Jeff Bezos is worth about 150B$, this is extremely high, but other people, such as the ceo of Goldman Sachs is only worth about 1.3million$, and even the ceo of apple and apple is only worth around 1.8Billion. What is the cause for such a high difference of weath between these people even though the company are comparable in size.
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Imagine running a lemonade stand selling cups of lemonade to all the thirsty people passing by. It’s a thriving success.. with a line of people around the block every day wanting to buy your lemonade.
Some people notice the success of your lemonade stand, seeing how much lemonade it sells, and would like to invest in it. They ask if they can purchase part of your business in exchange for being a part owner themselves. You could use the money this would bring for all sorts of things so you begin to sell ownership of the lemonade stand in small pieces, called shares or stock. Even though you’re selling pieces of your business you still want to be the “big boss”, so you make sure you always retain a majority of the shares.
Your lemonade stand continues to do great, and people are willing to pay more, and more, and more for the opportunity to be part owner. As a result the value of your shares goes up, which means your net worth goes up. A lot. More then someone who doesn’t own as many shares in their successful business.
This is essentially what’s going here. Musk and Bezos were the founders and / or early investors of their businesses. They own or owned huge stakes in businesses which have skyrocket in value. A CEO who is promoted to the rank but wasn’t a founder or early investor isn’t going to have nearly the same equity stake in a business. So if it’s successful they’ll be successful too, but not nearly to the same degree.
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