A Dollar and a Dream: 15 Tech Startup Billionaires (Infographic) Of the 500 richest people in the world, 167 are in the U.S. and 15 of those are tech entrepreneurs.

By Catherine Clifford

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It's the story that motivates hardworking people to ditch their career and chase the entrepreneurship dream: the tech startup that turns its founder into a very, very rich person.

On Forbes' latest list of the richest people in the world, 167 of the top 500 billionaires were in the U.S. Of those 167, 15 of them made their big bucks in tech startups.

Related: The Habits of Self-Made Billionaires (Infographic)

From Amazon's Jeff Bezos to Oracle's Larry Ellison, check out which tech titans made the list in this infographic compiled by a Houston-based online guide to business management programs.

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A Dollar and a Dream: 15 Tech Startup Billionaires (Infographic)

Catherine Clifford

Senior Entrepreneurship Writer at CNBC

Catherine Clifford is senior entrepreneurship writer at CNBC. She was formerly a senior writer at Entrepreneur.com, the small business reporter at CNNMoney and an assistant in the New York bureau for CNN. Clifford attended Columbia University where she earned a bachelor's degree. She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. You can follow her on Twitter at @CatClifford.

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