Aug.28,2018,10:37AM
Oprah Winfrey grew up in poverty and started off her career by becoming the first African American
TV correspondent in Nashville. Lucy Nicholson/Reuters
• From George Soros to Larry Ellison to Oprah Winfrey, here's a look at how some of the
wealthiest people on the planet came up from nothing.
Billionaires aren't all born with silver spoons in their mouths.
The "rags-to-riches" trope may be a cliché, but it's one that's definitely grounded in reality for
some famous billionaires.
Through extraordinary grit and perseverance, individuals across the globe have beat the odds and
achieved their own rags-to-riches stories.
Here are 21 people who started off life poor and went on to become billionaires:
At the beginning of his career, Laliberté had fire in his belly — literally. The Canadian-born
circus busker played the accordion, walked on stilts, and ate fire.
Later on, Business Insider previously reported, he took a chance and flew a troupe from Quebec
to Los Angeles without purchasing a return fair. The circus troup traveled to Las Vegas and
became Cirque du Soleil.
The son of Russian immigrants, Alan Gerry dropped out of high school in order to pursue a
career in the Marines.
Bloomberg reported that, after his stint in the military, Gerry went on to found "a tiny television
repair business after training via the G.I. Bill."
In 1956, Gerry made the decision to take the $1,500 he earned from his small business, and
found a cable company. The company went on to become known as Cablevision, which sold to
Time Warner for an estimated $2.7 billion in 1996, according to Forbes.
Kenny Troutt, the founder of Excel Communications,
paid his way through college by selling life
insurance.
Troutt grew up with a bartender dad and paid for his own tuition at Southern Illinois University
by selling life insurance. He made most of his money from phone company Excel
Communications, which he founded in 1988 and took public in 1996. Two years later, Troutt
merged his company with Teleglobe in a $3.5 billion deal.
Born into a nomadic tribe in the Syrian dessert to a poor mother who was raped by his father and
died when he was young, Altrad was raised by his grandmother. She banned him from attending
school in Raqqa, the city that is now capital of ISIS. Altrad attended school anyway, and when he
moved to France to attend university, he knew no French and lived off of one meal a day.
Still, he earned a PhD in computer science, worked for some leading French companies, and
eventually bought a failing scaffolding company, which he transformed into one of the world's
leading manufacturers of scaffolding and cement mixers, Altrad Group.
He has previously been named French Entrepreneur of the Year and World Entrepreneur of the
Year.
In an interview with the Mirror, Schultz said: "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.
He's since stepped down from his role as the coffee giant's CEO, and also resigned as executive
chairman in 2018.
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 firstAfrican 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."
Before the age of 10, DeJoria, a first generation American, sold Christmas cards and newspapers
to help support his family. He was eventually sent to live in a foster home and even spent some
time in a gang before joining the military.
With a $700 dollar loan, DeJoria created John Paul Mitchell Systems and sold the shampoo door-
to-door while living in his car. He later started Patron Tequila, and now invests in other
industries.
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.
To help pay for Langone's school at Bucknell University, he worked odd jobs and his parents
mortgaged their home.
In 1968, Langone worked with Ross Perot to take Electronic Data Systems public. (It was later
acquired by HP.) Just two years later, he partnered with Bernard Marcus to start Home Depot,
which also went public in 1981.
Bloomberg reported that Stephen Bisciotti lost his father when he was eight, and subsequently
had to work himself through college while attending Salisbury State.
He went on to co-found a firm that would become Allegis Group — one of the biggest talent and
staffing companies in the world —at the age of 23.
Now, according to Forbes, the Maryland native owns the NFL's Baltimore Ravens team.
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 the
soccer club Fulham.
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.
In his early teens, Soros posed as the godson of an employee of the Hungarian Ministry of
Agriculture in order to stay safe from the Nazi occupation of Hungary. In 1947, Soros escaped
the country to live with his relatives in London. He put himself through the London School of
Economics working as a waiter and railway porter.
After graduating, Soros worked at a souvenir shop before getting a job as a banker in New York
City. In 1992, his famous bet against the British pound made him a billion dollars.
Koum was born in Kyiv, Ukraine. At the age of 16, he accompanied his mother to California,
where they secured an apartment through government assistance. In order to survive, he swept
floors at a local store.
According to the Independent, Koum taught himself computer skills. In 2009, he cofounded the
world's largest mobile messaging service WhatsApp, which was purchased by Facebook for $22
billion in 2014.
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 Sibneft company, 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.
A 2009 BBC article reported 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.
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.
Pinault is now the honorary chairman 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.
Ka-shing fled mainland China for Hong Kong in the 1940s, but his father died when he was 15,
leaving Ka-shing responsible for supporting his family.
In 1950, he started his own company, Cheung Kong Industries, which manufactured plastics at
first. The firm later expanded into the real estate business.
Adelson, the son of a cab driver, grew up in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and began selling
newspapers at the age of 12, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.
A Forbes profile of the billionaire says years later, after dropping out of the City College of New
York, Adelson "built a fortune running vending machines, selling newspaper ads, helping small
businesses go public, developing condos and hosting trade shows."
Adelson lost almost all of his money in the Great Recession, but he earned much of it back in the
following years. He now runs Las Vegas Sands, the largest casino company in the world, and is
considered the most high-profile political donor in America, Forbes reported.
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.