Founders, CEOs, and entrepreneurs.
Danny Meyer opened Union Square Cafe at 27 in 1985 and built USHG, whose restaurants include Gramercy Tavern and Shake Shack.
T. Boone Pickens was the best-known corporate raider of the 1980s and chaired BP Capital Management. He gave away more than $1 billion before his death in 2019.
Conrad Hilton bought his first hotel in Cisco, Texas, in 1919 for $40,000 and built the world's first international hotel chain. He left most of his estate to the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.
Bobbi Brown launched ten natural lipstick shades at Bergdorf Goodman in 1991 and sold 100 in a day. After leaving her namesake brand in 2016 she started the Jones Road line in 2020.
Reid Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn, later served as its executive chairman, and went on to invest in and co-found AI ventures including Inflection AI and Manas AI.
Evan Spiegel turned a Stanford class project on ephemeral messaging into Snapchat, reaching a million daily users in 2012 and becoming the world's youngest billionaire in 2015.
Vera Wang went from competitive figure skating to Vogue and Ralph Lauren before opening her own bridal boutique in 1990, and sold her brand to WHP Global in 2024.
Barbara Corcoran, once labeled the 'dumb kid' because of undiagnosed dyslexia, built The Corcoran Group into a New York real estate powerhouse and sold it for $66 million in 2001. She is an original Shark Tank investor.
Colonel Sanders began selling fried chicken from a roadside restaurant in North Corbin, Kentucky, franchised it from 1952, and sold KFC in 1964 for $2 million at age 73.
Ted Turner took over his father's billboard company in 1963 and built the Turner Broadcasting System, launching CNN in 1980 as the first 24-hour cable news channel. He gave $1 billion to create the United Nations Foundation.
Steve Ballmer succeeded Bill Gates as Microsoft CEO in 2000, tripled sales over 14 years, then bought the Los Angeles Clippers and co-founded the Ballmer Group.
Ken Griffin ran a mail-order software firm from his high-school bedroom and now owns 80 percent of Citadel, one of the world's largest hedge funds. He made the largest private art purchase on record in 2015.
