Kylie Jenner was recently given the title of the youngest self-made billionaire by Forbes for her company Kylie Cosmetics that sells lip kits, lipsticks, blush, setting powder, concealer, gloss, brushes, bronzer, eyeshadow palette, eyeliner, etc. Her cosmetic company is worth 900 million dollars. That’s a lot of money for a company that is only three years old!

Jenner is now selling her lip kits and lipsticks in Ulta Beauty which increased her revenue. Jenner’s company first started as Kylie Lip Kit on November 30, 2015, and in 2016 the company name changed to Kylie Cosmetics. Kylie’s company took off because of the social media platform that she built through Instagram and Snapchatl; she used these social media platforms to promote her company and announce new products she was releasing. Her company skyrocketed and keeps expanding.

Kylie Jenner has been in the spotlight since she was 10 years old due to Keeping up with the Kardashians, which is a reality TV show that her older step sisters created and starred in. Jenner grew up in the public eye which caused her insecurities and one of her biggest insecurities that she had was her lips because she thought they were small.  She would try to overline them and in 2015 she got lip fillers. With her being insecure about her lips, she decided to create her own company so she could find a color that matched her lips most. From having her insecurity open to the public and always being judged she managed to create something that helped her and made her a lot of money.

When Forbes released that Kylie Jenner was the youngest self-made billionaire, social media went into a whirlwind. Everyone was posting about how this title Jenner was given was wrong because she was already rich, she had a platform, her last name and family aided her, you don’t know the real definition of self-made, etc.

“Nah, if they’d just said billionaire, it would be true and an achievement. But calling someone who could not have had more privilege or opportunity, self-made, is an insult to actual self-made people who came from nothing with no help.” – said Jameela Jamil actor on The Good Place. 

All fair points, but Kylie Jenner herself invested her own money and time for her company to succeed to the point that it is worth 900 million dollars. That doesn’t come easy. This got even more attention when Dictionary.com posted their definition of self-made which angered more people. In reality, she took advantage of what she was given and turned herself into the youngest self-made billionaire. Jenner turned the millions she had into a billion which a lot of rich kids don’t do. Yeah, she might have been born with a famous name, but Jenner herself worked to have an influence over people through social media and it might not look like a job to most but now a day a social media influencer makes money promoting and just posting on social media.

All in all, Forbes definition of “self-made” is when you did not inherit the business from your family and you created your own company from your own fortune. Kylie Cosmetics alone is worth a billion dollars and that’s not counting outside money Jenner makes. It is for that reason, that I believe Kylie Jenner is a self-made billionaire.