#18 Millionaires, billionaires, and the myth of self - made

This newsletter was born out of curiosity for the things I have always been interested in learning about but was lazy or procrastinated to explore.

A few years ago, (I don’t remember the year), but the American business magazine Forbes faced heavy backslash for announcing Kylie Jenner as the “youngest self-made billionaire”.

Back then, I didn’t care enough to learn about what exactly it means to be a billionaire or a self-made person. Who do you classify as self - made?

So, when Deepinder Goyal, the founder and CEO of Zomato, recently joined the billionaire club, my curiosity was revived. I wasn’t lazy this time around.

In this edition, I want to touch upon three key words: millionaire, billionaire, and self-made.

Starting off easy, a millionaire is, by definition, someone whose net worth is equal to or more than one million units of a currency.

For reference, 1 million = 1,000,000 (10,00,000 in Indian place value system)

Now obviously, when we put the actual currency in front of it, 1 million USD is definitely not equal to 1 million INR. (10 lakhs)

This is bound to create ambiguities. A millionaire in a poor country, will, most likely, be actually poor, especially when compared to millionaires in developed nations.

So, the definition, is expanded to consider only major currencies such as the US Dollar, the Pound Sterling, or the Euro.

Most net worths we see listed are always in USD. Now, millionaire is equivalent to having 1 million USD as your net worth.

Similarly, a billionaire is someone having 1 billion USD. Which is around 8372 crores INR.

Now, you must be having clarity on who is considered a millionaire.

There is another term called centi-millionaire, having their networth as USD 100 million or more.

Now, let’s talk about the term self-made. I read several definitions of self-made while researching for this post, some of which include:

“Having achieved success or recognition by your own efforts”

“Rich and successful because of your own efforts and not as a result of family money”

“Having succeeded in life unaided”

Honestly, none of these make a lot of sense to me. What exactly does succeeding unaided mean?

For this the definition of success also needs to come in the picture.

I still remember my mathematics teachers’ from 8th and 9th grades, who actually told me to get over my fear of maths. If it wasn’t for them, I probably wouldn’t have taken PCM in 11th and be studying data science today (it is still a struggle though🫠).

I still remember messaging countless people for referrals last summer, to help me land a summer internship. None of them panned out, except for one. Still I thanked everyone who took the time to help me out, when they had no obligations to.

So, when I consider myself successful, at a future stage, will I consider myself self-made?

Absolutely not. It’ll be a culmination of anyone and everyone who has helped or guided me in any way, be it personally or professionally.

But if I talk about classfying myself as self-made in terms of finances, then I’m still torn about this. I don’t know if I’ll consider myself a self - made millionaire (let’s hope billionaire 🤑)

Classifying anyone as a self-made millionaire or billionaire is a tough job. They may have made their wealth themselves, but it is definitely not unaided.

After all, our weekly Zomato orders made Deepinder Goyal a billionaire. 😝 

Here are some links if you want to read more:

What are your thoughts on this? Who would you consider a self-made person or a self-made millionaire?

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