Famous Entrepreneurs

Martha Helen Stewart was born on 3rd August in 1941 in Jersey City in New Jersey and became a millionaire by founding Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia which is a media and merchandising company. She has been successful in various different business areas such as her talk show Martha, her numerous bestselling books, and her magazine Martha Stewart Living. In 2001 she was named the third most powerful women in the United States by Ladies Home Journal.

Martha was raised in Nutley in New Jersey and graduated from Nutley High School. Her mother taught her how to cook and sew; her father taught her how to garden and her grandparents taught her the processes of canning and preserving which she later published books about. She took many extracurricular activities such as Art Club and she wrote for the school newspaper. She did some modelling and appeared in the television commercial “Rather fight than switch” cigarette adverts. She got straight As and was awarded a partial scholarship to Banard College in New York City. She majored in architectural history and met her future husband her Andrew Stewart who she married on 1st July 1961 and then later divorced in 1989. She left Barnard and continued modelling, returning a year later to graduate with a double major in History and Architectural History.

In 1967 she became a stockbroker and was very successful. She left the business in 1973 and in 1976 started a catering business which was very successful. She catered for a book release party where she met Alan Mirken who later helped her to develop the cookbook “Entertaining” which was a New York Times Best Seller. She then released many other cookbooks such as Martha Stewart’s Quick Cook (1983) and Martha Stewart’s Christmas (1989). She also wrote newspaper and magazine articles about homemaking.

In 1990 she signed with Time Publishing Ventures to develop her magazine Martha Stewart Living for which she worked as editor in chief. In 1993 she started doing a television programme based around her magazine and she became a frequent contributor to CBS’s The Early Show.

In September 1997 with her business partner Sharon Patrick she secured funding so that she could buy all of the television, print and merchandising ventures related to her name brand. She then consolidated this into the Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia company. She is the chairwoman, president and the CEO of this company.

The same year she also launched her website, catalogue business and floral business. She is the majority shareholder of her company with 96% control of voting power.

Milton Snavely Hershey became a millionaire by founding The Hershey Chocolate Company and the company town of Hershey in Pennsylvania.

He was born on 13th September 1857 on a farm in Pennsylvania. Because of the fact that his family regularly moved around, he quit school at the fifth grade and became an apprentice to a printer in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. However this apprenticeship soon ended because he didn’t enjoy the work and he instead began and completed an apprenticeship of four years working with a candy maker from Lancaster. When he completed the apprenticeship he then set up a candy making business which initially failed, along with his second and third attempts at establishing candy making businesses in New York City and Chicago.

In 1883 he came back to Lancaster and successfully set up the Lancaster Caramel Company using a recipe for caramel he had come across during his travels. This business allowed him to progress further in the candy making business, beginning his career as a successful businessman.

Using the money he made from the Lancaster Caramel Company he was able to buy 40,000 acres of land close to the area he was born. This allowed him to get the quantity of milk that was needed to produce good quality milk chocolate, which during this period was exclusively a Swiss product. He eventually managed to make a good formula for it using the method of trial and error, and in 1903 the building of his chocolate manufacturing plant started. The factory was completed in 1905, and later became the biggest chocolate manufacturing plant in the world. It used the most up to date mass production methods available which led to Hershey’s chocolate becoming the first product like it to be nationally marketed.

The factory started off in the middle of farmland, but eventually buildings such as houses, churches and other factories and businesses were set up around the chocolate factory, along with a transportation system. Eventually a public school system was implemented along with HersheyPark which had amusement arcades and a swimming pool. This bought more business to the town. Hershey used a lot of the money he had to help others and he and his wife were unable to have children. All of the money he made from his chocolate business he put into the public school (later renamed the Milton Hershey School) via a trust. He also set up the charitable M.S Hershey Foundation.

He passed away on 13th October, 1945, aged 88.

Richard Warren Sears was born on 7th December 1863 in Stewartville in Minnesota and became a millionaire by cofounding along with Alvah C. Roebuck: Sears, Roebuck and Company.

Sears started working when he was quite young to help his family with money. He learned telegraphy and then got a job in Redwood Falls in Minnesota as a station agent, working for the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway. In 1886 Minnesota retailer Edward Stegerson refused a shipment of gold-filled pocket watches made by a Chicago manufacturer. Sears managed to persuade the wholesaler to let him have any profit he made that was over $12. He then went around offering the watches to station agents along the line at $14. The station agents found it easy to sell the watches due to the expansion of the railways during this period and because of the recent introduction of time zones. Over six months Sears managed to earn himself a profit of $5,000.

He then went to Minneapolis to found the R.W. Sears Watch Company. He put adverts in farm newspapers and mailed flyers to possible clients.

