What are famous business minds investing in?

When we think of investments, we normally think of real estate, stocks, shares and bonds. These might be classically sound investments and a safe place to store and maintain your wealth, but are they going to make you wealthy? When we look at the world’s new generation of billionaires, hardly any of them became rich playing the stock market. So, the question is, where are famous business people making and investing their money?

How do you get that rich? 

First of all, most modern billionaires have built their wealth as entrepreneurs.

1.   Jeff Bezos / Amazon

2.   Bill Gates / Microsoft

3.   Mark Zuckerberg / Facebook

4.   Larry Page & Sergey Brin / Google

5.   Steve Jobs / Apple

Of all the above names, what do these businessmen have in common? They're all entrepreneurs that saw the potential on how to utilise technology to revolutionise our daily lives. They then worked hard to build out their dream and create their own business empires.

According to Forbes, over 70% of their rich list are now self-made. Of the world’s ten richest individuals, only Warren Buffett became wealthy by investing in stocks. Although he’s not a typical stock market investor. For Buffet, stocks are simply a vehicle to make large investments in companies with big potential.

The Wealth Elite, conducted an interview study with 45 German multi-millionaires who all had net worth’s of between ten million to several billion dollars. They concluded all were actually self-made entrepreneurs. Not a single person interviewed had built their wealth with stocks. As an asset class, stocks are a great way to stay rich and together with real estate, they should be the major building blocks of any investment portfolio.

The biggest names in the business and their investments you probably didn’t know about:

It’s not just entrepreneurs making millions from tech start-ups. Many high-profile celebrities have started their own Venture Capital firms which have proven to be highly lucrative - turning actors and musicians into highly successful business people in their own right.

Ashton Kutcher

Actor and film producer Ashton Kutcher is known as one of the top Silicon Valley investors, having invested in numerous companies through his venture capital firm A-Grade Investments. Within a mere seven years of starting the firm, he and his co-founder turned a $30 million fund into $250 million. Some of their top ventures? Early-stage investments in companies like Uber, Airbnb, Warby Parker, and even Houzz. The former MTV host of Punk’d is no longer kidding around with his $200 million net worth.

Bono

Turns out the famous U2 frontman didn’t make all his money from music. As with all of the other celebs on this list, Bono was able to amount his $700 million plus fortune through a series of smart investments. The most notable is his 2009 investment in Facebook.  

Along with the other founding investors of Elevation Partners, the rock-star bought a 2.3% share of the social media giant for $86 million — which grew to be worth about $1.4 billion. Although that sounds like a pretty solid return-on-investment, it didn’t make him quite as rich as the media originally believed. Those returns were shared among the Elevation Partner founders, earning Bono about $43 million in profits.

Oprah Winfrey

Remember when we all thought Oprah was taking over the world? Well, she kind of did, especially when it came to her investments. Oprah’s made a lot of smart investments over the course of her career, but the best was an investment into Weight Watchers in 2015. She invested $43 million in the weight loss company at $7 per share. Her fortune boomed nine-fold when the stocks soared to $101 per share. This turned out to be a gain of about $427 million. Savvy moves like this have allowed Oprah to amount a net worth of more than $2.5 billion.


Justin Bieber

Justin Bieber isn’t only stacking cash from his super successful music career, fragrance, and clothing brands. He’s also been a successfully investing for years, working with a business manager to make key investments in companies like Spotify, Liquid I.V., and Stamped. All of those timely decisions seemed to have paid off, as the 27-year-old is reportedly worth $300 million.

Jessica Alba

The actress known for her roles in the, “Fantastic Four” and “Sin City” has also been active in the business world. In addition to founding her household product company, Honest Co., in 2011, Alba has also made investments in start-ups like Headspace and Managed by Q. Her company most recently received a $200 million-dollar investment from L Catterton. Her net worth is on the rise and it valued at $200 million.

Beyonce

The former Destiny Child’s star turned worldwide pop icon knows how to swing it when it comes to investing — which makes sense, considering she’s worth an estimated $400 million. One of her strategies? Using her own brand to diversify her investment portfolio. An example of this was in 2015, when she told Uber she wanted equity in the company rather than cash as compensation for performing at a Las Vegas corporate event. When Uber went public in 2019, her stock was valued at roughly $9 million – and that’s just the beginning of the road.

Jay-Z

Queen Bey is just one-half of the equation when it comes to the financial success of the Knowles-Carter family. Jay-Z has also made some pretty impressive investments over the years, all of which have led him to an estimated net worth of $1 billion.

So, how did Shawn Carter get to become “hip-hop’s first billionaire?” With a lot of mixed ventures, hard work and smart investments. Since launching his champagne business, Armand de Brignac in 2007, the company has steadily grown to be valued at more than $300 million. He also launched a music streaming service called TIDAL in 2014, which is now worth $100 million. But by far Carter’s most impressive investment has to be the Uber stock he purchased for $2 million that’s now worth an estimated $70 million.

Elon Musk

Elon Musk along with his company, Tesla Motors are the latest edition to the world of cryptocurrency, in particular with Bitcoin. Musk recently announced on Twitter that his company had purchased $1.5 billion in Bitcoin, which is one of the biggest investments in cryptocurrency history. His announcement sent Bitcoin into an upward frenzy and according to CNBC, the company rapidly made over $1 billion in profits. Furthermore, it’s was reported at the B Word cryptocurrency conference, Musk admitted that Tesla would most likely resume accepting the digital currency as payment for their e-cars.

Other big names publicly linked to Bitcoin are Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Paris Hilton, Gwyneth Paltrow, Bill Gates, Serena Williams, Floyd Mayweather, Kanye West, and Mike Tyson. 

The evidence is stacked - anyone who wants to get filthy rich, the choice is clear: become an entrepreneur. If that’s out of the question, you can always put your money behind a tech company and try ride the coat-tails of their success. But as always – know the risks, and invest only what you can afford to lose.