Timing, luck or talent – what makes a billionaire?

What do an Italian communist student studying mime, a kid who loves to catch balls, and a comedian who can’t tell jokes about anything have in common?

They all become members of a carefully selected global club.

Miuccia Prada, Tiger Woods and Jerry Seinfeld are among the roughly 2,800 people on the planet who are US dollar billionaires.

But the list of super-rich people is very diverse around the world.

According to the American media company Forbes, which tracks the fortunes of the world’s richest people, the United States has 813 billionaires, China (including Hong Kong) is second with 473 billionaires and India is third with 200 billionaires.

Good and bad billionaire

The BBC World Service’s Good Bad Billionaire podcast is back. From celebrities and CEOs to sports stars and tech moguls, each episode looks at how some of the world’s billionaires made their fortunes. Hosts Simon Jack and Zing Tsjeng examine their wealth, power, philanthropy and legacy, and whether they think they’re good, bad or just incredibly rich.

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The scale of these assets can be hard to comprehend. A billion is a huge number – to put the scale into perspective, a million seconds is 11 days, but a billion is 32 years.

And for some, the existence of billionaires is embarrassing.

The world’s eighty-one richest people – the equivalent of a bus – have more wealth than the world’s four billion poorest people.

In its 2023 inequality report, Oxfam concluded: “Every billionaire is a policy mistake. The existence of booming billionaires and record profits, while most people face austerity, rising poverty and a cost of living crisis, is evidence of an economic system that is not working for humanity.”

Such inequality has led to calls in many countries for a tax on wealth rather than income. In the US, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren has proposed a 2% tax on wealth above $50m (£39m) and a 3% tax on wealth above $1bn (£778m).

But others argue that the prospect of wealth will inspire creativity and innovation that will improve the lives of millions.

American economist Michael Strain argues that we need more billionaires, not fewer, and cites Nobel laureate William Nordhaus, who found that about 2% of the profits from technological innovation go to founders and inventors – the rest goes to society.

Strain calls billionaires “self-made innovators who have changed the way we live.” He cites examples like Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer revolutionizing personal computing, legendary investor Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos disrupting retail, and Elon Musk disrupting the auto and space industries.

“None of these are ‘policy failures,’” he concluded. “Rather than wishing they didn’t exist, we should be glad they do.”

Many billionaires also donate large sums of money to charity. Gates and Buffett developed “The Giving Pledge” – a commitment to give away more than half of their wealth during their lifetime.

Rapper, business mogul and billionaire Jay-Z, though not a member of the pledge, offered this succinct defense of his wealth: “I couldn’t help poor people if I were one of them. So I got rich and gave back. To me, it’s a win-win.”

Billionaires didn’t get rich by accident. Their success also tells us something about ourselves.

It’s hard to become extremely wealthy if you don’t provide something people need, want, or like.

Whether it’s Prada’s minimalist style, the Star Wars franchise, or TikTok, the billionaires we discuss on the podcast have changed the world in some way or another — and the stories of how they did it are fascinating.

For example, the founders of Google tried to sell the first version of their search engine for $1 million but found no buyers. Today, Google is worth $2.3 trillion and co-founder Sergey Brin is personally worth $135 billion – roughly the GDP of Morocco.

Maria Bianchi was a communist party member in Italy in the 1960s, studying mime at a theater school before changing her name to Miuccia Prada.

India’s first self-made female billionaire, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, started her career as a brewer before facing gender stereotypes and trying her hand at pharmaceuticals, becoming Asia’s largest insulin maker.

Jerry Seinfeld’s parents were both orphans, and his father never hugged him. Perhaps that’s one reason he and Larry David had a rule for the characters on their hit comedy Seinfeld: “No hugging and no learning.”

The individual successes of these billionaires often reflect broader historical, political, or technological trends.

Tech entrepreneur Jack Ma, co-founder of Alibaba Group, is the beneficiary of two powerful and simultaneous forces – the rise of online retail and China’s rising economic power and wealth.

Chuck Feeney, the man who invented duty-free shopping (and gave away all his assets) created a wave of Japanese overseas tourism after World War II.

There are stories where luck plays an important role.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates happened to go to one of the few schools in the US in the late 1960s that had computers, while singer and entrepreneur Rihanna got her big break thanks to a chance audition with a record producer who happened to be on vacation in Barbados.

And let’s listen to what parents have to say.

Taylor Swift’s entire family moved from Pennsylvania to Nashville to further their teenage daughter’s career while Michael Jordan’s mother suggested he should “listen to what Nike has to say” before signing with Adidas or Converse – paving the way for the most lucrative sports endorsement deal in history.

There are a number of “sliding doors” moments in these stories — small events that, in retrospect, changed the lives and fortunes of these billionaires.

But when the doors open, you have to walk through them, and if there is one thing they have in common, it is the energy, drive and commitment that these people have brought to their respective fields of study. Plus the desire to keep going, when many would have given up long ago.

My Good Bad Billionaire co-host Zing Tsjeng and I always joke that when we make $10 million, you won’t see us losing any money – just two swivel chairs as evidence that I went fishing and she went to another music festival.

I guess people like us will never succeed but we have been fascinated, fascinated, moved, terrified and scared by those who have succeeded.