All people are not born with silver spoons in their mouths and all the advantages. A few super rich people whose stories of not-so-sudden success compels you to look into their lives before they were billionaires. So, here is a list of top 5 of the richest men of the world, who were born poor.
1. Bill Gates
Net worth – $53 Billion
Billionaire Story:
William Henry ‘Bill’ Gates III is an American business magnate, philanthropist and known as chairman of Microsoft, he founded the software company with Paul Allen. Bill Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution whose family was upper middle class and father was a prominent lawyer. His mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way.
2. Lakshmi Mittal
Net Worth – $28.7 billion
Billionaire Story:
Lakshmi Niwas Mittal, the CEO and founder of ArcelorMittal, was born on June 15, 1950 at Sadulpur, in Churu district of Rajasthan, in a poor family. He belongs to Marwari Aggarwal caste and his grandfather worked for the Tarachand Ghanshyam Das firm which was one of the leading Marwari industrial firms of pre-independence India. Laxmi Mittal lived with the 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.
3. Larry Ellison
Net Worth – $27 billion
Billionaire Story:
Larry Ellison was adopted by a middle class family in Chicago nine months after he was born to an unwed Jewish lady. Larry Ellison was a co-founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation and was a bright student, showed a good aptitude for science and math. He left the University of Illinois at the end of his second year, after his mother died.
Later, he studied computer designing and moved to California, where he did several odd jobs for about eight years. Then as a programmer at Ampex, he participated in building the first IBM-compatible mainframe system.
In 1977, Ellison and two of his Ampex colleagues, Ed Oates and Robert Miner, founded their own company, Software Development Labs, with just $1400 from his savings. The company was later renamed Oracle Corporation. The 65-year old Ellison is known for his extravagant lifestyle, flies planes and races sailboats.
4. Amancio Ortega Gaona
Net Worth – $25 Billion
Billionaire story:
He is a Spanish fashion entrepreneur. 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. He founded Confecciones Goa, which made bathrobes, but in 1975 he opened the first store in what would grow into the enormously famous chain of fashion stores called Zara.
5. Karl Albrecht
Net Worth - $23.5 billion
Billionaire story:
Theo Karl and Albrecht were raised in modest circumstances in Essen. Their father was employed as a miner and then 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. During World War II, Karl also served in the German Army. After the end of World War II, the brothers took over their mother’s business (1946).
