You may have found the winner. They did absolutely nothing but exist to make that money.
Kylie Jenner - Somehow at 21 she has become the world’s youngest billionaire by leveraging her Kardashian-ness to build a cosmetics business, fashion line and mobile app. Other than being followed on social media, did she provide any specific “talent” used to develop any of these enterprises? Or am I to understand she is Eugène Paul Louis Schueller (founder of L’Oreal), Donna Karen and Mark Zuckerberg all rolled into one?
Honey Boo Boo’s mother.
Here to second the motion that Stern is a HUGE talent and worth every penny he has earned. Millions upon millions of people have listened to his show over the last, what, 40 years. And if people weren’t being entertained by him, he wouldn’t on the air. Sure he has plenty of haters, but these are people who never became regular listeners or even never hear the show at all. Howard and his millions of listeners through the years don’t care about these people. They are free to turn the dial and listen to some wannabe.
She knew how to talk when she started making money.
I thought of him too.
With just a touch more effort he could have had his name on some product line or another. A William hung clothing line or workout video could have netted him a few more bucks.
Bill Gates was very talented at business. He pretty much kicked everyone’s ass in the PC software business. Lots of other people were creating better products, and yet he still won.
Sorry, this is an absurd characterization of Gates’ career, or that of Jobs. Try to give a serious answer rather than just dissing people because you don’t like them.
From Celebritynetworth.com:
Mods: you can close the thread, it’s been answered.
I’m going with John Travolta. He is an extremely poor actor and dancer, but his pretty boy looks and reasonable singing voice made him a movie star. Twice.
I just thought of another wrestler to add to this list: El Gigante/Giant González. The only reason WCW and WWF hired him was because he was 7 feet 7 inches tall(though he was billed as 8 feet tall). He was even worse than Sid in every way and might even be one of worst pro wrestlers in history.
Whoever won the largest lottery jackpot seems like the obvious answer. Zero is greater than any positive infinitesimal, so the only way to beat lottery winners would be to actually have negative talent, which I don’t think is possible. Even William Hung can be said to have the talent of persevering and giving it his all; he may have had no singing talent, but it’s a completely different thing to say it’s negative, and if all he had done was sing poorly no one would have cared.
That passed through my mind, but I don’t think he made anywhere near as much money as Sid.
Milli Vanilli?
Granted, they COULD dance, and marginally sing.
I saw a documentary on the early days of Microsoft. An attorney who worked with them was shown, and he said the Bill Gates would have been a better attorney than he ever was.
I think people simply don’t realize how much it takes to grow a successful company let alone one as large as Microsoft.
W
What do I win?
The OP said “not inherited or by marriage”.
I dunno; was Yoko Ono a savvy marketer? AFAIK, she was the daughter of a banker.
Good choice. A third rate writer of sci-fi potboilers. He just scraped a living from that. Scientology is the ultimate vaporware, it’s a sort of pseudo-religion based around presumed aliens and mystical powers. Third-rate sci-fi.
Ah, talent?
I’ll add my votes for Paris Hilton and the Kardashian tribe. I agree that they have an incredible talent for self-marketing and making a fortune out of their self-promotion, but that stretches the definition of talent. Really, they are just famous for being famous. IMHO, like Mark Zuckerberg they hit a nerve at just the right moment and got rich of out all proportion.
As for the Olsons, I am at a loss as to why they are so rich. Add them po the list.