⬅ # 928 Penny Pritzker|# 930 Harsh Mariwala ➡

# 929 Kwon Hyuk-bin 

$3.50B

Real Time Net Worth
as of 7/2/2024
$190 (0.00%)

# 929 Kwon Hyuk-bin 

$3.50B

Real Time Net Worth
as of 7/2/2024
$190 (0.00%)
OccupationFounder and Owner, Smilegate
Source of WealthOnline Games
Age50
ResidenceSeoul, South Korea
Marital StatusSeparated
Children2
EducationBS, Sogang University
Age-Adjusted Net Worth$6.88B
Kwon Hyuk-bin
Kwon Hyuk-bin
South Korea
Net worth: $3.50B

Self-Made Score 

Wealth History

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Biography

Overview

Kwon Hyuk-bin, a South Korean businessman, investor, and philanthropist, is the billionaire co-founder of Smilegate, a leading gaming company in South Korea.
He graduated with an electrical engineering degree from Sogang University and founded Smilegate in 2002.
After a failed startup endeavor, Kwon declined a software engineering role at Samsung to pursue video game development.
Kwon partnered with Tencent in 2008, leading to the release of CrossFire, Smilegate's most popular title.
He is the sole owner of Smilegate Holdings and has built it into one of South Korea's top gaming entities.

Career Highlights

Founded Smilegate in 2002, growing it into one of South Korea's most successful gaming companies.
Released CrossFire in partnership with Tencent in 2008, which became the world's most popular first-person shooter game.
Owns 100% of Smilegate Holdings, which is among the largest shareholders of SundayToz, a Korean mobile game developer.
Established Orange Farm, South Korea's largest private incubator, and donated over $5 million to schools in Vietnam and China.
Contributed over $2 million to his alma mater, Sogang University, furthering educational initiatives.

Smilegate and Gaming Ventures

Smilegate, headquartered in Pangyo, South Korea, develops, publishes, and services online games for mobile and PC platforms.
Creator of Crossfire, boasting over six million concurrent players globally.
Annual revenue surpassed 1 trillion KRW in 2020 with approximately 3,300 employees.
Operates subsidiary Stove, dedicated to supporting indie game developers.
Lost Ark, a PC MMORPG developed by Smilegate RPG, achieved significant success since its release in 2018, reaching 1.32 million concurrent users on Steam in North America and Europe.

Impact of Crossfire

Crossfire, the world's most popular online FPS, has amassed over 8 million concurrent users worldwide.
Annual international Crossfire tournament, CFS (CrossFire Stars), boasts a prize pool of approximately 1 billion KRW.
Smilegate recognized as one of the top 30 developers by Game Developer, largely due to Crossfire's success.
Crossfire ranked highest in revenue among all F2P games worldwide in 2014 according to SuperData Research.
Remained the world's most played game until 2017 when League of Legends claimed the top spot.

Philanthropy

Kwon Hyuk-bin's philanthropic efforts include establishing schools in China and Vietnam through the Smilegate Foundation.

How long would it take you to become as rich as Kwon Hyuk-bin?

If you started with $10,000 and invested an additional $500 each month at a 44.06% CAGR, it would take you 5 years to reach Kwon Hyuk-bin's net worth of $3.50B.

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 48.24% compared to 16.19% for the S&P 500 benchmark.

Enter data in all but one field below, then calculate the missing value

Kwon Hyuk-bin 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 Kwon Hyuk-bin, Online Games 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.

Edited by: Lee Bailey