recently expanded to Australia<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
8. Yusaku Maezawa \u2013 $1 billion<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n
Maezawa has had an interesting path to the top. Formerly the member of a Japanese punk band, he discovered a lucrative sideline in selling CDs at his band\u2019s gigs. This then developed into his own mail order business, called Start Today.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
His next leap was the most profitable. In 2004, he started up Zozotown, which caters for fashion-conscious shoppers. The website resembles an actual shopping mall, with retailers setting up stores and selling on consignment.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The business was subsequently floated, with Maezawa owning 59%. Sales have grown on average by 50% in the last five years, thanks to an army of 2.3 million subscribers, with pre-tax profit standing at $US54.6 million. Maezawa is reportedly plotting a play for older customers via an alliance with Yahoo Japan.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
9. Mark Pincus \u2013 $1 billion<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n
To some, Farmville is an inane, intensely irritating game. Tell that to Mark Pincus, the billionaire founder of Zynga, which makes Farmville \u2013 a game that has snared more than 60 million addicts worldwide.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Pincus founded Zynga in 2007, naming the company after his late bulldog. He has since hitched his wagon to the rise of Facebook, with Zynga\u2019s games, which also include FrontierVille and Mafia Wars, reaching 250 million consumers.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Following a round of funding, Zynga has been valued between $7 billion and $10 billion. Not that the start-up journey was completely smooth sailing for Pincus.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In 2009, he told TechCrunch: \u201cI knew that i wanted to control my destiny, so I knew I needed revenues, right, fucking, now. Like I needed revenues now.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I funded the company myself, but I did every horrible thing in the book to just to get revenues right away. I mean we gave our users poker chips if they downloaded this Zwinky toolbar which was like, I don\u2019t know, I downloaded it once and couldn\u2019t get rid of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
10. Oleg Bakhmatyuk \u2013 $1 billion<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n
As glorious proof that modern-day start-ups don\u2019t have to rely on dazzling online applications for fast growth, Ukrainian entrepreneur Bakhmatyuk has built his fortune upon the humble egg.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Cashing in on Ukraine\u2019s status as the \u2018breadbasket of Europe\u2019, Bakhmatyuk founded egg producer Avangardco in 2003. He floated a 20% stake in the company in June last year, a move that valued the company at $US1 billion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
6. Sean Parker \u2013 $1.6 billion Perhaps surprisingly for such a well-known entrepreneur who founded Napster back in 1999,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59252,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,23,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44426"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}