Want To Be Rich? These 4 Industries Launched Billionaires’ Careers
Written by
Stacy Sare Cohen
Edited by
Angela Corry
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Everyone starts somewhere — even billionaires. Many of the world’s richest entrepreneurs and innovators turned their first jobs into careers that produced massive wealth. Others succeeded with persistence and vision.
We analyzed the top 20 names on Forbes’ 2025 Billionaires List to find the four industries that have generated the most success. If you’re planning your career or considering a pivot, these industries offer lessons from the world’s wealthiest.
Tech and AI: Where Innovation Pays Off
Tech billionaires often began as coders or engineers, proving that technical skills can scale into global empires.
Elon Musk
- Net worth: $342 billion
- Sources of wealth: Tesla, SpaceX and xAI
Musk coded the video game Blastar from his bedroom in South Africa at age 12, which he sold for $500.
Mark Zuckerberg
- Net worth: $216 billion
- Source of wealth: Meta/Facebook
Zuckerberg designed early chat applications from his family home in DobbsFerry, New York, and later launched Facebook from his dorm room at Harvard.
Larry Ellison
- Net worth: $192 billion
- Source of wealth: Oracle
Ellison started his career at Ampex Corporation as a software programmer. There, he built a CIA database named “Oracle,” which inspired his company’s name.
Larry Page & Sergey Brin
- Net worth: $144 billion
- Source of wealth: Google
Page and Brin were computer science Ph.D. students at Stanford University who turned their research project into a new way to explore the mathematical properties of the internet. This eventually led to their positions at Google.
Steve Ballmer
- Net worth: $118 billion
- Source of wealth: Microsoft
Ballmer began his career as an assistant brand manager at Procter & Gamble. Later, Bill Gates hired him as Microsoft’s first business manager. He succeeded Gates as the company’s president and CEO.
Jensen Huang
- Net worth: $98.7 billion
- Source of wealth: NVIDIA
Huang worked at diners and began his career at AMD as a microchip designer. At his next position at LSI Logic, he climbed the corporate ladder before co-founding NVIDIA over lunch at Denny’s.
Luxury Brands: Turning Style Into Fortune
These founders turned everyday purchases — fromclothing to perfume, handbags to makeup and skincare — into billion-dollar businesses through brand loyalty.
Bernard Arnault & Family
- Net worth: $178 billion
- Source of wealth: LVMH
Known as the “pope of fashion,” Arnault worked for his father’s real estate firm, Ferret-Savinel, before investing in luxury goods that led to his fortune.
Amancio Ortega
- Net worth: $124 billion
- Source of wealth: Zara/Inditex
Ortega left school at age 14 to work as a shop assistant in a clothing store in A Coruña, Spain, where he delivered clothing by bicycle. Today, he is one of the wealthiest clothing retailers worldwide.
Françoise Bettencourt Meyers
- Net worth: $81.6 billion
- Source of wealth: L’Oréal
Bettencourt Meyers joined the family company’s board and became president of philanthropy until her mother passed away, when she became the beauty company’s largest shareholder.
Finance: Mastering Money To Make More
Those whounderstand how money grows and how to avoid risk have become rich thanks to compound interest and value investing.
Warren Buffett
- Net worth: $154 billion
- Source of wealth: Berkshire Hathaway
Buffett started as a securities salesman and financial analyst at Graham-Newman Corporation. While working there, he discovered value investing, which has earned him roughly $150 billion over the course of his career, CNBC reported.
Jeff Bezos
- Net worth: $215 billion
- Source of wealth: Amazon
Bezos‘ first job was flipping burgers at McDonald’s in Miami as a teenager, before he learned to analyze internet business models as a hedge fund manager on Wall Street. He founded Amazon Booksellers, which eventually became a trillion-dollar company.
Energy and Telecom: Building the Backbone of Wealth
These billionaires made their fortunes by building companies in fuel, power, data and communications, necessities that consumers and businesses rely on.
Mukesh Ambani
- Net worth: $92.5 billion
- Source of wealth: Reliance Industries
Ambani’s first job after graduating from Stanford was at his father’s textile and petrochemical business. He turned his father’s company into one of the largest oil refiners and expanded it to include gas and telecom, CNBC reported.
Carlos Slim Helú & Family
- Net worth: $82.5 billion
- Source of wealth: América Móvil
The Mexican entrepreneur started as a stockbroker in Mexico City. By investing profits in undervalued companies, he expanded his conglomerate, Grupo Carso, SA de CV, acquiring holdings in Latin America’s largest telecom company, as well as in construction, mining, real estate and consumer goods.
While luck and timing play a role, these industries show where ambition and skill can lead to extraordinary success.
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