Wow, its nice to see something I've strategized for years articulated well. While I would like a larger dataset, and mostly focus on the non-billionares in my more reasonable target wealth, it generally matches my analysis.<p>"Roughly 3/4 by starting companies and 1/4 by investing."<p>Some people have given me a hard time for not being too attached to companies, especially startups, but one of the things I've learned by seeing the internals of hundreds of companies, both as a contractor and as an employee, is that there are so many lessons to be learned at the business level <i>if you learn how to pay attention and think about those problems</i>. I found that as a sysadmin I was around these kinds of discussions a lot, but that other sysadmins just tuned most of it out. Instead I exploited the fact that so many C's viewed me as a "janitor", and soaked up the knowledge about what to do right and what not to do... and I continue to do so.<p>Now, I finally got my foot in the door in finance, and my two main strategies match (starting a business and investing).<p>"There were no fund managers among the 100 richest Americans in 1982. Hedge funds and private equity firms existed in 1982, but none of their founders were rich enough yet to make it into the top 100. Two things changed: fund managers discovered new ways to generate high returns, and more investors were willing to trust them with their money."<p>This is because put options weren't even a thing until, what, 1977, and more complicated options weren't removed from the moratorium until 1980. It was a very new field even for the existing hedge fund managers.<p>"of the 73 new fortunes in 2020, 4 were due to real estate and only 2 to oil."<p>Again, this is a very limited dataset, especially as someone who has been inside at least one oil boom, with family in the industry. I've seen quite a few many-millionares created by oil, they just don't show up in the forbes lists. They are still extremely wealthy, of course it's very sad to see so many of them piss it all away on hookers drugs trucks and houses, only to end up destitute when the bust cycle hits... (and a little infuriating)<p>The real crux is in defining the word "rich" it seems. To me, building up enough that I can retire early and live off my investements without penny pinching to much is "rich". I only need a few mil for that, and it's achieveable. To others, especially with high expenses because they live in places like SV/NY, their required "rich" is many more millions.