Impressive Billionaires or Not?

News flash: "Australian tycoon is world's richest woman worth $29Billion" 

But "heiress to an iron-ore empire" suddenly sounds less impressive, even if it was up by $19Billion last year. And then we read that the woman she pushed back to #2 spot was Wal-Mart heiress Christy Walton.  So are these successful entrepreneurs we can learn from?

I think the ranking should be based on increase in their net worth from the starting point.  And even that might be an indicator of the skills as an investor (or the skills of their management people) more than their success as entrepreneurs.  So let's agree that for model entrepreneurs we need to look at what they built starting from zero.  That works, even if they started with lots of their own money.

So then we still can be comfortable with our role models, like Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, etc. .... 

Rich heiresses, not so much.