Comments on: What Billionaires Have In Common

By: Mizz

Mizz — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:01:14 +0000

The most people are born in September, but the general population doesn’t have a ratio of 40/300 born in September. It’s a telling statistical characteristic of the billionaire group. Also, the ‘dropout’ thing is misleading. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were from highly educated and wealthy families, and both were destined to attend high-tier colleges, but dropped out when they saw the fortune to be made. It wasn’t like they were just clueless and unable to attend college for grades or money. A far greater opportunity pulled them aside. Their parents and schools hooked them up with thousands of hours of computer time, which was prohibitively expensive in those days. But their parents and they saw that it was an inevitable wave of the future, so they bought their kids computer time. Not that ‘any idiot’ could do the same, but it’s not that they were exceptional that made them exceptionally successful. It’s the exceptions that were made for them. If their parents had sponsored a dozen other kids to get 10,000 hours of computer time, those dozen people would probably be wealthy today.

By: idani27

idani27 — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 19:53:03 +0000

Does it mean that Australia (and other Southern hemisphere countries) have most of its population born in March?!?

By: marlene

marlene — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 10:14:21 +0000

I wonder what their religion is, or are they too arrogant to believe in the Almighty?

By: Hoax

Hoax — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 15:58:41 +0000

Who taught the author statistics? 8 of 68 worked at Goldman/Sachs–So what. I’ll bet 90% ate grilled cheese as a kid. Seems just as plausible that dairy is the source of their success.

By: Yonk

Yonk — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 05:33:57 +0000

How about flipping the script, and saying that you need college to become a “self made american mogul” …”according to forbes magazine 80% of billionaire moguls graduated college”
seems like much more startling a statistic eh?

By: Susan

Susan — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 01:48:32 +0000

Funny how they mention that a lot of them dropped out of college, and yet “Got an MBA from a top-tier school” is also on the list…

By: Johnny Cat

Johnny Cat — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 01:41:03 +0000

Ah, Miss C beat me to it. But I’ll add that new year’s is a factor, too.

By: Lauch

Lauch — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 01:25:06 +0000

Check out Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliars” for a bunch of interesting facts about billionaires and normal folks who are successful. Most pro hockey players, for example, are born in the first three months of the year.

Well worth the read!

By: Miss Cellania

Miss Cellania — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 01:07:52 +0000

More people are born in September than any other month. You’d probably find the same stats with a non-billionaire population. After all, it’s COLD in January!