Here are a few business tycoons who worked their way to the top
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Starbucks’ Howard Schultz grew up in a housing complex for the poor.
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Net worth: $2.9 billion
In an interview with British tabloid Mirror, Schultz says: “Growing up I always felt like I was living on the other side of the tracks. I knew the people on the other side had more resources, more money, happier families. And for some reason, I don’t know why or how, I wanted to climb over that fence and achieve something beyond what people were saying was possible. I may have a suit and tie on now but I know where I’m from and I know what it’s like.”
Schultz ended up winning a football scholarship to the University of Northern Michigan and went to work for Xerox after graduation. Shortly after, he took over a coffee shop called Starbucks, which at the time had only 60 shops. Schultz became the company’s CEO in 1987 and grew the coffee chain to more than 16,000 outlets worldwide.
Russian business tycoon and Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich was born into poverty and orphaned at age two.
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Net worth: $8.2 billion
Abramovich was born in southern Russia, into poverty. After being orphaned at age two, he was raised by an uncle and his family in a subarctic region of northern Russia.
While a student at the Moscow Auto Transport Institute in 1987, he started a small company producing plastic toys, which helped him eventually found an oil business and make a name for himself within the oil industry. Later, as sole leader of the Sibneftcompany, he completed a merger that made it the fourth biggest oil company in the world. The company was sold to state-run gas titan Gazprom in 2005 for for $13 billion.
He acquired the Chelsea Football Club in 2003 and owns the world’s largest yacht, which cost him almost $400 million in 2010.
Forever 21 founder Do Won Chang worked as a janitor, gas station attendant, and in a coffee shop when he first moved to America.
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Net worth: $6.5 billion
The husband-and-wife team — Do Won Chang and Jin Sook — behind Forever 21 didn’t always have it so easy. After moving to America from Korea in 1981, Do Won had to work three jobs at the same time to make ends meet. They opened their first clothing store in 1984.
Forever 21 is now an international, 480-store empire that rakes in around $3 billion in sales a year.
Born into poverty, Oprah Winfrey became the first African American TV correspondent in Nashville.
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Net worth: $3 billion
Winfrey was born into a poor family in Mississippi, but this didn’t stop her from winning a scholarship to Tennessee State University and becoming the first African American TV correspondent in the state at the age of 19.
In 1983, Winfrey moved to Chicago to work for an AM talk show which would later be called “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”
Ralph Lauren was once a clerk at Brooks Brothers dreaming of men’s ties.
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Net worth: $6.8 billion
Lauren graduated high school in the Bronx, New York, but later dropped out of college to join the Army. It was while working as a clerk at Brooks Brothers that Lauren questioned whether men were ready for wider and brighter designs in ties. The year he decided to make his dream a reality, 1967, Lauren sold $500,000 worth of ties. He started Polo the next year.
Steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal came from modest beginnings in India.
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Net worth: $12.3 billion
A 2009 BBC article says the ArcelorMittal CEO and chairman, who was born in 1950 to a poor family in the Indian state of Rajasthan, “established the foundations of his fortune over two decades by doing much of his business in the steel industry equivalent of a discount warehouse.”
Today Mittal runs the world’s largest steel making company and is a multibillionaire.
Luxury goods mogul Francois Pinault quit high school in 1974 after being bullied for being poor.
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Net worth: $14.2 billion
Pinault is now the face of fashion conglomerate Kering (formerly PPR), but at one time, he had to quit high school because he was teased so harshly for being poor. As a businessman, Pinault is known for his “predator” tactic, which includes buying smaller firms for a fraction of the cost when the market crashes. He eventually started PPR, which owns high-end fashion houses including Gucci, Stella McCartney, Alexander McQueen, and Yves Saint Laurent.
Leonardo Del Vecchio grew up in an orphanage and later worked in a factory where he lost part of his finger.
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Net worth: $24.1 billion
Del Vecchio was one of five children who was eventually sent to an orphanage because his widowed mother couldn’t care for him. He would later work in a factory making molds of auto parts and eyeglass frames.
At the age of 23, Del Vecchio opened his own molding shop, which expanded to become the world’s largest maker of sunglasses and prescription eyewear with brands like Ray-Ban and Oakley.
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison dropped out of college after his adoptive mother died, and he held odd jobs for eight years.
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Net worth: $49.8 billion
Born in Brooklyn, New York, to a single mother, Ellison was raised by his aunt and uncle in Chicago. After his aunt died, Ellison dropped out of college and moved to California to work odd jobs for the next eight years. He founded software development company Oracle in 1977, which is now one of the largest technology companies in the world.
Last September he announced his plans to step down as Oracle’s CEO to become CTO and executive chairman.
At one time, businessman Shahid Khan washed dishes for $1.20 an hour.
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Net worth: $4.4 billion
He’s now one of the richest people in the world, but when Khan came to the US from Pakistan, he worked as a dishwasher while attending the University of Illinois. Khan now owns Flex-N-Gate, one of the largest private companies in the US, the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars, and Premier League soccer club Fulham.