People Who Became Very Rich in America

One of the reasons Starbucks likes to stick up for liberal causes is the fact its founder Howard Schultz grew up very poor, so poor he lived in housing for the poor when he was a child. He has said, “I may have a suit and tie on now, but I know where I’m from, and I know what it’s like.” Schultz was accepted by Xerox as a salesman. He was promoted but quickly moved on to the coffee business where he became responsible for their U.S. operations. This is how he discovered a new company called Starbucks. He joined them and became Director of Marketing. He wanted the company to open coffee houses but the owners decided against it even though they had a successful trial. He opened his own, and in two years convinced Starbucks to sell him their business for 3.8 million dollars. The rest is history.

Do Won Chang came to this country seeking a better life and wow, he certainly found it. When he got here he needed a job, and became a janitor among other things. IN 1984 he and his wife were able to open a small store which carried clothing. As time went buy they kept buying more stores, and because of their success they reached the incredible number of 600 stores. Today the stores carry all sorts of fashion items for both men and women and the couple are estimated to be worth 6.1 billion dollars.

Stephen Bisciotti didn’t have enough money to pay for college so he had to work his way through. His family weren’t poor, but they were middle class and didn’t have enough money for a lot of extras. His father was a construction sales executive. When he graduated college, he and his cousin started a business out of his cousin’s basement. They had started a business called Aerotek which staffed aerospace and technology sectors. The first year it made 1.5 million dollars. By the time the year 2000 rolled around he had enough money to purchase 49% of the Ravens football team. He also received an option to purchase the remaining 51% which he did. His net worth is estimated at 4.5 billion dollars.

Jan Koum started out with nothing. He and his mother came from Kyiv, Ukraine and moved into an apartment in California with the help of government assistance. His mother worked as a baby sitter to feed the family and he swept the floors in a grocery store. As Koum was growing up he became interested in computer programming. He joined a group of hackers where he met some of the future founders of social websites and others. He went to college and later was hired by Yahoo. He founded WhatsApp with a friend in 2009. In 2014 Facebook purchased WhatsApp for 19 billion dollars. In 2018 it was estimated Koum was worth 9.1 billion dollars.

I think most of us have heard of Ralph Lauren. He was born in the Bronx to Jewish immigrants. His father was a house painter and artist. He went to high school, but dropped out of business school. He began a business specializing in men’s ties in 1967. He convinced a business which he worked for called Beau Brummell to let him start his own line of merchandise with them. He founded the Polo name. By 1969 his line of clothes became so popular Bloomingdale’s in Manhattan was selling them exclusively. Then he started to also sell women’s clothes. It is estimated he was worth 7.1 billion dollars in early 2018.

Another case of an immigrant coming to the United States from Pakistan and eventually striking it rich was the case of Shahid Khan. He is also known as Shad Khan. He came to this country at 16 years old with nothing and had to wash dishes to make money. Eventually he graduated from University of Illinois and received a degree in industrial engineering. When he was in college he obtained a job with an automotive manufacturing company and when he graduated he was hired as engineering director. Eventually he started a small company with a loan from the Better Business Bureau and some money he had managed to save. His company supplied bumpers and it was so good at it the big three started to buy bumpers from him. Next Toyota began to buy bumpers. By 1989 every Toyota vehicle sold in the U.S. had his bumpers on them. He purchased the ownership in the Jacksonville Jaguars and purchased the Fulham F.C. of London soccer club, Fulham of the Premier League. His estimated worth is 7.6 billion dollars as of the early part of 2018.

There are those who claim one cannot make it anymore in the United States, but this is far from the truth. Sure, the stories of people going from rags to riches are rare, but it certainly does happen. I have only mentioned billionaires. There are far more multi-millionaires. If you do a search for the number of millionaires in the United States you will find, this is not a pun, millions of them, 13.6 million to be exact. This means the United States has 41% of the world’s millionaires. It also has the most billionaires with 585, out of 2,754 worldwide. Which means we have a shade over 21% of all the billionaires in the world.