About

At the December 2024 New York Times DealBook Summit, Jeff Bezos said:

“Somebody needs to make a list where they rank people by how much wealth they’ve created for other people, instead of the Forbes list that ranks you by your own wealth.”

Nobody made it properly. So this is that list: every number traceable to an SEC filing, an academic dataset, or a named data source — refreshed every fifteen minutes while markets are open.

How it works

Company wealth creation comes from Hendrik Bessembinder’s research dataset (Arizona State University), which measures dollar wealth generated for shareholders beyond Treasury-bill returns since 1926 — then a live market delta brings it to the current quarter-hour. From each founder’s attributed share we subtract what they kept: their live Forbes net worth. What remains is wealth that exists in other people’s hands because that founder built something.

Corrections

The data layer is plain YAML with a citation required on every number, and continuous integration rejects anything uncited. Found an error, or want a founder added? Open an issue or a pull request — the repository link is in the footer of every page.

Not affiliated with Forbes, Amazon, or any listed company.