While tech dominates the list, with founders of such corporate giants as Microsoft, Google and Facebook all featuring, investment and retail are also present.
What sets these billionaires aside from other entrepreneurs is an elite-level business focus. From starting out in bedrooms and garages to world domination they have relentlessly grown businesses into global giants.
Billionaire mentality
Imagining how you would spend their fortune is an interesting notion. Philanthropy? A small island and a fleet of private jets? A never-ending holiday? Good causes?
Spending the money – whether imaginary or actual – might be a job in itself, but first it must be earned. What are the lessons every executive can learn from the world’s richest billiionaires?
In their own words and from careers spent building immense fortunes, these are the business secrets of the world’s richest people.
Elon Musk — CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and X
Fortune: $386bn
Business hack: Musk has built his empire by tackling industries most believed were impossible to disrupt — space travel, electric cars, and even social media. He is famous for setting audacious goals and then iterating rapidly, often launching products before they’re fully polished in order to learn faster than rivals. His philosophy is that speed of execution beats perfection.
Signature move: Launching bold, unfinished products to accelerate learning and outpace competitors.
Follow their lead: Executives can adapt Musk’s method by setting stretch goals and then prioritising speed over perfection. This means launching pilot projects, gathering feedback in real time, and continuously iterating. Musk proves that being first to market with courage and agility often outweighs waiting for the “perfect” product.
Priceless advice: “Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”
Larry Ellison — Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Oracle
Fortune: $386bn
Business hack: Ellison turned Oracle into a global powerhouse by being relentlessly aggressive in both sales and acquisitions. He combined technological foresight — betting on databases when few understood their potential — with a bold approach to competition, often outspending or outmanoeuvring rivals. His style shows that calculated aggression can drive massive scale.
Signature move: Using bold acquisitions and fierce sales tactics to dominate markets.
Follow their lead: Executives can learn from Ellison that growth often requires boldness rather than incremental steps. Don’t be afraid to buy, merge, or aggressively expand when opportunities arise. Playing it safe rarely reshapes an industry — decisive moves do.
Priceless advice: “If you do everything that everyone else does in business, you’re going to lose. The only way to really get ahead is to be different.”
Mark Zuckerberg — Co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Meta
Fortune: $264bn
Business hack: Zuckerberg has repeatedly bet the entire company on the future. From pivoting Facebook to mobile in the early 2010s, to acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp before rivals understood their potential, and now steering Meta into an AI and metaverse powerhouse, he has shown a willingness to make risky, long-term plays that redefine the business. His success shows that conviction and timing can be more powerful than caution.
Signature move: Making bold, company-defining pivots before the market catches up.
Follow their lead: Executives can learn from Zuckerberg that waiting for certainty often means arriving too late. Strategic acquisitions, platform shifts, or entering new markets ahead of competitors can feel uncomfortable, but they create defensible advantages. The lesson is to move fast, take calculated risks, and trust a long-term vision.
Priceless advice: “In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”
Jeff Bezos — Founder of Amazon and Blue Origin
Fortune: $253bn
Business hack: Bezos turned Amazon from an online bookstore into the world’s largest retailer by making customer obsession the company’s guiding principle. He prioritised long-term growth over short-term profits, reinvesting heavily in logistics, technology, and infrastructure. His willingness to delay gratification gave Amazon the scale and efficiency competitors couldn’t match.
Signature move: Reinvesting profits to prioritise long-term growth over quarterly results.
Follow their lead: Executives can apply Bezos’s thinking by refusing to sacrifice customer trust for short-term gains. This means committing resources to infrastructure, service quality, and user experience — even when immediate profits suffer. The result is a durable competitive moat built on loyalty and scale.
Priceless advice: “We’re not competitor obsessed, we’re customer obsessed. We start with the customer and we work backwards.”
Larry Page — Co-founder of Google and former CEO of Alphabet
Fortune: $206bn
Business hack: Page built Google into a tech giant by pushing beyond incremental improvements and chasing moonshots. From early search algorithms to projects like self-driving cars and AI research, his philosophy has been to think 10x bigger rather than 10 per cent better. Page believes transformative growth comes from pursuing bold ideas others avoid.
Signature move: Pursuing moonshots that redefine industries rather than settling for incremental progress.
Follow their lead: Executives can adopt Page’s mindset by asking what would make their industry obsolete — and then building toward that future. Incremental gains are easy for competitors to copy, but step-change innovations create enduring advantage. Dedicate resources to high-risk, high-reward projects that could unlock exponential growth.
