Big Fish from Nothing

Trying to think of people who started from nothing and made it very big. Obvious examples include Alan Sugar (electronics out of the back of a van) and Richard Branson (college music mag, records at college, or drugs depending on who you believe).

Can you think of any others, and how they did it?

Bill Gates, obviously.

Yeah that works, I should have been more specific. I’d prefer people who have traded to get there. How did Trump start out? Was he rich already or was it all front?

Jim Rogers…investment banker

The guys who started HP.

The guy who started SONY.

Warren Buffet

This man:

[quote]Gary Coull
April 14, 1954 - October 26, 2006

Flamboyant Canadian journalist who co-founded CLSA, an innovative brokerage for investors in the Asia-Pacific markets


Coull: one of the first to predict the astronomic rise of China

GARY COULL was a former journalist in Hong Kong whose pushy charm, business acumen and natural nose for a story took him to the top of the financial world. An accomplished schmoozer with a tenacious eye for detail, he predicted the astronomic rise of China and created Asia’s most successful brokerage house.
In his headlong lunge to sell the Asia story to the investment community Coull and his company, CLSA, transformed the often dryly mathematical science of equity research into a vibrant and original mixture of news-led themes, social analysis and applied demographics. Investors, he believed firmly, needed more than just spreadsheets and figures to form their opinions.

Coull’s extraordinary skill at nurturing contacts and instinct as a showman shaped the company ethic, and CLSA’s investor forums across Asia were the glitzy, almost excessive, manifestation of this. Presidents, business leaders and, on one occasion, Coull’s own cancer doctor, would speak at the events. It was Coull who persuaded Alan Greenspan to address the Tokyo forum just two days after he had retired as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Later that evening the conference guests were greeted by a squadron of hostesses wearing specially commissioned sequined cowboy hats in the CLSA company colours.

Via the often irreverent, sometimes tangential, output of his lovingly nurtured research department, Coull encouraged fund managers to join him in studying the behaviour of everyday consumers and in pursuing the bigger picture. Coull prided himself on making Asia comprehensible to the outsider, and pushed remorselessly for better corporate governance at companies throughout the region. Unlike rival houses, he liberally hired journalists as researchers, hoping that, like him, they would reduce big issues to their essentials and give clients the all-important “angle” to each investment decision.

Coull wanted the research notes — printed in bright yellow and blue graphics — to be a cheeky, highly visible alternative to what he called the “dull mainstream” of traditional stock broking. One focused on the spending habits and ambitions of 20-year-olds across Asia; another looked at how Japanese children think about death. The CLSA notes on bird flu, “One flew over the chicken’s nest”, were among the only places investors could see the financial impact of the virus assessed in terms they could work with.

Even when he was serving in the supposedly hands-off role of chairman, Coull’s influence was clearly detectable in much of CLSA’s research. To show, for example, divergent consumer spending habits and the uneven spread of Chinese economic success, one classic Coull-inspired research note consisted largely of photographs of families from throughout the sprawling kingdom. The pictures required each family to stand outside their home surrounded by the entire contents of their house — everything from flat-screen televisions to cheap plastic cookware.

“Stick the story at the front, and leave the numbers at the back,” was the order he growled to any analyst who had temporarily forgotten the company ethos of “blue and yellow” brokerage.

Younger researchers working at CLSA could hardly believe that it would be the chairman himself who would berate them for minor errors that he had discovered buried deep within their reports.

Coull’s pursuit of the CLSA vision and tendency to micromanage research, though undoubted strengths of his company, attracted considerable criticism. Possessed of a legendary temper, he could be a fearsome boss, and he was an unforgiving stickler for detail. Just weeks before his death from colonic cancer, he upbraided a senior colleague over the cover illustration for a research report on “Chindia” — a trademarked concept devised by Coull himself to describe an economic bloc formed by considering China and India a single developing market of 2.5 billion consumers.

The illustration presented to him consisted of Chinese and Indian leaders staking their claims on a vast Monopoly board. “Rip it up,” snapped Coull, “China and India’s growth is not a game.”

The greatest impact of Coull’s work was naturally in Asia, where the cocktail of diverse emerging markets, vast populations and staggering economic potential first inspired him to settle as a journalist.

