The basic form is worden.
Here are the most useful forms:
So werd is the singular simple past form.
Because rijk is being used as a predicate adjective, not directly before a noun.
Compare:
In Hij werd rijk, rijk comes after a linking verb (werd) and describes the subject Hij, so it usually stays in its basic form, without -e.
Because eerste is an ordinal adjective placed before the noun bedrijf.
In Dutch, ordinal numbers used before nouns normally take -e:
So the base idea is eerste = first, and before a noun it appears with that -e ending.
Because zijn is the normal Dutch possessive pronoun meaning his.
Dutch possessive pronouns do not change depending on the gender of the noun the way adjectives often do. So you simply get:
So zijn stays zijn.
Here bedrijf means company, business, or firm.
That makes zijn eerste bedrijf mean something like:
Dutch bedrijf is a common word for a commercial enterprise.
Here met means something like with, through, or by means of.
So rijk met zijn eerste bedrijf suggests that his first business was the means by which he became rich.
It does not necessarily mean he was physically together with the company; it expresses the instrument or source.
A natural English sense is:
Sometimes yes, but the nuance is a little different.
In this sentence, met is very natural because it fits the idea of becoming rich by means of that business activity.
This sentence has normal Dutch main-clause word order:
So:
Hij werd rijk met zijn eerste bedrijf.
Dutch main clauses usually put the finite verb in the second position. That is exactly what happens here.
Yes. Dutch often allows other elements to come first, as long as the finite verb still stays in second position.
For example:
This is still correct. It puts more emphasis on met zijn eerste bedrijf.
Notice what happens:
That is standard Dutch inversion after a fronted element.
Because rijk is an adjective here, not a noun.
In Hij werd rijk, rijk describes Hij after the verb werd. Dutch does not use an article in that structure.
Compare:
In the second sentence, rijke comes before the noun man, so the structure is different.
Yes, very common.
rijk worden is the normal everyday way to say to become rich.
Examples:
So this sentence uses a very standard Dutch pattern.
rijk is pronounced roughly like the English word rake, but with a Dutch ij sound that is not exactly the same as English a.
A rough guide:
For an English speaker, a rough approximation is rike, but the real Dutch vowel is worth listening to from native audio.
A rough pronunciation is buh-DRAYF or buh-DRIFE, but neither is perfect.
A few important points:
So the stress pattern matters a lot: not BE-drijf, but be-DRIJF.
It is in the simple past.
The past meaning comes from werd, the past tense of worden.
So the sentence presents the event as something completed in the past:
This is the normal past-tense way to describe how someone became rich.