PEOPLE: 8 Well Known Entrepreneurs Who Made A Quick Million Dollars

People often say that being an entrepreneur and starting a home business is difficult. That it often takes incredibly hard work, a little start-up capital, long hours, and heroic levels of courage and self-reliance.

That may be true for 99% of entrepreneurs, but every once in a while someone completely bucks the trend and achieves success overnight seemingly effortlessly. One thing they do have however, is a very good idea, filling a gap in the market that their customers were crying out for.

These people achieved success lightning quick, making a fortune in their first month of trading. Many with a home business, without much start-up capital, or support. Some of them took longer than a month to set-up their business, but from the moment they started trading, or attempted to monetize their business, they made over a million dollars in their first month.

8 well-known entrepreneurs who made a million dollars in their first month of business


David Karp

Heard of Tumblr? There can’t be many people left on the planet who haven't. David started Tumblr with his own hard earned savings, without any investment in 2007.

It has been a long road to get to this point, but up until now Tumblr has still not been monetized. However, there are a number of well-known brands such as MTV set to sign up for Tumblr advertisements. In real terms though, David Karp made millions instantly, as his net worth was in the millions as soon as Tumblr took off. Not bad for a 26 year old who started a home business from his own means.


Ben Lerer

While many of the tech entrepreneurs around are theoretical millionaires who have so far just had funding rather than actual revenue, this guy really is the real deal. Ben Lerer founded Thrillist, an amazingly simple concept that sounds like someone really should have thought of it earlier, but the very best ideas often do share this trait. It’s simply an online newsletter that allows advertisers to connect to people in a specific city. It has millions of subscribers, and plenty of companies willing to pay to reach them.

It initially earned $50k per annum, and took off almost instantly, netting Ben his first million within a month of trading.


Mark Zuckerberg

Okay, I know, his story has been done to death. There’s even a Hollywood movie about it. But you cannot make a list about people earning a million fast and not include Mark Zuckerberg. Especially since he’s now worth tens of billions of dollars, even after the disastrous Facebook IPO. As soon as Facebook started monetizing, mark made a million instantly.

As with many tech starts ups of this kind, Mark Zuckerberg was a millionaire the very moment he had a great idea and put it on the web.


Victor Kislyi

Although Victor’s company had been around for awhile before it developed it’s first commercial game, as soon as the game launched he became a millionaire. The game in question wasMassive Assault for the PC.

In 2010 Victor Kislyi launched World of Tanks, which has gone on to be a huge success, making him a multi millionaire. He was so flush with cash, that he decided to fund a dig to excavate British RAF Spitfires that were buried during WW2.


Matthew Corrin

Matthew Corrin’s story is quite extraordinary, in that the hype he managed to create around his fresh produce was almost too much. When Matthew opened Freshii, a company that sells fresh, healthy fast food, he had queues around the block, and sold out of produce before lunch.

Within his first month of opening he was one healthy millionaire.


Ben Kaufman

Ben Kaufman launched Quirky when he was barely in his twenties, he couldn’t have imagined it would take off so quickly. His idea to get readers to vote on whether or not an upcoming product was a good idea was revolutionary. As with most millionaires of this type, as soon as his website went live he was instantly worth millions.




Markus Persson

The second games developer on our list, ‘Markus Persson‘ made the amazingly simple, but fiendishly addictive game Minecraft. Minecraft had a passionate following even before it’s official launch due to a very popular tech demo. As soon as it did, Marcus became an instant millionaire. He’s currently estimated to be worth around $15 million dollars.

Not bad for a home business run by one man until very recently.


Junaid Shams & Ahmed Khattak

These two are listed together because they shared the same brilliant idea. GSM Nation. With around $150,000 dollars of start-up capital, and some investment from Yale Entrepreneurial Institute, they came up with a way to offer their customers phones without getting locked down into a contract.

It made Junaid & Ahmed millions in revenue almost instantly.