Page 182 - Forbes - USA (October 2019)

355. BRAD KELLEY is the third largest shareholder in top Holdings chair just tripled 363. STEWART RAHR
plant-based meat manufacturer the size of his latest venture, Cal-
$2.4 BILLION WX Beyond Meat, which went public ifornia-based Mechanics Bank. $2.3 BILLION WX
SELF-MADE SCORE: ( in May. Williams grew up on his Ford’s private equity fund, which SELF-MADE SCORE: %
SOURCE: TOBACCO family farm in Nebraska. purchased Mechanics in 2015, SOURCE: DRUG DISTRIBUTION
AGE: 62 RESIDENCE: FRANKLIN, TN raised $1.1 billion to help finance AGE: 73 RESIDENCE: NEW YORK CITY
PHILANTHROPY SCORE: N.A. 363. RAY DAVIS its $2.1 billion acquisition of Ra- PHILANTHROPY SCORE:
Kelley sold his discount ciga- bobank, another California bank, A close friend of Trump, Rahr says
rette maker Commonwealth $2.3 BILLION T SELF-MADE SCORE: * in September. he regularly grabs a bite with the
Brands for $1 billion in 2001. SOURCE: PIPELINES president in Washington. Rahr
He’s now one of the nation’s AGE: 77 RESIDENCE: DALLAS 363. ERNEST GARCIA III sold his family’s drug whole-
178 largest landowners, with 1.5 mil- PHILANTHROPY SCORE: N.A. sale business, Kinray, to Cardi-
lion acres in five states. Born Davis and Kelcy Warren (No. $2.3 BILLION Ì SELF-MADE SCORE: % nal Health in 2010 for $1.3 billion.
on a farm, Kelley reportedly 159) cofounded natural gas pipe- SOURCE: USED CARS Since then he’s made conservative
T AGE: 37 RESIDENCE: PHOENIX
S bought his first piece of proper- line firm Energy Transfer in 1996. investments and focused on phi-
I ty at age 17. lanthropy, including $25 million
L Davis stepped down as co-CEO in PHILANTHROPY SCORE:
in donations to the Make A Wish
E 2007. He is a minority owner of The Stanford-educated engi-
H 355. PHILLIP T. RAGON the Texas Rangers baseball team. neer started out as an invest- Foundation.
T
ment analyst before joining
$2.4 BILLION S SELF-MADE SCORE: * 363.GERALD FORD his father’s used car dealer- 363. PETER THIEL
SOURCE: HEALTH IT ship business, DriveTime, in
AGE: 70 RESIDENCE: BOSTON
$2.3 BILLION T SELF-MADE SCORE: ( 2007. Five years later, Garcia $2.3 BILLION T SELF-MADE SCORE: *
PHILANTHROPY SCORE: SOURCE: BANKING cofounded Carvana, an e-com- SOURCE: FACEBOOK, PALANTIR
In April, Ragon donated $200 AGE: 75 RESIDENCE: DALLAS merce platform for buying and AGE: 52 RESIDENCE: LOS ANGELES
million to Massachusetts Gen- PHILANTHROPY SCORE: selling used cars, as a subsid- PHILANTHROPY SCORE:
eral Hospital, the largest gift in Forty-four years after buying his iary of DriveTime. It was spun Former PayPal mafia member,
the hospital’s history. His soft- first bank in Post, Texas, the Hill- out in a 2017 IPO, and its stock Thiel appeared on Fox News in
ware firm InterSystems, based has been in the fast lane late- July and accused Google of work-
in nearby Cambridge, Massachu- • B E G I N N I N G S • ly. His father, Ernest Garcia II ing with the Chinese government.
