Where are today’s richest Gen Z actually coming from?
In the early tech days, barriers to entry were much lower, which is why many young fortunes came from tech. Today, competing in tech often requires hundreds of millions, and most young “tech billionaires” seem to come from elite, already-wealthy backgrounds, so I don’t really see them as self-made.
Because of that, I think entertainment ( also the Creator Economy & Digital Entertainment ) is where genuinely meritocratic Gen Z wealth is forming now: content, music, media, etc. Barriers to entry are still low, distribution is global, and success is driven more by audience demand than access to capital. Most other industries simply take too long to scale without major backing.
Curious what others think, where do you see real, bottom-up Gen Z wealth being created today?
u are confusing cash flow with wealth.
creators are just highly paid employees of the algorithm. they own nothing. if the platform changes, their net worth hits zero.
tech is still the only game where you build true leverage. writing code costs $0.
building a saas in a dorm room is still the most efficient path to generational wealth.
don't mistake being famous for owning assets.
one is a high-paying job. the other is freedom
The most successful creators already have substantial net worths and own businesses that vastly already exceed what they make on social media
And really, social media is a high paying job and building a SaaS is freedom? Don't make me laugh
Both these paths are not the most efficient paths to wealth either, very skewed distribution of outcomes but the right tail is infinitely better than what you get elsewhere
This has never been, and never will be, true, especially today, now that all the low-hanging fruit is gone.
It's still tech and the absolute richest people (at least the publicly known/non-sovereign types) will always be from tech going forward.
I agree, but as I said, I don’t really consider them “self-made.” Just look at the recent Forbes 40 Under 40 list, almost all the tech founders were born to ultra-connected parents, attended Ivy League schools, etc. The only truly self-made ones built companies in areas like beverages or beauty ( non american also ).
IMO that's a cop out. Well you're asking for "richest" and nobody under 30 from beverages or beauty are in the same zip code as even mid-size successful tech outcomes (except that Kardashian sister and PRIME). Sure, maybe their family was worth a few million liquid because dad was a doctor or lawyer or finance bro, but if they turned that around to build a $1b+ company out of college that's an outcome you can't seriously just attribute to familial connections otherwise there would just be way more of them. Execution is a huge factor. The difference between starting from a multi-millionaire family or a normal middle class family and becoming a billionaire when measured in terms of sheer increase in wealth and other success metrics is marginal at best. You're still a sub 0.0001% outcome globally, orders of magnitude smaller if you're only looking at Gen Z.
If you seriously think starting out in a multimillionaire, ultra-connected family is the same as starting in a middle-class one, there’s literally no point arguing with you.
If you can't do basic math then you're right, there is literally no point in having this conversation. On the off chance you did pass 7th grade, maybe stick around. I'm going to guess you're Gen Z given the question and the attitude so I'll give you some grace...
There's obviously a difference in life/difficulty faced in general but that's not the question you asked so try taking your ego out of the equation for 2 seconds and think critically. These #s are obviously rough but it gives you a broad sense check for the difference. How many millionaires are out there vs how many billionaires? Google returns ~58m vs ~3k. How many of each are Gen Z? Over 340k in the US alone (let's say 500k globally for round #s) vs 30 billionaires.
There's ~8b people globally. So being a billionaire at all is ~0.00004% of the population vs ~0.7% for millionaires. ~2b are Gen Z, so being a billionaire for them is ~0.000002% vs ~0.025% for millionaires.
Even if you want to argue 90% of billionaires for Gen Z come from millionaire families (we'll use the 27 / 58m) that's ~0.00005% vs the chance for the remainder in Gen Z (we'll use 3 / [2b-58m]) is ~0.0000002%.
So sure, you're ~250x more likely to become a billionaire as a Gen Z coming from a millionaire family vs not (obv this isn't adjusting millionaire age group overlap, that richer families typically have more kids, or for middle class vs absolute poverty, all of which would MASSIVELY shrink this delta). But what does the above surface-level napkin math translate to? It's not some revelation that a millionaire is more likely to be almost anything sheerly as a result of having greater resources and therefore greater opportunity to execute on their desires. Across the board though it's still less than a 10,000th of a % for the outcome to happen at all. The magnitude of the difference for Gen Z to become a billionaire starting from a millionaire family vs not is less than 500,000ths of a %.
We're looking at literal lottery ticket math (1/300m chance of winning the Powerball = 0.0000003%) being more likely than a random person in Gen Z becoming a billionaire. To pretend that on a real % basis that coming from a millionaire family vs not magically makes it "easy" to become a billionaire is asinine. Focusing back on the 0.00005% for millionaire family to Gen Z billionaire, you are more likely to:
So, yes, you are more likely to become a billionaire if you came from a millionaire family. But there are literally tens of millions of millionaire families and still just a fraction of a fraction of 1% ever become billionaires...
And it's not as if it's ONLY tech people who have those legs up - you think the kids starting beauty, beverage, and influencer careers didn't have those EXACT SAME benefits?
Kylie Cosmetics? - Kim Kardashian's little sister
PRIME? - Paul Brothers the Disney stars
Hasan Piker? - Dad's a VP/BoD for one of Turkey's larges conglomerates
Yeah man. Real salt of the earth, blue collar backgrounds those came from...
Don’t agree I see the bifurcation amongst my friends mirroring the data - middle class kids can’t really seem to quit their high paying finance jobs bc they’d move back in with parents in bumfuck and lose the golden ticket to 1%. Friends from wealth get rent subsidy, save $0 because it doesn’t matter and will still be fine if they fail so they bother to take a swing
You think most content creators weren't??? America is broken for average Americans, so of course only the wealthy and connected are building in this environment. Foreigners are able to be more self made because the cost of inputs(land labor capital) are simply lower, making the barriers to enter lower.
It's tech. Most wealthy people in tech are people you've never heard of. They make a couple hundred million exiting some B2B SaaS to a FAANG+ company.
Are you the same guy who has been asking versions of this question every 2 days?
Definitely Tiktok / Instagram influencer. You have no idea how much they make. Successful ones make tens of millions per quarter of year for just posting videos & pics of themselves. But trust me it is very hard to be elite influencer even though it looks really effortless
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