Fired from Handy Dan in 1978, Arthur Blank co-founded Home Depot with Bernard Marcus, opened the first stores in Atlanta in 1979, and later bought the Atlanta Falcons.
Tony Hsieh sold LinkExchange to Microsoft for $265 million in 1998, then led online retailer Zappos as CEO for 21 years until August 2020.
Sam Walton opened the first Walmart in Rogers, Arkansas, in 1962 and built it into the world's largest corporation by revenue. He was the richest person in the United States from 1982 to 1988.
Martha Stewart built a lifestyle empire spanning magazines, television and merchandising, survived a 2004 conviction and five months in prison, and staged a comeback that returned her company to profit in 2006.
Sara Blakely turned $5,000 in savings and a pair of cut-off pantyhose into Spanx, then launched the footwear brand Sneex in 2024. She was named to the Time 100 in 2012.
Jeff Bezos turned a 1994 online bookstore into Amazon, the world's largest e-commerce and cloud company, and went on to found Blue Origin and buy The Washington Post.
He quit Microsoft, came home, and registered a company in his parents' house in Greater Kailash. Three of its four websites were shut down. The fourth was Lenskart, which listed in 2025 raising over ₹7,200 crore.