setts, has over $700 million in (No. 114), is also a billionaire He also suggested that the FBI
annual sales, but it was a long thanks to Carvana. and CIA should investigate wheth-
road to success. Ragon previous- er the search giant had been infil-
ly tried to become a professional 363. DAVID GOTTESMAN trated by foreign agents. A spokes-
musician in London. For a time person for Google told Forbes the
he made ends meet selling Indi- $2.3 BILLION T SELF-MADE SCORE: * allegations were baseless and that
an clothing he picked up in the SOURCE: INVESTMENTS Google only works with a small
U.K. to boutiques in Boston. AGE: 93 RESIDENCE: RYE, NY number of people in China on
PHILANTHROPY SCORE: open source and education-relat-
355. T. DENNY SANFORD Berkshire Hathaway board ed activities. Meanwhile, Thiel’s
member “Sandy” Gottesman secretive data-mining company
$2.4 BILLION T SELF-MADE SCORE: ( met Warren Buffett in 1962 and Palantir signed a $144 million con-
SOURCE: BANKING, CREDIT CARDS placed an early bet on the Or- tract with the Navy in July. The
AGE: 83 RESIDENCE: SIOUX FALLS, SD acle of Omaha. He now has a 15-year-old unicorn’s expected IPO
PHILANTHROPY SCORE: stake of more than $2 billion in is reportedly on hold.
Sanford’s First Premier Bank the company. Gottesman found-
has only 17 branches, but it’s one 342. JIM BREYER ed his own investment firm, 370. EDWARD BASS
of the largest issuers of Master- First Manhattan Co., in 1964,
cards in the country, specializing $2.5 BILLION T which now manages over $21 $2.2 BILLION T SELF-MADE SCORE: $
in high-risk borrowers. The Min- SELF-MADE SCORE: * billion in assets. SOURCE: OIL, INVESTMENTS
nesota native started working in SOURCE: VENTURE CAPITAL AGE: 74 RESIDENCE: FORT WORTH, TX
his father’s garment shop at age 8. AGE: 58 RESIDENCE: 363. CLAYTON MATHILE PHILANTHROPY SCORE:
WOODSIDE, CA
At 18 he was sentenced to 90 days
in jail for fighting but was offered PHILANTHROPY SCORE: $2.3 BILLION S SELF-MADE SCORE: & 370. LEE BASS
a lighter sentence by the judge if A longtime partner at Silicon SOURCE: PET FOOD
he agreed to go to college. Sanford Valley’s Accel, through which AGE: 78 RESIDENCE: BROOKVILLE, OH $2.2 BILLION T SELF-MADE SCORE: $
SOURCE: OIL, INVESTMENTS
has given away more than $1.6 bil- he bet early on Facebook, he PHILANTHROPY SCORE:
AGE: 63 RESIDENCE: FORT WORTH, TX
lion to causes such as healthcare started Breyer Capital in 2006 Mathile started out as an ac-
and education. and has invested in AI start- countant for General Motors PHILANTHROPY SCORE:
ups. He is now also co-chair- in the Chevy division in To- With their brothers Robert (No.
355. EVAN WILLIAMS man of IDG Capital, a Chi- ledo, Ohio. He was later em- 140) and Sid (No. 275), the siblings
na-focused VC firm. While at ployee No. 7 at pet food firm sold part of their oil interests to
$2.4 BILLION 3 SELF-MADE SCORE: ( Stanford in 1982, he sent his Iams and bought the busi- ExxonMobil in 2017 for $5.6 bil-
SOURCE: TWITTER résumé to Apple’s Steve Jobs, ness in 1982. Seventeen years lion in stock and up to $1 billion
AGE: 47 RESIDENCE: SAN FRANCISCO who forwarded it to the VP later, he sold Iams to Procter & in future cash payments. Ed is
PHILANTHROPY SCORE: of marketing. He was hired Gamble for $2.3 billion. Today leading the effort to privately fund
The Twitter cofounder left the so- for the summer (Breyer, in he is chairman of Aileron, a more than half of the $540 million
cost of the new Dickies Arena in
cial media giant’s board in Febru- the No. 42 jersey, pictured Dayton-based school that of- Fort Worth. Lee and his wife do-
ary. Once Twitter’s CEO, Williams with friends in Menlo Park fers management training for nated $25 million to Vanderbilt
is now CEO of online publishing during those months) and small business owners, which
stayed on to work part-time last year to support scholarships
platform Medium and cofounder he started with $130 million 11
while he was in college. for veterans.
of Obvious Ventures. The VC firm years ago.

O C T O B E R 3 1 , 2 0 1 9
F O R B E S . C O M
WEALTH INHERITED VS. SELF-MADE CHANGE IN WEALTH KEY: S UP T DOWN SIGNATORY OF THE PHILANTHROPY SCORE
! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) WX UNCHANGED Ì NEW TO LIST 3 RETURNEE GIVING PLEDGE