Forbes 400 Data Shows Paul Graham Is Wrong

"pg, unfortunately for America, in recent years most of the highest paid people (to the tune of hundreds of millions per person) have been financiers. Even fairly successful outcomes in the start-up world, such as Mint.com to take a random example, don't make founders that rich.

I suspect if you look at the new inclusions in Forbes 400 list over the past 10 years, that list (of deltas) would be dominated by Finance. This is not a good thing."

pg replied:

"Instead of assuming this, why don't you check and tell us? It should be pretty easy; historical Forbes 400 data is available online."

I decided to go check and tell everyone, and Paul Graham is wrong about the Forbes 400 showing startups having a higher return than Wall Street. According to the Forbes 400 data, between 1999 and 2009:

- 211 new people entered the Forbes 400 list during this ten-year period.

- Of these, 59 were from finance.

- 17 were from technology.

I think the record speaks for itself.

You can see the raw data at http://www.forbes.com/lists/home.jhtml?passListId=54&passYear=1999&passListType=Person, http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/54/rich-list-09_The-400-Richest-Americans_FinalWorth.html.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Dalio

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Simons

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Schwarzman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paulson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Och

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Shaw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_A._Cohen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_C._Griffin

If you're curious as to whether I included any specific people please feel free to ask.

- Hedge funds and other money management

- Private equity

- Investment banking

- Leveraged buyouts

- Proprietary trading

- Traditional (retail) banking and credit cards

I did not consider heirs with investments to have gotten their money in finance, unless they increased their original sum ten-fold or more (in real dollars). I also did not consider real estate investment/speculation to be finance.

There's something about the way you phrased this that makes me think you were gunning for pg. It would be nice if you included the complete breakdown, as well as your criteria for determining tech vs. finance. Since you had to manually go through the entire list, I can't imagine it would have been difficult to record your results.