The number of Forbes 400 members living in California rose to the highest it's been since the dot-com era in 2000.
on The Forbes 400 for the first time. The state’s openness to immigration, combined with its sheer size and concentration of innovative companies, institutions and investors in tech hubs like Silicon Valley and Los Angeles, goes a long way in explaining why so many fortunes have been built there. It’s what led to the rise of successful startups, from Google in the 1990s to WhatsApp in the 2000s, both of which had immigrant cofounders in Sergey Brin and Jan Koum.
“Part of what has made Silicon Valley the capital of innovation is that the talent still comes here in order to do things,” said LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman in a 2012 with fellow billionaire Peter Thiel on the secrets behind Silicon Valley’s success. “Good entrepreneurs move to where they need to be.”the country’s largest, with a GDP of $2.97 trillion in 2018, dwarfing its nearest rival, Texas, which has an economy about 60% the size of California’s.
“Higher education is very important and institutions are great for turning out talent,” says Stephen Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto. “We’ve welcomed immigrants from all over the place, so it’s no surprise that an enormous number of tech companies in Silicon Valley were founded by immigrants.”
Silicon Valley — and the technology sector as a whole — are key to California’s economic success and its ability to retain billionaire-level talent. Technology was the top industry among this year’s contingent of California billionaires with 44 members, followed by finance and investments with 18 and real estate with 9.
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