Two things Rich List members have in common: The Australian’s Money Cafe Podcast with James Kirby

Dream of becoming a billionaire? Then it pays to have these two traits that the founders of Canva and Meriton share, the editor of the Richest 250 tells the Money Cafe podcast.

Canva founders Cliff Obrecht and Melanie Perkins are worth $16bn from an idea many venture capitalists thought was a dud. Source: Max Doyle

The two things the The List: Australia’s Richest 250 members have in common are persistence and property — most likely in that order — says Richest 250 editor John Stensholt who explains most entrants on the list persist in building their businesses and then move into property to fortify the family fortune.

But when we talk about persistence we mean persistence on a whole new level: Stensholt tells the story of the Canva duo — Melanie Perkins and Cliff Oberecht — who visited dozens of venture capital companies around the world and faced numerous rejections before finally finding a funder: The couple now have a combined valuation of $16bn.

Meanwhile, property is a long term game and the remarkable story of the Andrianakos family who started with servo stations in Melbourne steadily building up their property empire proves the case: This year the Greek immigrant family ascended to the official ranks of the Richest 250 sporting a valuation of $896m to rub shoulders with giants of the sector such as Harry Triguboff.

We also talk about the new adventures of commodity magnates such as Andrew Forrest at iron ore company Fortescue who has made major divestments into clean energy such as hydrogen power. Similarly, coal baron Trevor St Baker who is also making serious money from his electric car charging empire Tritium.

As inflation looks like it is here to say there is also some very interesting moves by nation’s richest into gold and cryptocurrency. Hedge fund king Michael Hintze has moved into gold mining though the Resolute group while Graham Tuckwell the man who created the world’s first gold-based Exchange Traded Fund is now moving into bitcoin.

In fact, our question of the week this time on the show is from Martin who asked:

Q

‘I bought the GOLD ETF a couple of years ago. This was just in case my portfolio was impacted by some terrible future event — like rampant inflation, or a war!

Unfortunately, both are now a reality — but the price of my ETF hasn’t moved very much.’

A As Michael Hintze might explain gold mining companies have the potential to make more – or lose more — than Exchange Traded Funds which move in a more sedate fashion. Hintze’s Resolute group is down around 30 per cent over the last year — while the EFT GOLD is up around 15 per cent.

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