Steve Jobs founded Apple. He spent decades building Apple to becoming the most valuable company in the world. In the end , Apple only contributed $2 billion to his wealth Now look at a man who never worked a single day at Apple. Warren Buffett invested in Apple between 2016 and 2018 when the stock was very undervalued. That purchase has netted Buffett over $100 billion in profit. He wrote no code. He shipped no product. He sat in Omaha and held. Now Microsoft. Bill Gates built it from nothing. He is worth about $114 billion today, after giving away close to $100 billion in his lifetime. A staggering fortune by any measure. But, his former assistant, Steve Ballmer is now worth about $179 billion. Ballmer did not found Microsoft. He was employee number 30, and received no equity when he joined. He negotiated a stake, became CEO, retired in 2014, and then did the one thing almost nobody does. He never sold. Today, he owns about 4% of the company. Gates owns less than 1%. The employee is now $65 billion richer than the founder. Most people believe there is only one road to serious wealth. Start a company. Sacrifice a decade of your life. Out-work everyone. That road is real, but it is brutal, and most who walk it never make it. The much simpler , less stressful way to build wealth is to buy shares of companies that are already the best in the world . The stock market allows us to do just that. You can simply buy a slice and become an owner beside the founder, while keeping your day job. But do not confuse simple with easy. Ownership only compounds if you do three things: 1.Buy great businesses, the top 1% in the world, not exciting stories. 2.Buy them when Mr. Market panics and marks them below their intrinsic value. 3.Then do the hardest thing in investing, which is nothing. Ballmer did not out-invent Gates. He simply out-held him. You do not have to found the next Apple to get wealthy from it. You just have to own it, and keep owning it.