The 2011 Forbes “World’s Billionaires” list is out and guess who makes it to the top as the youngest billionaire? …No, it is not Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg who usually gets the credit for being the youngest billionaire.
The social networking giant with over 600 million users has recently been valued at $82.5 billion which is the reason that Mark and his co-founders have leapt into the rankings of the mega wealthy.
The Forbes ranking though lists Facebook at a value of $50 billion, based on the Goldman Sachs led investment, significantly less than the current $82.5 billion valuation implied by the latest stock sale in the private markets. So the social media billionaires all have lower rankings than they ought to by most estimations.
Facebook’s Co-Founders
- Mark Zuckerberg ranks 52 on the Forbes list this year with $13.5 billion and ranks second though in the youngest list.
- Dustin Moskovitz has $2.7 billion and he is actually the youngest billionaire. He is 8 days younger than Mark earns the right to be the worlds youngest billionaire. He was Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard roommate and Facebook’s third employee. The two dropped out of Harvard and moved to California to work for the social networking firm full time; he was its first chief technology officer and then vice president of engineering. He left in 2008 to start Asana, a software company that allows individuals and small companies to better collaborate.
- Eduardo Saverin $1.6 billion
- Sean Parker $1.6 billion.
Investors in Facebook
- Peter Thiel has $1.5 billion
- Yuri Milner has $1 billion and is the majority investor in Russia’s Digital Sky Technologies
Companies That Have Made Their Money From The Facebook Eco-System
Facebook’s largest platform developer Zynga (the company behind Texas Holdem Poker and Farmville) which has been valued recently at close to $5 billion has founders who have become billionaires in barely 2 years.
- Mark Pincus at $1 billion
- Eric Lefkofsky at $1.billion
So if my maths is correct that makes 8 billionaires who have made their wealth from Facebook and whose net worth exceeds $1 billion.
I don’t think this list is going to be getting smaller anytime soon. So who are the other companies in associated industries that feed off the Facebook industry that produces 10% of the internet traffic that are going to ride on the coat tails of Facebook and make their billions?