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In Forbes (worldwide) Billionaires list, in the top 500 positions (#1-490, due to tied positions), the U.S. had 167 billionaires (those who are American citizens) or about 33%.

In Forbes’ Mar 2013 Billionaires list, the United States has 167 citizens in the top 500 positions (ranking #1-490, due to ties). So about 33% of the top 500 billionaires are Americans. An even smaller number are tech startups. Here are the number of billionaires by company for a selection of recent or one-time tech startups — from the Forbes top 500:

  • 1 – Amazon.com: Jeff Bezos (rank #19, $25.2B)
  • 1 – Apple.com: Laurene Powell Jobs and family (rank #98, $10.7B: partial fortune from Disney)
  • 1 – Dell: Michael Dell (rank #49, $15.3B)
  • 2 – Ebay: Pierre Omidyar (rank #123, $8.7B), Jeffrey Skoll (rank #363, $3.7B)
  • 3 – Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg (rank #66, $13.3B), Dustin Moskovitz (rank #353, $3.8B). An additional 4 Facebook billionaires ranked beyond 500 (see note #4, below).
  • 3 – Google: Larry Page (rank #20, $23B), Sergey Brin (rank #21, $22.8B), Eric Schmidt (rank #58, $8.2B). An additional 3 Google billionaires ranked beyond #500 (see note #5, below).
  • 1 – LinkedIn: Reid Hoffman (rank #437, $3.1B)
  • 3 – Microsoft: Bill Gates (rank 2, $67B), Steve Ballmer (rank 51, $15.2B), Paul Allen (rank 53, $15B: fortune partly from investments)
  • 1 – Oracle: Larry Ellison (rank 5, $43B)

Notes:

  1. Ranking #s above are from the full worldwide Billionaires list, with net worth calculated by Forbes in Mar 2013.
  2. Microsoft and Oracle haven’t been startups in decades, but are included for reference.
  3. There are additional American “tech” billionaires in the full Forbes list from previous decades.
  4. There are 4 additional billionaires associated with Facebook: Eduardo Saverin (rank #670, $2.2B); Sean Parker (rank #736, $2B: fortune from other sources as well); Peter Thiel, Facebook’s first outside investor, ranked #931 ($1.6B – part of which may be from his stake in co-founding PayPal); Jim Breyer, another investor, was ranked #1175 ($1.2B – part of which is his from his venture capital investments elsewhere).
  5. There are 3 additional billionaires associated with Google beyond ranking #490 — all early investors: Andreas von Bechtolsheim (rank #503, $2.8B), David Cheriton (rank #882, $1.7B), Kavitark Ram Shriram (rank #922, $1.65B).
  6. According to the Forbes Billionaires list, there were 1426 people listed in total.
  7. 29 of the 1426 people (about 2%) were under 40 at the time.
  8. 10 of the 29 are in technology, which includes 4 from Facebook alone.
  9. 11 of the 29 are Americans.
  10. 5 of the 29 are first-time billionaires.

GOOGLE VS FACEBOOK VS TWITTER

Facebook and Twitter are two of the more notable recent tech startups to go public, with Google going public nearly 10 years previous. Here are some numbers on the collective wealth of these companies.

Google

  • Google started trading on Aug 19, 2004, with an IPO share price of $85, but opened at $100.
  • Estimates suggested that upon the IPO, at least 1,000 Google employees would become millionaires on paper. Further estimates suggest more than 1,000 employees have since become millionaires.
  • YouTube, which was purchased on Nov 13, 2006 by Google for $1.65B, made its founders millionaires, along with a few other employees, at least on paper, since the deal was all-stock only.
  • Co-founder Chad Hurley’s stake was estimated to have been worth $345.6M (694,087 Google shares, plus 41,232 shares in trust), based on a market price on of $470.01 on the day of Google’s SEC filing (Feb 7, 2007).
  • Co-founder Steve Chen’s stake (625,366 shares, plus 68,721 in trust) ended up worth $326.2M that day.
  • Co-founder Jawed Karim’s stake (137,443 shares) was worth $64.6M that day.
  • At least 24 YouTube employees received Google shares, with at least 2 becoming multi-millionaires — including YouTube’s spokeswoman, Julie Supan, who got 10,308 shares ($4.845M), and YouTube interface designer Christina Broadbeck, who got 18,898 shares ($8.882M)
  • Several members of Steve Chen’s family and Chad Hurley’s family received shares, with the lowest value making them at least $3.23M richer, on paper.

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