2016 Rich List: The Top 10 Billionaires In Tech [INFOGRAPHIC]

2016 Rich List: The Top 10 Billionaires In Tech by Jeff Desjardins, Visual Capitalist

The fast-moving startup scene has captured the imaginations of many people around the world.

Part of the reason? The traditional art of fortune-building used to pay off only after decades of perseverance, focus, and patience. Today, however, the scalability of technology allows an aspiring entrepreneur to go from zero to hero in a few short years.

With a good idea and skillful execution, a fortune can be made practically overnight.

The Top 10 Billionaires in Tech

The speed of technology is reflected in the following infographic from ERS Solutions, which covers the wealthiest 10 billionaires in tech.

The oldest person on the list is Larry Ellison at 72 years old, while the youngest is Mark Zuckerberg who is forty years his junior.

How fast do things change in tech?

Compare this year’s list with the top 10 billionaires in tech from 2006 and you will see clear differences.

Hasso Plattner, Paul Allen, and Pierre Omidyar all made the list ten years ago, but are nowhere to be seen on the 2016 edition. They were bumped off the list by new names like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Jack Ma, who were just getting things rolling ten years ago.

Back then, Amazon’s stock price was $35 per share (today, it is $844) and Facebook had just secured its first outside investments and was opening up its platform to the outside world. Alibaba had measly revenues of $68 million per year, and just took a $1 billion investment from Yahoo.

The criteria to make the list has also changed considerably over the last decade. The “poorest” person on the list had $6 billion in 2006. Ten years later, one would need at least a fortune of $20 billion to scrape it onto the list’s #10 spot.

Here’s the data from 2016 again in table-form:

Top 10 Billionaires in Tech