On Forbes ranking of the 400 wealthiest people in America, 30 year old Dustin Moskovitz, founder of organization App Asana, is the second youngest billionaire, followed by Evan Spiegel, founder of Snapchat. Currently, Moskovitz is worth $8 billion, and told Quora what he plans to do with it all.
First of all, he doesn’t really feel the money is actually his, and he has a duty to give it back. He cited Louis C.K, who said, “I never viewed money as being ‘my money.’ I always saw it as ‘The Money.’ It’s a resource. If it pools up around me, then it needs to be flushed back into the system.”
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Of course, this doesn’t imply that money is like other things that need to be flushed, unless it is going to be spread around, like manure that creates fertile ground. Moskovitz said he and his partner Cari are “stewards of capital. It’s pooled up around us right now, but it belongs to the world.” They started Good Ventures, a philanthropic organization, and they give generously to Give Well. He says he doesn’t plan to leave the world with a significant fortune.
Coupled with philanthropy will be business investment. He will continue to invest in his own business and other worthy projects, like innovative software ideas. He does not plan to set up a legacy fund that will invest the money automatically when that dark day arrives, hopefully only in the very distant future. Instead, “I’d like to be rid of it before then. The money we grant will be inevitably re-invested in the economy somehow.”
