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Grizzly Bulls’ Billionaires Index

⬅ # 139 Jerry Jones|# 141 Wang Wei ➡

# 140 Eric Smidt 

$15.5B

Real Time Net Worth
as of 12/19/2024

# 140 Eric Smidt 

$15.5B

Real Time Net Worth
as of 12/19/2024
OccupationOwner and CEO, Harbor Freight Tools
Source of WealthHardware Stores
Age64
ResidenceBeverly Hills, California
Marital StatusMarried
Age-Adjusted Net Worth$11.8B
Eric Smidt
Eric Smidt
United States
Net worth: $15.5B

Self-Made Score 

Movado Museum Classic Men's Watch - Swiss Quartz Movement

Wealth History

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Biography

Overview

Eric Smidt is the CEO and sole owner of Harbor Freight Tools, a leading home improvement retailer in the United States with over 1,400 stores and $6.5 billion in sales.
Born in the late 1950s, Eric Smidt co-founded Harbor Freight Tools with his father, Allan Smidt, in 1977 when he was just a teenager.
Smidt showed early entrepreneurial spirit by starting Harbor Freight as a small mail-order tool business operating out of a small warehouse in North Hollywood, California.
Despite starting the business at a young age, Smidt managed to earn enough credits through his work at Harbor Freight to graduate high school.
Eric Smidt became the president of Harbor Freight in 1985 and assumed the role of CEO after purchasing his father's half of the company in 1999.
In 2010, Eric Smidt faced legal challenges when his father, Allan, sued him for alleged 'looting' of the company to finance his own lifestyle. The case was settled out of court.

Company Growth and Leadership

Under Eric Smidt's leadership, Harbor Freight Tools has expanded significantly, growing from its humble beginnings as a mail-order business to become the leading discount tool retailer in the U.S.
Harbor Freight's growth accelerated after Smidt became the sole owner in 1999, with the company experiencing dramatic expansion in both retail and catalogue sales.
Eric Smidt prioritized building a senior leadership team, fostering a sustainable high-performance culture centered on core values such as excellence, continuous improvement, and collaboration.
He also emphasized delivering unbeatable value to customers by offering quality tools at significantly lower prices compared to competitors, achieved through direct sourcing and rigorous quality assurance measures.

Eric Smidt's Wealth is Equivalent to:

11,909,161 Herman Miller Aeron Chairs

Herman Miller Aeron Chair

2,927,152 Gold Bars (50 gram)

24K Solid 50g Gold Ingot

158,107 Tiny Homes

Tiny House, Two Bedroom Solar Prefab Home

How long would it take you to become as rich as Eric Smidt?

If you started with $10,000 and invested an additional $500 each month at a 42.79% CAGR, it would take you 5 years to reach Eric Smidt's net worth of $15.5B.

Is this realistic? It depends how closely the VIX-TA-Macro Advanced model performs to its history in the future. Since Grizzly Bulls launched on January 1, 2022, it's returned 66.02% compared to 28.56% for the S&P 500 benchmark.

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Eric Smidt is very wealthy, but what's stopping you from reaching that same level of success? As summarized in our five fundamental rules to wealth building, becoming wealthy in a modern capitalist economy is not complicated. There's actually only three variables:

  1. Your starting capital
  2. Your earnings after expenses
  3. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of your savings

Most people start with zero or very little, so if you weren't born into wealth, don't fret! The majority of the fortunate folks listed in our Grizzly Bulls’ Billionaires Index came from middle class or lower backgrounds. The most distinguishing characteristic of the group is their ability to consistently earn a high CAGR on their savings.

Every billionaire has a unique strategy to achieve high CAGR. For Eric Smidt, Hardware Stores is the primary source. Whether you choose to invest your savings in your own businesses or the businesses of others is not as important. The salient piece of the puzzle is ensuring that your hard-earned savings are generating sufficient CAGR to reach your long term goals.

Most people simply invest their money in index funds and call it a day. There's nothing wrong with this approach, but it guarantees relative mediocrity. To achieve greatness, you need to invest your money to earn higher than average returns. In the long run, better investors will always finish ahead of better earners.

Source: Grizzly Bulls reporting

Methodology: Grizzly Bulls' Billionaires Index is a daily ranking of the world's billionaires and richest people. Grizzly Bulls strives to provide the most accurate net worth calculations available. We pull data from public equity markets, SEC filings, public real estate records, and other reputable sources.

The index is dynamic and updates daily at the close of U.S. stock market trading based on changes in the markets, economy, and updates to Grizzly Bulls' proprietary algorithm of personal wealth calculation. Stakes in public companies are tracked daily based on the relevant closing prices of the underlying securities. Additionally, stakes in private companies, cash, real estate, and other less easily valued assets are updated periodically through careful analysis of insider transactions, comparable public company sales / EBITDA multiples, etc.

Affiliate Disclosure: Some of the links on this page are affiliate links. This means that, at no additional cost to you, we may earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. We only recommend products or services we believe will add value to our readers.

Edited by: Lee Bailey