How long would it take you to spend $10 million? How about $100 million? What if you got the astronomical sum of $1 billion? Well, CNET founder and tech entrepreneur Halsey Minor knows his own personal answer: five years.

That's right, Minor, who was once valued at over $1 billion, is now bankrupt. He had amassed his fortune through founding and building the online news source CNET since its inception in 1994. He was once one of the most influential players in the tech field.

"Minor, from Charlottesville, Virginia, founded CNET in 1994 and sold the network to CBS in 2008 for a reported $1.8 billion. The tech entrepreneur had other successes as well. He was an early investor in the now-profitable OpenDNS. He also Pumped $6 million into a voice over internet startup called Grand Central that would later be purchased by Google, and turned into Google Voice, for $50 million in 2007," reports the Daily Mail.

Minor is now a far cry from his glory days, however. Earlier this summer he filed for bankruptcy, and several of his mansions are now up for sale around the country. Though the numbers are still uncertain, it appears that Minor is actually in debt, owing tens of millions of dollars to the government and business partners.

"I love being an entrepreneur even though it involves financial risk," Minor said. "I have been fortunate enough to play a meaningful role in building great companies like CNET Networks, Salesforce.com, Rhapsody, NBCi, the service known as Google Voice and others. But if you win some you are going to lose some too."

While he seems to be taking everything in stride, it's a little hard to ignore the fact that he really did blow through $1 billion in five years. Much of that money was lost to bad investments, as Minor slowly strayed away from a tech industry that he seemed to understand like the back of his hand.

"A case might have been made that I should never have strayed from technology," Minor said. "However, I like doing things outside my comfort zone, and I believe that willingness in part accounts for my tech successes."

That's all well and good, Halsey, but next time you might want to consider socking some of those savings away for a rainy day.