South African entrepreneur, Mark Shuttleworth, has an estimated net worth $500 million as of 2012. At the age of 22 Shuttleworth founded Thawte, a digital certificate and internet security company which he sold to VeriSign for $575 million in 1999, when he was 26. He used a fraction of his wealth to start HBD Capital (now called Knife Capital), a Cape Town-based emerging markets investment fund. HBD has made a series of successful exits including Fundamo, a mobile financial services company which was acquired by Visa for $110 million in 2011; and csense, which was acquired by GE Intelligent Platforms the same year. Shuttleworth also founded and funds Ubuntu, a computer operating system which he distributes as free open source software. He holds dual citizenship of South Africa and the United Kingdom and currently lives on the Isle of Man. On 25 April 2002, Shuttleworth became the first-ever African in space and the second self-funded space tourist.

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