Google or Facebook.
• The list: John Doerr (Kleiner Perkins w/ Google), Douglas Leone (Sequoia Capital w/ Google), Mark Stevens (Sequoia Capital w/ Google), Ken Langone (w/ Home Depot), Michael Moritz (Sequoia Capital w/ Google), Jim Breyer (Accel w/ Facebook), Peter Thiel (w/ Facebook), Kavitark Ram Shriram (w/ Google), Chris Sacca (Lowercase Capital w/ Twitter, Uber).

Inheritance

• The percentage of inherited is much higher than I had expected, especially for newly minted billionaires which was 36%.
• How should inheritance play into the policy decisions being made regarding taxes and inheritance?