In 1887 the company moved to Chicago as it was a significant transportation centre for the Midwestern United States. He moved to Oak Park in Illinois and went on to hire Alvah Curtis Roebuck who was a watch repairman who helped him to repair watches that were returned. He was the first employee of the company. In 1893 along with Roebuck, at the age of 30, Sears co-founded Sears, Roebuck & Company. Roebuck departed from the company a couple of years after and Sears got new business associate called Julius Rosenwald. Rosenwald was a clothier who went on to become President of the company in 1908 when Sear retired, aged 44. After he retired he moved from Oak Park to Lake Bluff in Illinois.

In 1893 Sears published their first catalogue which only offered watches at this time. Come 1897 the catalogue offered men and ladies clothes, silverware, plows, athletic equipment and bicycles. The catalogue had 500 pages and was posted to around 300,000 houses. As Sears used to live on a farm in his youth, he catered to rural consumers as he knew the things they needed. His experience on the railroad helped him to send merchandise to distant places.

The company started to sell mail order homes using the catalogues in 1908. Sears died at the age of 55 in 1914 from Bright’s disease in Waukesha in Wisconsin.

Robert L. Johnson who was known as “Bob” was born on April 8th, 1946 was the first African American to become a billionaire and to be listed on Forbes World’s richest list. He was the founder, chairman and CEO of Black Entertainment Television (BET) and is now the founder and chairman of RLJ Development. Along with rapper Nelly and basketball player Michael Jordan he owns the Charlotte Bobcats, who are a National Basketball Association franchise.

He was born in Hickory in Mississippi but during his childhood spent most of his time in Freeport in Illinois. He went to Freeport High School which he finished in 1964, and then he went to the University of Illinois where he studied history. He graduated from the university with a bachelor’s degree in 1968 but then achieved a master’s degree in International Affairs which he studied for at Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

In 1980, along with his wife Shelia Johnson he created and launched Black Entertainment Television, which at the time was the only television network with a target audience of African Americans. Eleven years on BET was the first company controlled by African Americans to be on the New York Stock exchange. In 1998 the company became private and bought all of its publicly owned stock back again. It was bought for $3 million by Viacom in 1999 which meant it was not a black owned business anymore. Johnson was the company’s chairman and Chief Executive Officer up until 2005 when Debra L. Lee, a former BET vice president took over as Chief Operating Officer and President of the company. Since 2007 BET has expanded into the BET network with channels such as BETJ, BET Hip-Hop and BET Gospel. The channels reach over 65 million American homes.

Johnson was the richest black person in America until he and his wife got divorced in 2002 and she took a large proportion of his fortune. They were married for 33 years and have two children. Oprah Winfrey is now currently the richest African American.

After selling BET, Johnson set up RLJ Companies, a business network of companies in real estate, financial services, hospitality, film production, professional sports, automotive and the gaming industry. He also founded Our Stories Films in 2006 along with Harvey Weinsein and created the $30 million Liberia Enterprise Development Fund in 2007.

According to the 2009 Forbes list he is now worth about $550 million due to the current economic recession.

Henry Ross Perot was born on 27th June 1930 and became a billionaire by founding in 1962 EDS (Electronic Data Systems) which he then sold on in 1984 to General Motors. In 1988 he also founded Perot Systems which was then sold to Dell in 2009 for $3.9 billion. He is ranked as the 68th richest person in America estimated at being worth around $5 billion in 2008. He also ran for President of the United States of America in 1992 and 1996.

He was born in Texarkana in Texas and went to Patty Hill Private School. In 1947 he graduated from Texas High School in Texarkana. He then became a member of the Boy Scouts of America and in 1942 became Eagle Scout after he had only been in the program for just over a year. He received the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award. In 1949 he went into the United States Naval Academy and helped to set up its honour system. In 1953 he graduated and was battalion commander and president of his class. In late 1954 he was made a junior grade lieutenant. He served the rest of the four years of his commitment and then left the Navy in 1957.

After leaving the Navy he got a job at IBM (International Business Machines) as a salesman. He was one of the best employees and managed to fill his year’s sales quota in only a couple of weeks. In 1962 he left IBM and founded EDS (Electronic Data Systems) in Dallas in Texas. The American government gave his business several good contracts in the 1960s ushc as computerising Medicare records and in 1968 the company went public. Within days the price of shares in the company rose from being $16 per share to being $160 per share. EDS was sold to General Motors in 1984 for $2.4 billion.

In April 1970 EDS shares decreased $450 million in only one day, leading to him attracting attention from the press and being named “the biggest individual loser ever on the New York Stock Exchange.”

In 1988 he founded Perot Systems Corporation Inc in Planto in Texas. His son H. Ross Perot Jr. later took over the job as CEO from him and also now holds the position of Chairman. Perot now serves as Chairman Emeritus.