The middle-class son of a Vancouver auctioneer, he graduated from British Columbia University and travelled widely as a young man, working briefly as a dishwasher in the House of Commons in London, and on a kibbutz in Israel. But it was in Hong Kong that he settled eventually in 1977, using his well-developed charm to cajole his way into a job on the region’s largest English-language newspaper, The South China Morning Post. He later moved to the Far Eastern Economic Review — the respected business magazine that gave him access to the boardrooms and corporate suites of Asia he would one day inhabit again as a company chairman.

But by 1983 the infectious entrepreneurial spirit of Hong Kong had fired Coull with ambitions way beyond the limitations of journalism. For four years he tried his hand at a number of precarious enterprises, including a stint as a wholesale mop salesman with a shipment of dud mops, before falling in with another ex-journalist, “Aussie” Jim Walker.

Knowing that broking was an industry where Coull’s salesmanship and ingenuity would be well rewarded, Walker lured his friend into that world at the then tiny firm of Winfull Laing and Cruickshank. The minnow was later bought by the giant French financial group Crédit Lyonnais, and the kernel of CLSA took shape. Coull and Walker, however, ensured that they personally held a substantial stake in the emerging firm — a stake that would secure what Coull saw as a vital degree of management independence.

In its early days, though, CLSA was by no means assured of success. Dozens of great brokerages had risen and fallen in Asia, and many more would eventually lose their independence in a market saturated with long-established players. But the pair clung determinedly to what they saw as CLSA’s “added value”: a process of educating global investors in the promise of Asia through the lenses of demographics and consumer behaviour.

The strategy worked. As the 1990s savaged and shook the investment banking scene, CLSA was the house carrying off the awards for its Asian research. “We have outlasted the brands of the 1980s, we are the single surviving name from that era,” Coull boasted.

With the success of CLSA came considerable wealth, and Coull knew how to spend it: a lover of casinos, cigars and the races, he lived to see his own horse, Stable Mail, win the Hong Kong Peninsula Cup Trophy in 2005.

While the CLSA brand and the company’s 1,000-strong staff survive as Coull’s most obvious legacy, a research note he wrote himself in 1989 will perhaps endure as his greatest achievement.

From Wall Street to Hong Kong, there is no dearth of brokers and economists claiming to have foreseen the economic explosion of China decades ago. Coull was among a tiny handful of those with a document to prove it: a detailed prediction of Chinese economic success long before the mainstream political or financial community had envisioned it. [/quote]

Michael Dell

Sold magazine subscriptions at high school and invested US$1000 of the profits into his own computer company. Sales of US$49 billion in 2004.

I think the guy that started Best Buy. The story goes he had to get rid of a bunch of electronics because a storm messed his stuff up and he ended up making more money doing his deep discount sale than he ever had before. He just continued doing that.

Sweet, thanks guys.

His parents were fairly well off (though not rich) so I don’t think he counts.

Ray Croc

Sam Walton

[quote]Samuel Moore Walton (March 29, 1918 – April 6, 1992) was the founder of two American retailers, Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club. He was the patriarch of the Walton family, the richest family in the world. . .

Growing up during the Great Depression, Walton had numerous chores to help make financial ends meet for his family. He milked the family cow, bottled the surplus and drove it to customers. Afterwards, he would deliver newspapers on a paper route. Upon graduating, he was voted “Most Versatile Boy.”

. . . Walton joined JCPenney as a management trainee in Des Moines, Iowa three days after graduating from college. This position earned him $75 a month. He resigned in 1942 in anticipation of being inducted into the military for service in World War II. . .

In 1945, after leaving the military, Walton decided he wanted to own a department store but would settle for a variety store. With some help from his father-in-law with a loan of $20,000, plus $5000 he had saved from his time in the Army, Walton purchased a Ben Franklin variety store in Newport, Arkansas. . .

It was here that Walton pioneered many concepts that would prove to be crucial to his success. Walton made sure the shelves were consistently stocked with a wide range of goods at low prices. His store also stayed open later than most other stores. . . He also pioneered the practice of discount merchandizing by buying wholesale goods from the lowest priced supplier. This allowed him to pass on savings to his customers, which drove up his sales volume. Higher volumes allowed him to negotiate even lower purchase prices. . .

