Young people are
changing the face of the world. It’s a good thing if we see today as “the so
much anticipated” tomorrow, and start thinking like the leaders of today. Very
few of the chunk of young people are Africans, quite a number a Americans while
others cut across the world. I set out to produce a list of young people around
the world who are making dramatic impact across the globe. To achieve this, I set
out on a quest to identify and study a few of them on Forbes. Forbes is known
to produce a reliable and up-to-date list of world’s successful people and
relevant information about them.
These people represent
the entrepreneurial, innovative and intellectual best of their generation. They
make tremendous impact cut across real estate, financial services,
manufacturing, media, information technology, health care, agriculture, fashion
and academics. You definitely don’t need to be like everyone to use a common
sense. You are as good as they are, your fingers might just need to go to work.
Today I’ll
talk about 5 of them, 5 youths that are enviable
and are a challenge to the present generation.
THIS IS NO ORDER
OF PREFERENCE
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| Dustin Moskovitz |
Dustin Moskovitz
Age: 28
Net Worth: $3.8 billion
Moskovitz is the youngest billionaire in the world. Moskovitz, Mark Zuckerberg‘s former roommate, no longer works at Facebook, the social networking giant that he co-founded. A signee of Bill Gates‘ and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge, Moskovitz bikes to work, flies commercial, and pitches his own tent at Burning Man.
Net Worth: $3.8 billion
Moskovitz is the youngest billionaire in the world. Moskovitz, Mark Zuckerberg‘s former roommate, no longer works at Facebook, the social networking giant that he co-founded. A signee of Bill Gates‘ and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge, Moskovitz bikes to work, flies commercial, and pitches his own tent at Burning Man.
Ladi Delano, Nigerian
Age: 30
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| Ladi Delano |
The jet-setting Nigerian serial entrepreneur
made his first millions as a liquor entrepreneur while living in China. In
2004, at age 22, he founded Solidarnosc Asia, a Chinese alcoholic beverage
company that made Solid
XS, a premium brand of vodka. Solid XS went on to achieve over 50% market share in China
and was distributed across over 30 cities in China, and pulled in $20 million
in annual revenue. Delano subsequently sold the company to a rival liquor
company for over $15 million and ploughed his funds into his next venture-The
Delano Reid Group, a real estate investment holding company focused on mainland
China. Today, Delano is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Bakrie Delano Africa (BDA) – a $1 billion joint venture with the $15 billion (market
cap) Bakrie
Group of Indonesia.
Bakrie Delano Africa serves as the investment partner of the Bakrie Group in
Nigeria. The Indonesian conglomerate has provided over $900 million worth of
funds to invest in Nigeria and Bakrie Delano Africa is responsible for
identifying investment opportunities in mining, agriculture and oil & gas
and executing them.
 |
| Mark Shuttleworth |
Mark Shuttleworth, South African
Age: 38
When Shuttleworth was 22, he founded Thawte, a
digital certificate and internet security company which he sold to VeriSign for
$575 million in 1999, when he was 26. Shuttleworth used a fraction of his
proceeds to start HBD Capital (now called Knife Capital), a Cape
Town-based emerging markets investment fund. HBD has made a series of successful
exits including Fundamo, a mobile
financial services company which was acquired byVisa for $110 million in 2011; and csense, which
was acquired by GE Intelligent Platforms the same year. Shuttleworth also
founded and funds Ubuntu, a computer
operating system which he distributes as free open source software.
Shuttleworth has a net worth north of $500 million.
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| Justin Stanford |
Justin Stanford, South African
Age: 28
South African-born Stanford is a software
entrepreneur and venture capitalist. After dropping out off high school,
Stanford set out to launch an internet security company which flopped.
When he came across ESET, a Slovakian
anti-virus software package, he negotiated with its manufacturers and cornered
the exclusive, lucrative Southern African distribution for the product. Today,
Stanford’s ESET Southern Africa operates the ESET brand in the region
and sells ESET’s range of internet security products in about 20 sub-Saharan
countries, leveraging on an extremely successful internet business platform and
digital distribution model for online software sales and service. Today,
Stanford’s ESET brand records over $10 million in annual turnover and controls
5% of the anti-virus market in Southern Africa. Stanford is also the founding
partner of 4Di Capital, a Cape Town-based venture capital fund. Stanford is
also a co-founder of theSilicon Cape Initiative, a non-profit movement that
aims to turn the Cape into Africa’s own Silicon Valley.
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| Jason Njoku |
Jason Njoku, Nigerian
Age: 31
The maverick Nigerian Internet entrepreneur is
founder of Iroko TV, the world’s largest digital distributor of African movies.
Iroko TV has been dubbed the ‘Netflix of Africa’. Earlier this year, Iroko TV
raised $8 million in venture capital from Tiger Global Management, a New
York-based private equity and hedge fund run by billionaire Chase Coleman. IrokoTV enjoys lucrative content
distribution deals with Dailymotion, iTunes, Amazon and Vimeo. Njoku is
unwilling to divulge figures, but analysts believe IrokoTV could be worth as
much as $30 million. Njoku is the company’s largest individual shareholder.
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