In 1956 in Greensburg in Pennsylvania he married his wife Margot Birmingham and they have five children: Ross Jr, Nancy, Suzanne, Carolyn and Katherine. By 2007 they had 15 grandchildren.

Russell Wendell Simmons was born on 4th October 1957 and became a millionaire by founding Def Jam, a hip-hop label along with Rick Rubin and by creating the fashion lines Argyleculture, American Classics and Phat Farm. He is the third richest person in hip hop, being worth around $340 million, he is topped only by Jay-Z and Sean Combs.

Simmons has two brothers and his younger brother Rev Joseph Simmons is “Run” from the hip-hop group Run-DMC. Russell went to the City College of New York however left after a short while to start producing records and to help support rap artists such as John Chavous, Kurtis Blow and his brother’s group Run DMC. Later in his life his record label ended up signing these acts. In 1984 Russell became friends with Rick Rubin and together they established Def Jam Records. They signed LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy along with many others acts. Simmons went on to form Rush Communications, a corporation that included Def Jam along with a movie production house, a management company, a magazine, an advertising agency, Phat Farm and television shows like Def Comedy Jam. He went on to sell what he owned of Def Jam Records in 1999 for $100 million to Universal Music Group. In 2003 Run Athletics was established by Rush Communications which is a sneaker company that makes Arthur Ashe and Legacy shoes.

He went into business with Unifund and produced some re-loadable Visa debit cards such as the Baby Phat Rushcard and the Rushcard and to help people who could not get a credit card. He also put “Def Poetry” on Broadway as a live show. This led to him getting awards for the cast which was young and multicultural.

In March 2007 his self help book he wrote with Chris Morrow was published. This book is called “Do You! 12 Laws To Access The Power In You To Achieve Happiness And Success” and was published by Gotham Books.

In January 2009 he was made Editor-in-Chief of GlobalGrind.com:The World According To Hip-Hop. He also is a blogger for The Huffington Post.

On 20th Decemember 1998 he married model Kimora Lee with his brother Reverend Run conducting the service, however the couple spilt in March 2006 with their divorce being finalised in January 2009. Russell has two daughters called Ming and Aoki who both model for the Baby Phat Kids Collection.

Scott McNealy was born on 13th November 1954 in Columbus in Indiana and serves as the chairman of the company Sun Microsystems. He became a billionaire by co-founding Sun Microsystems with Andy Bechtolsheim, Bill Joy and Vinod Khosla, and in 1982. Sun Microsystems is a company that sells computer components and software.

McNealy before entering the company had a background in business rather than computer science like many other people in this type of business. He achieved a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Harvard and got an MBA from Standford Graduate School of Business. Before he went to college he went to Cranbrook Schools in Bloomfield Hills. He is married and has four children.

Sun Microsystems joined companies like Oracle Corporation, 3Com and Silicon graphics in the middle of the 1980s when they successfully started up in Silicon Valley in California. The company is now based in Santa Clara in California which is part of the Silicon Valley, with its manufacturing facilities being located in Hillsboro, Oregon in the USA and in Linlithgow in Scotland. In 1982 after McNealy had graduated from Standford, he was approached by Vinod Khosla, who had also attended Stanford who asked him to provide leadership for the business Sun Microsystems. Sun originally stood for Stanford University Network from Bechtolsheim’s original computer project.

McNealy took over Khosla’s job as CEO in 1984 who went on to depart from the company in 1985. Before this he was the Vice President of Operations from February 1982 to February 1984. After this he held the roles CEO and President of the company. He then added Chairman of the Board of Directors to his role in the company in December 1984. In April 1999 he stopped being President of the company and the job was taken over by Edward Zander, but he continued to serve as the Chairman and CEO. In July 2002 he became the President again up until April 2004 when Jonathan Schwartz took over the job. In April 2006 Jonathan Schwartz also took over as CEO after McNealy had worked as the CEO for a total of 22 years. He now remains as Chairman of the Board of Directors.

On 20th April 2009, Sun and Oracle announced that Oracle will take over Sun for $7.4 billion. This was approved by Sun’s shareholders on 16th July 2009 and as of October 2009 the acquisition is pending.

William G McGowan was born on 10th December in 1927 and became a billionaire by founding and working as the chairman of MCI Communications, which was an American telecommunications company that grew to become the second biggest long distance provider in America. By leading the company he played an essential role in the breakup of the company American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) which was in the past the largest telephone company in the world.

He was born in Ashley in Pennsylvania and joined the US army after the graduated from high school, serving as a medic for around two and a half years. When he was discharged from the army he went to Kings College in Pennsylvania and achieved a degree in chemical engineering. After this he went to Harvard Business School from which he graduated in 1954. He then went on to manage a consulting firm which helped to rescue companies that were in trouble in the garment district of New York City. The agency after about a year began to raise venture capital, which led to McGowan dealing with firms that were developing ultrasonic cleaning technology and electro-mechanical equipment.