Priceless advice: “You don’t need to have a 100-person company to develop that idea.”
Sergey Brin — Co-founder of Google and former President of Alphabet
Fortune: $193bn
Business hack: Brin helped shape Google’s culture of curiosity and innovation by encouraging experimentation across products and platforms. From search to Google X’s “moonshot factory,” he championed an environment where asking impossible questions was as important as delivering immediate results. His leadership proved that curiosity, when paired with resources, can generate world-changing innovation.
Signature move: Creating a culture where experimentation and curiosity drive breakthrough innovation.
Follow their lead: Executives can follow Brin’s example by fostering a workplace where exploration is rewarded, not punished. Allow teams to run bold experiments, even when failure is likely. By encouraging curiosity-driven innovation, leaders unlock fresh solutions and prepare their organisations for future shifts.
Priceless advice: “Solving big problems is easier than solving little problems.”
Steve Ballmer — Former CEO of Microsoft and Owner of the LA Clippers
Fortune: $170bn
Business hack: Ballmer is known for his boundless energy and operational drive. At Microsoft, he focused on execution, scaling the company’s revenues by relentlessly pushing enterprise software sales and aggressive expansion. After leaving Microsoft, he reinvented himself as a sports mogul, showing that adaptability and energy can carry across industries.
Signature move: Driving growth through energy, execution, and sales intensity.
Follow their lead: Executives can learn from Ballmer that strategy means little without execution. Create a culture of energy and accountability, where teams are motivated to deliver results consistently. Harness enthusiasm as a leadership tool — momentum builds when employees see leaders pushing with conviction and stamina.
Priceless advice: “All companies of any size have to continue to push to make sure you get the right leaders, the right team, the right people to be fast acting, and fast moving in the marketplace”
Bernard Arnault — Chairman and CEO of LVMH
Fortune: $164bn
Business hack: Arnault built LVMH into the world’s dominant luxury group by acquiring heritage brands like Dior, Louis Vuitton, and Dom Pérignon, then modernising them without sacrificing exclusivity. His genius lies in balancing tradition with innovation — preserving each brand’s story while expanding its reach. Crucially, he has often made acquisitions during downturns, proving that bold moves in uncertain times can define an empire.
Signature move: Acquiring heritage brands and scaling them while preserving prestige.
Follow their lead: Executives can learn from Arnault by recognising the value of brand equity and storytelling. Protecting your company’s core identity while investing in innovation builds resilience and pricing power. In practice, this means doubling down on strengths during crises, and seeking growth when competitors retreat.
Priceless advice: “In the luxury business, you have to build on heritage.”
Warren Buffett — Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway
Fortune: $150bn
Business hack: Buffett became one of history’s greatest investors by sticking to value investing: buying strong companies at fair prices and holding them for decades. He avoids trends he doesn’t understand and focuses on fundamentals like cash flow and management quality. By resisting hype cycles, he has compounded wealth consistently for more than 60 years.
Signature move: Patience — holding long-term investments while others chase short-term gains.
Follow their lead: Executives can borrow Buffett’s discipline by focusing on fundamentals instead of noise. Build strategies that endure beyond quarterly targets, and concentrate on areas where you have true expertise. Success compounds over time when you choose wisely and avoid constant pivots.
Priceless advice: “Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.”
Jensen Huang — Co-founder and CEO of Nvidia
Fortune: $146bn
Business hack: Huang transformed Nvidia from a niche graphics card maker into the backbone of the AI revolution. He had the foresight to see that GPUs could power not just gaming, but data centres, deep learning, and generative AI. His strategy of betting early on transformative infrastructure turned Nvidia into one of the most valuable companies in the world.
Signature move: Anticipating the AI era decades before Wall Street believed in it.
Follow their lead: Executives can learn from Huang that the biggest opportunities often lie in overlooked infrastructure. Anticipate how shifts in technology will reshape demand, and position your business to become indispensable when the wave hits. Betting early on foundational technologies can create trillion-dollar enterprises.
Priceless advice: “Our company is 30 years in the making. Overnight success takes a long time.”
Billionaire business hacks
From Silicon Valley to Paris, the strategies of the $2.2tn club offer lessons that resonate in Dubai, Riyadh, and across the GCC.
Vision-led growth, bold investments, and patient execution are the same qualities driving the region’s transformation.
For Middle East executives, these billionaire secrets are not just inspiration — they are a roadmap for competing on the world stage.
