Self-made Billionaires
Forbes put out its annual billionaires list recently, and boy, is it rich. Among the record 1,826 people on it are plenty of people with very humble beginnings.
Hong Kong's Li Ka-shing started out a 15-year-old school dropout who worked 16 hours a day in a plastics trading company. Cut to today, and he's worth $33.8 billion.
Howard Schultz
We all know that Howard Schultz’s $2.5 billion Starbucks fortune is huge. Schultz’s origins are interesting. The first in his family to graduate from college, Schultz grew up in a New York housing project and got a college education through an athletic scholarship.
Oprah Winfrey
She needs no introduction, of course, but Oprah Winfrey wasn't always so famous, or, for that matter, rich.
As a child, she was so poor that her grandmother had to make her dresses out of potato sacks. Cut to today, and Winfrey is worth an estimated $3 billion.
David Walentas
New Yorker David Walentas grew up poor, shoveling manure at a farm.
Now the real estate developer is worth an estimated $1.8 billion.
Sheldon Adelson
It’s not surprising that a casino business like Sheldon Adelson’s could land him a $29.9 billion fortune.
What is surprising is his childhood story. The floor of a Boston tenement house was his childhood bed. At 12, he purchased a license to sell bought his newspapers in Boston with a $200 loan from his uncle. At sixteen, he started a candy-vending machine business.
David Murdock
Sure, produce is cheap. But those $3-a-pound fruits and veggies add up — to a $3.1 billion fortune, to be exact.
And yet David Murdoch, who is dyslexic, never finished high school; the canned-produce mogul got an honorary diploma in 2009.
He poses here with actress Helen Mirren.
Shahid Khan
Pakistan-born Shahid Khan is as self-made as they come: He came to the United States and worked as a dishwasher.
Today, his $4.5 billion fortune includes the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Sara Blakely
Spanx founder Sara Blakely worked unglamorous jobs (including selling fax machines door to door) before pooling her $5,000 life savings to create her company.
Her empire is now worth about $1.5 billion.
Jan Koum
As a child, Ukrainian immigrant Jan Koum relied on food stamps before growing up and creating WhatsApp, the world’s biggest mobile messaging service.
He’s now got a $6.8 billion fortune.
John Paul DeJoria
Shampoo and tequila do not seem to go together. But John Paul DeJoria has made a $2.8 billion fortune in those two businesses.
Oh, we almost forgot to mention: Before he got rich, he was so poor he slept in his car.
Leonardo Del Vecchio
The Luxottica founder’s story sounds like a novel. Leonardo Del Vecchi's impoverished mother had to give him to an orphanage when he was a baby.
He went on to serve as a tool and die maker’s apprentice before parlaying his metalworking skills into a $21.6 billion eyeglass empire.