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It's common among seasoned entrepreneurs that getting to the first million is the hardest, while the next million usually comes more easily.

Of course, we are talking here about the first million that comes through the establishment of companies or businesses in general, and not what comes through a sudden inheritance, marriage to a wealthy party, or the sale of real estate and land.

The hard first million full of sweat and struggle targeted by a self-made entrepreneur who starts from scratch.

All this difficulty regarding the first million, so what about the first billion?

At first glance, it seems impossible to reach the number nine zeros, and it is indeed so if it is proceeded in the traditional, aggressive way based on the intensification of work and effort.

However, it seems very possible to reach this number in record time, only if you take the unconventional winding road that no one before you has entered.

Only then, you may find the nine zeros at the end of the road in a time ranging from several months to a few years.

At least that's what happened with them!

(1, 2, 3)

Billions of quarrelsome partners

When Edward Saverin Saga enrolled at Harvard University, fate fell upon him with a colleague named "Mark Zuckerberg". Both noticed the possibility of building a limited social network for university students, and decided in 2004 to start creating this site, which they called "The Facebook".

Zuckerberg was the founder, while Edward Saverin was one of the co-founders who helped launch the site from its inception, and worked on the financial side of the project.

After only one year, Saverin was expelled from the whole project after violent problems occurred between him and the first founding team of the company, as a result of which Mark Zuckerberg froze his stake and then expelled him from the company, which was most clearly embodied in the movie “The Social Network” (The Social). Network), and some considered this particular incident - the expulsion of Saverin from the company - as the basis on which the story of the film was based.

With the advent of 2008, and only four years after the launch of the Facebook project, Mark Zuckerberg reached the world of billionaires, and was included in Forbes in the list of billionaires.

Ten years after entering the first billion club, and by the year 2018, Zuckerberg's fortune is estimated at $65 billion.

As for the expelled partner Saverin, who did not actually work at Facebook for more than a year, but continued to own a very small stake in the company, this share, which translated to a billion dollars by 2010, rose to 9 billion dollars by 2018. A huge fortune he made by joining him To found an unknown startup company during university in 2004, and he did not last for more than one year!

(4, 5, 6)

A billion often comes with acquisitions

The famous American businessman "Mark Cuban", who became famous with the launch of the entrepreneurial competition program "Shark Tank" several years ago, had a long history in the world of business and entrepreneurship dating back to the eighties, after working in a group of simple professions. , which ended with the establishment of the company "Micro solutions", which he later sold for several million.

Cuban entered the world of millionaires early, but did not reach nine zeros until 1999, when Yahoo!

- which was completely dominating the Internet world at that time - by acquiring his company "Broadcast.com", which he founded in the mid-nineties to take advantage of the rapid growth of the spider network.

"Hey ho!"

She bought his company in a very large deal estimated at $ 5.7 billion, which led to him entering the world of billionaires from its widest doors in that period, with a net profit exceeding one and a half billion dollars in that period.

This deal - Yahoo's acquisition of Broadcast at the end of the 1990s - was the largest acquisition by Yahoo in its history, and the funny thing is that "Yahoo!"

itself was sold entirely to Verizon for $4.8 billion in 2017, less than one of its deals in the 1990s.

(1, 2, 7)

Only 3 years to reach a billion

When American entrepreneur Evan Spiegel and his partner Bobby Murphy started their startup "Snap Chat" in 2011, this application was based on a simple idea of ​​exchanging photos and clips that could disappear from the recipient's device and from the application's private servers as well after a period.

It did not take more than two years, until billions began knocking on the doors of the two partners with the largest possible offers.

In 2013, Facebook made an offer to acquire the company worth 3 billion dollars, but the offer was rejected by the founders, considering that the value of the application is much more than that.

Soon after, Google made a larger takeover offer of $4 billion, but it was also turned down.

With the advent of 2014, Snapchat had expanded significantly globally, making the value of the shares owned by the two partners enter the billionaire club after only 3 years of working on the application, and their wealth escalated to reach the ceiling of three billion dollars during 2018. (8, 9)

The beginning of billions comes through a broken laser pointer

When the French-born Iranian-born American entrepreneur Pierre Omidyar turned 28, and with the whole world rushing to establish digital companies that depend on the growing Internet service at the time, he decided to launch eBay in 1995 to provide a way to buy and sell Online.

The first product sold through the site was a cheap broken laser pointer.

Three years after this moment, and with the advent of the year 1998, the company was transformed into a public company in the stock market at a price of $18 per share, bringing the price after only 3 months to $300, turning “eBay” into one of the largest technology companies in the Internet world, and Pierre entered Omidyar quickly became a billionaire after working for only 3 years.

Today, Omidyar's fortune is about 11 billion dollars, and he occupies his permanent place in the list of the world's richest people annually.

(10, 11)

A billion four years later, and countless billions later

In the year 1994, the employee with a distinguished banking and investment career, "Jeff Bezos", decided to give up his comfortable job, and start himself in establishing a start-up company, taking advantage of the massive activity to exploit the Internet, which was expanding rapidly annually in that period.

His project was very simple, which was to create an online bookstore called "Amazon.com".

Several years later, and specifically 4 years after the moment of launching the online store, and with the advent of 1998, Jeff Bezos was booking his place in the Forbes list of the world’s billionaires with a fortune estimated at about one billion dollars, although the name “Amazon” was hardly considered a player in that period. As big as it happened in the following years.

Entering the new millennium, Amazon has expanded tremendously beyond selling books and turning into the largest online retail store in the world, and the first and largest monopoly of this industry globally, as it acquired dozens of regional companies working in the field of electronic sales.

In 2018, Jeff Bezos' fortune increased to $ 164 billion, a figure that makes him not only the world's richest person today, but also the richest person in history.

(12, 13)

The fastest billionaire in history

American investor Jay S Walker is perhaps the fastest person to join the billionaire club in a record time estimated at only one year.

Over the course of several years, Jay Walker established several companies in different fields and achieved remarkable successes, but the major leap he made was through the establishment of the "Priceline.com" website, which specializes in tourism services and provides low prices for tickets and hotels.

The site was launched in 1998, and it was providing a new and different service at that time.

Only 3 months after the launch of the site, the site was able to secure buying and selling operations in huge numbers, which made the company in 1999 turn into a public company, and Jay Walker's wealth jumped by record to exceed one billion dollars in a period that did not exceed one year only.

However, Jay Walker's presence in the list of billionaires did not last for a very short time. After the company became a public company, "Priceline" also collapsed along with a large number of technology companies at the time in the so-called "dot com burst" Which led to the downfall of many companies.

In the year 2000, Jay Walker gave up his position in the company, and later sold his shares in it for $ 425 million, which brought him back to the world of hundreds of millions and not billionaires.

(1, 2, 14) 

In the end, the models mentioned in this report may confirm the fact that hard effort and continuous work may allow you to reach the first million after many years.

But this effort will not allow you to reach millions - not to mention billions - unless it turns from a daily routine effort to unconventional innovations that take your company hundreds of steps forward, and generate huge money for you with minimal effort and in the least possible time as well.