Walton located a variety store in Bentonville, Arkansas which he would open as another Ben Franklin franchise, but called “Walton’s Five and Dime.” . . . Walton went on to found another variety store in Fayetteville, Arkansas. . . It went on to become as successful as the original Five and Dime. . .

The first true Wal-Mart opened in 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas. Wal-Mart eventually became the world’s largest retailer. In 2004, more than 1.5 million people were employed by the Wal-Mart corporation. . .[/quote]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Walton

Chung Ju-yung

[quote]Chung Ju-yung (November 25 1915â€"March 21 2001) was the founder of Hyundai Group along with his brothers, at one time South Korea’s largest multinational conglomerate (chaebol). The Hyundai Group split up from the 1980’s to until recently into many satellite groups as follows.

While living, Chung had a very successful career. In Seosan, he carried out a successful reclamation project, using a decommissioned oil tanker as a cofferdam. Also he had sent 500 cows to North Korea over the DMZ. He was the first to propose the Geumgangsan sightseeing excursions. He died in 2001.He developed PONY as a first Korean car. That was the start of Hyundai Motors.

He founded Hyundai Heavy Steel Company. The Company developed non dock ship making method.[/quote]

His parents were fairly well off (though not rich) so I don’t think he counts.[/quote]
Father is a big shot lawyer in WA. Gave his son a 2 million dollar trust fund when he went to Harvard.
I guess it depends if you think 2 million USD is a lot of money for a 18 year old to start out with.

Donald Trump was a son of a successful real estate developer that specialized in Brooklyn. Didn’t start life with a 2 million trust fund like Gates, but he wasn’t blue collar working class either. Lived the playboy lifestyle well into college and grad school. Found his calling in Manhattan.

John Schnatter- Founder of Papa John’s Pizza

He delivered pizza in college. After college in 1984 he sold his car ($1,600) to buy partnership in his fathers’ local bar in Louiseville, Kentucky and knocked out a closet to set up a kitchen and start selling pizza. Papa John’s is now #3 behind Dominos and Pizza Hut in the United States.


Just a sidebar…One day to be added to this list will be “Donald”, Owner and Founder of QQPizza, #1 across ASIA. Stay tuned for more details.

A few good, honest, back-to-earthers from New England and Colorad0 who hit it big:

Roxanne Quimby, founder of Burt’s Bees

[quote]The story of Roxanne Quimby is the stuff of entrepreneurial legend. A divorced mother living without electricity, she teamed up with Burt Shavitz, a reclusive beekeeper, and in 1984 began selling items made from beeswax. Over the years she built that crafts business into Burt’s Bees, a leading natural personal-care brand. Last fall Quimby, who’d bought out Shavitz when he retired, struck a deal to sell 80% of the company to AEA Investors, a private-equity firm, for more than $175 million. She plans to donate half the proceeds to a land trust to establish a national park in northern Maine and is now even weighing a run for that state’s governorship.

Burt’s Bees was a result of having my kids. I’d been an artist, part of a generation that was very critical of capitalism. When I was 25, my husband and I bought 30 acres …[/quote]
findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_k … kepm352324

Tom and Kate Chappell, of Tom’s of Maine

[quote]Unable to find natural personal-care products for themselves and their five children, Tom and Kate Chappell decided to make their own. They borrowed $5,000 from a friend to start Tom’s of Maine and began making Clearlake, the country’s first phosphate-free laundry detergent, in 1970. Five years later, Tom’s of Maine premiered the country’s first natural toothpaste to hit the fledgling commercial market for natural products.

Today Tom’s distributes more than 100 products, including toothpaste, decongestants, mouthwash and chest rubs, to drug stores and supermarkets all over the world. Astounding growth, considering the company went three years without developing a single new product in the mid-1980s.

That’s when Chappell came close to dropping out of the business world and considered selling the company. Instead the disillusioned CEO enrolled in the theology program at Harvard Divinity School. He graduated in 1991 with a master’s degree in theology and a renewed passion for the company and its goals. Soon after, Tom and Kate decided to embark on the biggest expansion in Tom’s of Maine’s 20-year history. . . .[/quote]
allbusiness.com/human-resour … 226-2.html

boston.com/business/articles … _of_maine/

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, of Ben & Jerry’s

[quote]Friends since high school, in 1978 Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield took a $5 correspondence course in ice cream-making from the Pennsylvania State University. They founded the company the same year in a renovated gas station in Burlington, Vermont, using distinctive production methods they learned from Steve Herrell. Starting with a $12,000 investment ($4,000 of which was borrowed), the company built a devoted following for their products and business practices.

