The Internet Tycoons - Billionaires One and All - a Short Sample

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The Internet Tycoons with their self-made riches attract the same kind of fascinated ogling that the Nabobs, Sheiks and Majaraji of yesteryear did in their day. The modern Internet tycoons are the "champions league" of entrepreneurs.  The common denominator to many of the winners of the entrepreneurial speed race, i.e. time from start-up to major player, is that the Internet has been a key business driver for them. An overview is presented here with a listing of several race winners, some of them speedier than others. The overview by no means professes to be complete; it is just a sampling.  For instance, it includes a mere half-dozen of the high tech companies with a broad software/hardware reach, beginning with Apple and ending with Wipro. 

The list is in reverse chronological order, similar to that of a U.S. resume, with the most recently founded company first. The dollar figures attributed to the founders are from the March 2011 estimates of their net worth by Forbes magazine.

 For instance it includes only a few of the high tech companies with a broad hardware or software reach, such as Microsoft (Bill Gates), Apple (Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak), Oracle (Larry Ellison), Wipro, an Indian software outsourcing firm (Azim Premji) and Intel. The list is in reverse chronological order (like a U.S. CV), beginning with the firm most recently founded. The $ figure is the March 2011 estimate of the founder´s worth made by Forbes.
 
Jeffery Bezos, 47, founded Amazon.com in 1994 and comes in at $18.1 billion.

Michael Dell, 45, took Dell publc in 1988, a computer manufacturer which sells its products on the Internet. He comes in at $13.5 billion.

Ma Huatong, 39, co-founder of Tenant, China´s most popular Internet site, comes in at $5 billion. (Tenant is the T of "TAB," China´s three most popular websites. The A is for Alibaba and the B for Baido.) Apparently he is as careful with his money as Steve Jobs ($8.3 billion). Ma Huatong was attacked in the Chinese press when it came out that he had been claiming a government housing subsidy of $463 a month. 

Xavier Niel, 43, while still in high school established Minitel, the French forerunner to the Internet. He comes in at $3.7 billion.