Even as a Scripture Union kid, I do not know why I am obsessed with the Forbes Billionaire list. The day I told our chair, Prof Ed, at Carnegie Mellon University (he’s now the dean of my alma mater, Johns Hopkins University) that I was going to leave, my mind was on this list. Prof asked me to stay but it was challenging because yes there is a Forbes list.
I had honoured an invitation in Silicon Valley where a VC paid me my 4-month pay for a day job. My perspectives changed about work! Really? This world is not a balanced equation. (Sure, you can say Forbes List does not matter. Fair. But I tell you, this list inspires me and those people therein inspire. You must not agree. This is just a village boy admiring the power and success of capital considering that the class leader (Elon Musk) came like me with nothing as an immigrant.)
Money is a tool to deal with many inconveniences of life. If I have it in tons, I will go to Abuja and ask the government to give me rights to build a DEEP seaport that connects Akwa Ibom via Aba to Ovim. Then, have a manufacturing hub and make it possible that jobs will become rights for all. The Forbes List reminds me how capital can deal with many issues in Nigeria.
Register for Tekedia Mini-MBA edition 17 (June 9 – Sept 6, 2025) today for early bird discounts. Do annual for access to Blucera.com.
Tekedia AI in Business Masterclass opens registrations.
Join Tekedia Capital Syndicate and co-invest in great global startups.
Register to become a better CEO or Director with Tekedia CEO & Director Program.
This week, Shoptreo’s Treo shoes were sent to all the kids in my primary school alma mater (Ovim Community School) in the village. Imagine if one could send laptops with personal solar power for all. Great things would happen. Ego. Kudi. Owo. Money. We need it to advance communities because fixing the world’s problems will need private capital.
ChatGPT’s monthly revenue is at least $415 million, reports The Information, growing by 30% over the past three months thanks to a surge in subscriptions. OpenAI’s signature chatbot recently hit 20 million paid subscribers, proving that many “are willing to pay for a chatbot that can code, write, give personalized health advice and medical diagnoses and cook up detailed financial plans.” If the AI startup maintains this rate, its annual revenue could reach its 2025 target of $12.7 billion, up from $4 billion last year. – LinkedIn News
---
Register for Tekedia Mini-MBA (June 9 – Sept 6, 2025), and join Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe and our global faculty; click here.
If you are not inspired by Billionaires List, what then will inspire you – Terrorists List? Even if you are a defender and an advocate of the poor, to help the poor escape poverty, you still need money to do that. The reason why only few things are rights is because anything that requires money to be provided cannot be a right, else you will violate people’s right whenever you run out of money.
Education, Healthcare, Housing, Transportation, Energy, they all require tons of money to be provided at scale. Those who think government should do them, well, governments don’t create money, they still rely on ingenuity of innovators and businesspeople to get money to do those things.
Any chance of reducing poverty and improving living standards for all can only happen at scale via capital, which markets make possible to access and deploy. Hating billionaires could be like hating progress, since poor people cannot help you advance anything worthwhile.