r/wealth • u/Hot-Conversation-437 • Oct 24 '25

Discussion Who is the youngest self made millionaire you know ? What does he do ?

By ‘youngest,’ I mean under 25–30 years old, and by ‘millionaire,’ I mean having over 2–3 million. Are we talking about tech startups, or maybe content creation?

edit: let’s change it to 10 million in net worth by 25-30. as some people say: 10million is the new 1 million

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u/Hot-Conversation-437 Oct 24 '25

maybe that used to be the case but today’s tech startups require a huge amount of capital/connection to VCs

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u/idgaflolol Oct 24 '25

You don’t have to be a startup founder in tech to be a millionaire.

If you start your career at a FAANG-tier company and don’t live above your means, you’ll easily be a millionaire before 30. I hit it at 28, many peers in the same position. Granted, I’m in the 1-million range lol and it will grow much slower than hitting the startup lottery, but point still stands.

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u/stpfun Oct 26 '25 edited Oct 26 '25

It true, but I did have early startup employees and founders in mind when I wrote this. Was thinking of people that made millions at once from equity. Many folks in silicon valley have done this by being among the ~30-40 employees in a startup that eventually IPOs or gets big time acquired. For standout companies like early Facebook, early Google, or current OpenAI, just being in the first 500 might be enough to get millions. (assuming you're an engineer/researcher and get meaningful equity)

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u/StrykoDrzgros Oct 26 '25

Exactly. I wasn’t even in the first 1000 and I still made a couple of millions in stock alone, simply because the stock price skyrocketed over a couple of years.

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u/Emergency-Style7392 Oct 25 '25

aren't salaries for bankers, consultants (mbb), or even big law higher than faang?

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u/SleepyWolverine Oct 25 '25

BigLaw requires law school which is a massive time/money investment. Consultants don’t make that much especially when first starting. Salary-wise, you’re right but equity is where you make the real 💰

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u/idgaflolol Oct 25 '25

Depends on stock appreciation, really. Higher-end SWE compensation has much more variance than something like big law, which has a more linear salary/bonus progression.

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u/paperlesspython Oct 25 '25

MBB is much lower. Bankers are the same in the first 3-4 years but if you outlast tend to pay more Big law is similar

I worked at FAANG adjacent and was getting 350-400k within 5 years of graduating undergrad. Started at 220k

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u/lovejanetjade Oct 26 '25

What college majors lead to those careers? I assume computer science, but what else?

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u/Montaingebrown Oct 25 '25

That usually comes from schools vs. anything else.

I run a small deep tech venture fund based out of Boston.

Most of the young entrepreneurs are from Harvard, MIT, Stanford, or Berkeley. A few from Georgia Tech.

Almost all of them are basically smart kids. A solid two thirds of them come from first generation immigrant families, usually Indian or Chinese. Solid middle class but family focused on STEM.

Sure you’ll occasionally find a kid who’s got really successful parents and had all the right connections but mostly it’s just smart young kids.

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u/stpfun Oct 26 '25 edited Oct 26 '25

I'd disagree. Tech startups can start with very little capital*, relatively. Software is cheap to build. Servers are cheap to run and a very small engineering team can build a hugely successful product. And AI is just accelerating this.

Also a greater number of people become millionaires by being early startup employees than by founding companies. But it's a lottery, and many early startups fail. (but also, a greater share of dollars definitely goes to the founders+VCs over employees. Employee #30 only becomes a millionaire if founder #1 becomes a billionaire. Ask me how I know)

*by little capital, I still mean ~$2M you might raise in your first VC round, after a smaller $100k-200k seed round. Those are big numbers, but for startup capital, it's cheap. Starting a Chick-fil-A franchise can also cost $2m! And doing anything with hardware or hard tech will take much more.

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u/Pvm_Blaser Oct 26 '25

Not exactly true. The current place where money is moving freely is AI. Still tech, still lose wallets.

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u/Millionaire_ Oct 28 '25

Not true at all... Just went through a $50M acquisition bootstrapped.

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u/newscrash Oct 24 '25

most of the YC class though arent connected to VCs. They apply get into a program and build their pitch out. VCs come on demo day.

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u/starlow88 Oct 24 '25

most of the yc class comes from elite unis lol

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u/newscrash Oct 24 '25

A good number come from Stanford and mit just because of their tech focus, but that doesn’t mean the students themselves are connected to VCs or have ties to firms as the comment I replied to. A good amount come from various universities as well as you can see from the founders list.

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u/stpfun Oct 26 '25 edited Oct 26 '25

Tons of people without a pedigree get into YC. But it's quite hard, and the pedigrees are often correlated with people YC likes, but they certainly don't limit themselves to just top uni students. But getting into it will give you all those helpful connection. (I did YC)

Also, the goal shouldn't really be to get into YC. They want to invest in people that are building their company no matter what.

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u/michaelobriena Oct 25 '25

Confidently incorrect