F. W. Woolworth pioneered fixed prices, direct buying from manufacturers and self-service display cases with his Five-and-Dime variety stores.
Cornelius Vanderbilt quit school at 11, started his own ferry at 16 with $100 borrowed from his mother, and built shipping and railroad monopolies that made him one of the richest Americans in history.
J.P. Morgan financed the creation of U.S. Steel, General Electric and International Harvester and, during the Panic of 1907, organized the coalition of financiers that saved the US monetary system.
George Soros founded the Quantum Fund, earned a $1 billion profit betting against the pound on Black Wednesday in 1992 and has donated more than $32 billion to the Open Society Foundations.
Bill Ackman founded Gotham Partners in 1992 and later Pershing Square Capital Management, becoming one of the best-known activist investors on Wall Street.
Henry Kravis co-founded Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and pioneered the leveraged buyout, including the RJR Nabisco deal chronicled in Barbarians at the Gate.
Daniel Lubetzky built PeaceWorks around Middle East cooperation, then launched KIND Snacks in 2003, which became the fastest-growing US snack company in 2015 before Mars agreed to acquire it in 2020.
Cameron Winklevoss, an Olympic rower with twin brother Tyler, co-founded ConnectU, sued Mark Zuckerberg over Facebook in 2004 and went on to co-found the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange.
Indra Nooyi moved from Chennai to Yale in 1978 and led PepsiCo as chairman and CEO from 2006 to 2018, ranking repeatedly among the world's most powerful women.
Gary Vaynerchuk grew his family's wine store, then became a digital marketing leader through VaynerMedia and co-founded Resy, which American Express acquired in 2019.
Tom Ford, previously creative director at Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, launched his own brand in 2005 and directed the films A Single Man and Nocturnal Animals.
Michael Kors redesigned his mother's wedding dress at five, sold clothes from his parents' basement as a teenager and built a global fashion brand now part of Capri Holdings.