The company experienced difficulties with their distribution early on. Ice cream brand Häagen-Dazs, at the time a subsidiary of Pillsbury, tried to force independent distributors to choose one of the brands, and Ben & Jerry’s filed a lawsuit against the Häagen-Dazs subsidiary saying that it had acted illegally in its operation and was trying to put Ben & Jerry’s out of business. To coincide with the lawsuit, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield also began the “What is the Doughboy afraid of?” campaign to raise public awareness. This campaign included stickers placed on all Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream products with a hotline number where people could complain, or query. Notably, the phone number Ben & Jerry’s placed on its products was a Häagen-Dazs phone number, so customers could complain directly to Ben & Jerry’s competitor. They also encouraged a boycott of all Pillsbury subsidiaries, which included Burger King.

Pillsbury went to Ben & Jerry’s with an out-of-court settlement and signed an agreement that stated it would not impose any such rules on the suppliers. The Ben & Jerry’s brand grew tremendously, partly because of the success of the David and Goliath case and the publicity the brand received because of it. Ben & Jerry’s tendency to specialize in unusually complex flavors (the company originated the now-often imitated “Seagull Droppings” flavor[citation needed], for example) further aided in sales.

The capital raised from their IPO helped fuel rapid expansion, but also reduced the founders’ control.

In 1988, Cohen and Greenfield were named “U.S. Small Business Persons of the Year” by President Ronald Reagan.

After a failed attempt by Cohen to return the company to private ownership, Ben & Jerry’s was purchased in August 2000 by the Unilever conglomerate for slightly over $326.43 million.[/quote]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_&_Jerry’s

Mo Siegel and John Hay, of Celestial Seasonings

[quote]Celestial Seasonings founders Mo Siegel, John Hay and others started gathering herbs and flowers in the mountains around Boulder and selling them to local health-food stores in 1969.

In the 1970s the company grew rapidly, creating popular herbal tea blends (such as Sleepytime and Red Zinger) and moving to larger headquarters twice; they were selling internationally by 1977. Celestial Seasonings created and sponsored the Red Zinger Classic bicycle race in Colorado during the 1970s.

Celestial Seasonings was purchased by Kraft Foods in 1984 . . . [/quote]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Seasonings

John Risley and Colin MacDonald - Clearwater Seafoods. They started the business selling lobsters and such out of the back of a pick up truck.

[quote]Year-to-date 2006 Clearwater’s sales and net earnings were $231.6 million
and $20.6 million respectively versus sales of $230.6 million and net earnings
of $15.1 million in 2005. During the third quarter of 2006 Clearwater’s sales
and net earnings were $80.0 million and $8.1 million respectively versus sales
of $93.5 million and net earnings of $12.1 million in 2005.[/quote]

[quote]What do software mogul Bill Gates and banking investor Warren Buffett have in common with wanted Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera?

They are all featured in Forbes magazine’s world’s billionaires report as “self-made” billionaires.

Guzman Loera, whose nickname means Shorty, escaped from a Mexican prison in 2001. He heads the powerful Sinaloa cartel, investigators say. Authorities on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border blame the Sinaloa and other cartels for a surge in violence in the region.

He ranked 701th on Forbes’ yearly report, with an estimated fortune of $1 billion. . .

Guzman Loera has a three-decade history of drug trade spanning North, Central and South America. The Forbes profile of Guzman Loera reported that “the U.S. government is offering a $5 million reward” for the billionaire’s capture.

Forbes magazine was not available for comment, but its article offers a clue as to why Guzman Loera made the list.

“So is there anywhere one can still make a fortune these days? The 38 newcomers offer a few clues. Among the more notable new billionaires are Mexican Joaquin Guzman Loera, one of the biggest suppliers of cocaine to the U.S.”[/quote]
edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/ameri … topstories

… but his career took a turn for the worse after his death?