Bloomberg:
Finding billionaires in Silicon Valley isn’t hard. Dropbox Inc.’s Arash Ferdowsi and Veeva Systems Inc.’s Peter Gassner have both crossed the threshold this year, and tech fortunes make up a fifth — or about $1 trillion — of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
But tracking down members of the three-comma club at Apple Inc. is a less fruitful endeavor, even though the iPhone-maker is the world’s most valuable company, with a market capitalization of $879 billion.
Chairman Art Levinson is the only insider to make the cut, and Apple stock accounts for just 20 percent of his $1 billion fortune, according to regulatory filings. The rest comes from his long tenure at Genentech Inc., where he was chairman and chief executive officer, and an early stake in Google Inc.
No other Apple insider comes close.
I think one core attribute of any huge company with few or no billionaires is a long legacy. A tech company born in current times that then grows huge is much more likely to make a billionaire or two. Or three.
Apple’s big growth curve happened long before billion dollar valuations were common. They went public in 1980, fragmenting their ownership stake, making it that much harder for a single person to emerge as a billionaire.
Thoughtful article.
I agree, very thoughtful article and it paints a very nice picture of Apple’s executive compensation over time.
I think they can live nicely on tens or hundreds of millions, shouldn’t have to scrimp too much. Apple’s top talent are there to be doers and having fun at it, and they are compensated nicely.
Also makes it very difficult for Apple to retain top talent. That gap in potential compensation is huge. Having to work hard like a startup but not being able to look forward to the huge windfall would put a dent in anyone’s long term future career plans at Apple.
Focusing on billionaires is misleading. I think Apple is trying to attract and retain long term employees but not by offering stock options that go through the roof with an IPO. They get people who want to work at a company they believe in and are compensated very well by anyone’s standards.
I know a few people who have gone to Apple over the last few years and they are all exceptionally talented and accomplished. They literally could work anywhere but chose Apple. I also think that the compensation structure is one of the reasons why Apple has a higher percentage of women working in their technical streams than the other large tech companies.
“I think one core attribute of any huge company with few or no billionaires is a long legacy. A tech company born in current times that then grows huge is much more likely to make a billionaire or two. Or three.”
That’s not true. Microsoft minted a number of billionaires. Intel is significantly older than both and can at least claim Grove and Moore as billionaires. The difference with Apple is that it did not have relatively straight line growth. The issue at hand is that Apple went from near bankruptcy to wild growth when it was it was a public company.