Four Austin Residents Among Richest In America: Forbes Magazine

AUSTIN, TX — The Forbes list of richest Americans has come out, and a handful of Austin residents have made it into the rarefied ranks. These are people who don't have to go buy scratch-off tickets at the convenience store hoping to strike it rich because they're already there.

Once again, Michael Dell, 52, tops the list of richest Austinites, with an estimated fortune of $23.2 billion. Overall, he's the 19th-richest man in America and the 2nd-richest person in Texas. Dell's personal narrative is familiar to many of us in Texas — particularly Central Texas — given his storied career in computers.

Dell founded his first company in 1984, at the age of 19, with $1,000 in capital from his family. He ran PCs Limited, a seller of IBM PC compatible computers from his dorm room at the University of Texas at Austin. From those humble beginnings, his company's new iteration is now a corporate behemoth based in Round Rock hiring more than 100,000 workers. In September 2016, his Dell Inc. completed the acquisition of EMC Corp., — the largest technology merger in history at $60 billion — and became a subsidiary of Dell Technologies.

But you knew that. Everybody knows that. Less-known figures than Dell made the list of richest Americans too, or people who didn't think were among the uber-wealthy set.

Take Robert Smith, for example. Smith, 54, has a personal wealth is placed at $3.3 billion according to the Forbes reckoning. But unless you follow the world of private equity, it's likely that his name doesn't ring a bell. Overall, the financier emerged as the 226th richest person in the nation.

A former Goldman Sachs executive, Smith started private equity and venture capital firm Vista Equity Partners in 2000, according to a bio provided to Forbes. As a barometer of his considerable wealth, consider this: Last year, he pledged his Cornell University alma mater $50 million personally and through a foundation last year.

Trailing closely is John Paul DeJoria, 73, who amassed his fortune with the unlikely combo of hair products and tequila. If you watched television in the last, say, 20 years, you may be familiar with DeJoria. Back in the day, he appeared in a series of commercials beseeching the public not to be fooled by imitation hair care products mimicking his.

The ads may have worked, as he's among the richest of the rich with a personal fortune of $3.1 billion, third-richest in Austin and the 248th-richest person in America.

Like Dell, DeJoria also has a riveting personal narrative but one of the real picking-himself-up-from-his-own-bootstraps variety (no borrowing big bucks from rich family members like Dell) marked by periods of homelessness. He recounts his journey in the video below:

Bert "Tito" Beveridge, 55, has a surname that could have fated him to amass his fortune off a beverage, namely vodka. He's also one of the richest people in Austin (and the 324th richest person in the U.S.) built on the strength of his Tito's Vodka, an Austin-born concoction. One of the fastest-growing spirits in America, Tito's Vodka sold 44 million bottles of the stuff last year. He started his company in 1997 with $90,000 in leveraged fund secured through 19 credit cards, according to Forbes. He slept on floors and couches while he built his empire.

So you might be asking at this point: Who is the richest person in Texas? That would be Alice Walton of Fort Worth, an heiress to the Walmart fortune. According to Forbes, her personal fortune is a staggering $38.2 billion, making her the 13th richest person in America.

So who's the country's richest person? That honor goes to Bill Gates, a perennial entrant in the richest list, with $89 billion. Jeff Bezos of Amazon comes in second place with $81.5 billion, followed by Warren Buffett ($78 billion) and Mark Zuckerberg ($71 billion). Larry Ellison came in fifth-richest person in America with a paltry $59 billion. How the co-founder of Oracle Corp. manages to survive off a measly $59 billion in wealth is anyone's guess.

>>> Read the full list of richest people at Forbes

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