I’ve met and exchanged emails with Marc Benioff (net worth: $1.9b), CEO of Salesforce.com. Nice guy, does a ton of charitable giving. He personally had the COO of his charitable foundation contact me to help develop an idea I had proposed.
Yeah. In a game of monopoly once at her house. It was a bit of a ramshackle house with a big hole in the fibro and a screen door that wouldn’t shut. She had a lot of KFC buckets lying around so I guess she gave a few sizeable donations to Colonel Sanders.
Our home town billionaire is Warren Buffet. I exchanged a few words with him once in a restaurant.
I have a first cousin who topped out at around 600 mil a few years ago. Not a billionaire but still . . .
He owns (as far as I know he still owns it, but it is up for sale) the only golf course in Belize.
Wah, my heart bleeds for them. Current world GDP per-capita is just over US$9,000. Every man, woman, and child on the planet would have that much if wealth was equally distributed. As a perennial college student who worked my way through school, I lived on about that much for several years. It certainly was not luxury, but it was enough for basic living and even a few luxuries in the US; a first-world nation with massive income disparity.
Now imagine if everyone had equitable income, and prices weren’t inflated by huge differences in wealth. I’m not saying billionaires need to give away all their money to bring up the poor masses, but there’s some serious food for a thought exercise.
I have a fairly good friend who, when I first met him, was worth $100 million. He got that from being one of the founders of SUN. But he was Sergei Brin’s supervisor and an early backer of Google. So he might be a billionaire today; I don’t know. As for Sergei, well yes I met him when he was an impecunious grad student. I attended a talk he gave on his idea for a new browser. Also his supervisor delegated him to take me on a tour of San Fransisco, so I spent most of a day with Sergei touring SF. Among other things, we walked to the midpoint of the Golden Gate bridge and then back. So I have met one, possibly two, but before they were billionaires.
According to Alan Sugar, billionaires are just like us. They also have valets to help them dress.
I know several. However, I’m not at liberty to divulge such information to the masses.
Good stuff Sleel. I would go one step further and say bring back the tax that forced them to give away 90% of their profits. Capitalism for it to work needs not the poor to name drop and boast who they know with the bigbucks as if these people are demigods and somehow superior. Don’t feed their egos please …don’t these people know how crass they sound to the ones with no advantage under Capitalism.
I’ve met a few, in my line of work - CEOs. I can’t say I really know any of them, but I have shaken hands with them and talked to them. First name basis and everything.
I can share two that won’t identify where I work.
At a grad school alumni gathering in Hong Kong about 15 years ago, there were a few 50 something loud, big haired, mid western ladies with the tackiest costume jewelry imaginable. Picture 6" flaming rhinstone peacock broaches and shit like that.
I met and chatted with a bunch of other alumni and then grabbed a beer with a buddy. I asked him who those women were. He said, did you meet “Merle.” “Sure, the guy over there.” and my buddy said that’s “Merle Hinrichs - he founded Asian Sources (now Global Sources) and his wife (the one with the rhinestone peacock) was a founding 10% investor in duty free shops. Her jewelry collection is insured for USD200M.”
Whilst all true, it only shows that money doesn’t come with taste. Merle was quite a nice guy, and I did enjoy chatting with him before I knew who he was. Asian Sources was run in quite a miserly fashion though. The HQ was in an old dumpy factory in a crappy part of Hong Kong island. Starting salary for grad school recruits was USD20k (that’s annual salary) in 1991.
a couple of months ago, I was in the neighborhood Tully’s Coffee in Medina with my family and signing the contract with our house builder. Steve Ballmer comes in alone talking on the phone, bellies up to the counter and orders something. I speak to my kids in Chinese: “hey, check that guy over there on there on the phone, he’s a multi-billionaire.” My eldest daughter speaks up “he dresses worse than you do Dad.” It was true, Steve had on a ratty pair of gym shorts and a well worn polo shirt. From where we were, I couldn’t make out what he ordered or how he paid, but that would have been a mundane thing that I would have found interesting. He walked out with his drink and I didn’t see what he was driving either. So, technically, I didn’t meet him but wanted to share. Medina, BTW, has several Microsoft billionaires including Bill Gates as well as at least one other in Jeff Bezos and possibly more.
Paul Allen is a nice guy.
Actually I don’t think there are “several” Microsoft billionaires. I didn’t include SteveB b/c I don’t think he is one.
Yes, I sat right next to him at a business dinner and chatted for a couple of hours, off and on. IIRC he was worth about $8B at the time. One thing I noticed is that he looked like any ordinary salaryman - scuffed wingtip shoes, dockers and shirt that didn’t completely match, standard-sized class ring with a semi-precious stone, Timex watch, etc. He didn’t talk about world affairs or high society - he talked about fishing and how his grandchildren were doing in school. I was very flattered by him when he told me that he wanted to meet me because I was a “known expert” in his business, even from the other side of the world.
When I was first told I would be seated next to him, I had been expecting spats and a gold cane. 
The only sign anyone would have had that he was important was that he had three personal assistant/helpers (two of which I think doubled as security) who followed him around and acted very nervous and twitchy every time someone walked up to him.
How long ago was that? I know Nathan Myhrvold isn’t worth over a billion anymore.
Steve Ballmer is worth something like $15B according to Forbes: http://www.forbes.com/wealth/billionaires/list
wiki says that Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Steve Ballmer are all billionares. Wiki also quoted (Forbes 400 list revealed that in March 2011 both Jon Shipley and Nathan Myhrvold lost their billionaire status). So, there were at least 5 and now 3. There may be more that had a lot of money from Microsoft and parlayed that into billionaire status - I have no idea. There are also some billionaires because they sold their companies to Microsoft.
I once (only once) shared an elevator with one of the co-founders of the company I work for. At the time, I’d guess his share was worth about $250 million.
Other than that, in more than fifty years, I can’t think of ever interacting with someone with a net worth of more than a million or two.