It was in 1968 that he was first contacted by MCI due to the fact that he was experienced and skilled at raising venture capital. He invested $50,000 into the business and became chairman of Microwave Communications of America which was the predecessor to MCI Communications. Working as the chairman he raised capital for the company and set up 15 regional carriers that made the basis of the communications network for the company, out of 17. It was in 1971 that he reorganised the company into MCI Communications.

He worked extremely hard at his job, often working fifteen hours a day. In 1974 MCI filed a lawsuit against AT&T, and in 1982 McGowan’s work led to the divestiture of AT&T and the creation of a long distance telephony market in America.

On 21st December 1986, he suffered from a heart attack which led to him receiving a heart transplant on 25th April 1987. After six months he returned to work until he died on 8th June 1992 from another heart attack.

MCI Communications in 1991 had made $9.5 billion in revenues and managed 16% of the American domestic and international long distance market. Before his death McGowan set up the William G. McGowan School of Business at King’s College.

William Jaird Levitt was born on 11th February 1907 and is known as “the father of modern American suburbia” He was an American real estate development whose advances in housing after World War Two allowed these types of planned communities to be built in various areas through the creation of affordable housing. This led to him becoming a billionaire.

He was President of Levitt and Sons which was a real estate company started by his father Abraham Levitt around the beginning of the Great Depression. In this position he was able to supervise the various aspects of the company excluding the designs of the houses they built which was managed by his brother Alfred. Before World War Two the company built mainly upmarket houses on Long Island in New York and in the surrounding area. However when William came back from serving in the Navy during World War Two he realised that veterans needed more affordable housing than the housing they were building.

Therefore after the war Levitt and Sons started a large building project on Island Tree near Hepstead in Long Island. This project was known as Levittown and was an idea of Levitt’s for a planned community with houses built in the way of an assembly line. In 1947 people began to move into Levittown in New York as were known as “Levittowners”. The houses in Levittown were on sale for $8,000-$12,000 and could be paid for with monthly payments as cheap as $57.

Another similar community was then built in Bucks County in Pennsylvania by the company. This community consisted of 17,000 homes and people began moving into it in 1952. Belair at Bowie in Bowie, Maryland was built by them in the 1950s. In 1957 Bowie took over the Belair Mansion and estate which was where the Colonial Governeor Samuel Ogle lived with his Belair Stables. Other towns built by the company include Levittown in Puerto Rico in the 1960s, and towns in Palm Coast in Florida and Richmond and Fairfax in Virginia. Strathmore-at-Matawan, a 5000 house community was also built in North Central New Jersey in the early 1960s. This name was originally used by the company when they were building upper class housing in Long Island in the 1930s.

In 1968 International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) bought Levitt and Sons for around $90 million. After this Levitt lost a lot of his money in various unsuccessful investments.

He died on 28th January 1994.

William Randolph Hearst was born on April 29th 1863 and became a billionaire by becoming a leading newspaper publisher. He was born in San Francisco in California, and was the son of millionaire mining engineer, George Hearst. He went to Harvard and was a member of several notable groups before he got expelled for presenting his professors with chamber pots that had their names painted on them. He then entered the publishing business in 1887 when he took charge of the San Francisco Examiner from his father which he had acquired in 1880. He then got the most up-to-date equipment available at the time and hired the most gifted writers around during this period such as Jack London and Mark Twain which increased the newspaper’s success. When he moved to New York City in 1896 he took over The New York Journal which was failing at the time, using money from his mother Phoebe Apperson. He hired the writers Julian Hawthorne and Stephen Crane and stole Richard F. Outcault from Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. The New
York Journal became extremely successfully due to the fact that its cost was lowered to only one cent and it used sensationalist yellow journalism. Hearst then gradually acquired newspapers in other cities such as Boston, Los Angeles and Chicago. He kept expanding until he had 28 newspapers in various major American cities such as the Boston American, the Los Angeles Examiner, the Chicago Examiner, the Atlanta Georgian, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Detroit Times, the Washington Herald and the Washington Times. He also expanded into magazines such as Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, the New York Daily Mirror, Harper’s Bazaar and Town and Country, as well as expanding into book publishing which led to him making the biggest newspaper and magazine business on the globe.

He was elected as a democrat in the United States House of Representatives but failed to become mayor of New York City and governor and lieutenant of New York although he ran for the positions. However his newspapers and magazines still allowed him significant political influence. He became leader of Democratic Party in 1896 and stayed as the leader until 1935.

His empire reached its peak in 1928, before the Great Depression. The Great Depression hit his empire hard, World War Two helped to repair some of the damage but the empire never reached the same level again. Hearst died at the age of 88 on August 14th, 1951 from a heart attack.