Five Success Stories of Entrepreneurs Who Started their Business with Empty Pocket
It’s not unusual to hear about success stories of entrepreneurs who used the wealth they made from a previous effort to build a blooming new startup. Experienced business owners who took over a decades-old franchise and transformed it into something new. These Success stories are inspiring in their own way; but to me, it’s even more inspiring to hear about people who started with nothing.
These are best success stories of entrepreneurs who started their journey with no capital, no funding and sometimes no education or experience, yet despite the odds were still able to build huge success stories of entrepreneurs.
1. John Paul DeJoria
John Paul DeJoria isn’t as much of a household name as Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, but he has skilled feats of entrepreneurship and business management that competitor theirs. Starting out as a Newspaper courier and working as a caretaker and pull the truck driver to make ends meet, DeJoria finally started working at a hair care company, where he met Paul Mitchell.
With a loan of just $700, the two of them started a business. That Business turned into the company now known as John Paul Mitchell Systems. Later, DeJoria co-founded Patron Spirits and was a founding partner of the House of Blues chain. Today, he’s worth more than $3.1 billion.
2. Kevin Plank
Kevin Plank, the CEO of the fitness clothing company Under Armour. When he started selling signature clothing under the Under Armour brand.
The Success Story of Kevin Plank is he took all the cash he had saved, about $20,000. And racked up an additional $40,000 of credit card debt to fund the company.
3. Jan Koum
Jan Koum, the founder of WhatsApp, was born in a small village near Kiev in Ukraine. Coming from poverty, Koum’s family immigrated to California, and Koum started learning about computers in his spare time. By the time he was 18, he had developed impressive skills, and in 1997, he was hired by Yahoo! as an infrastructure engineer.
He spent a decade in that industry. Realizing the huge potential of the app industry in 2009 and starting WhatsApp Inc. By 2014, WhatsApp had become enormously popular. Facebook bought the app for a staggering $19 billion.
4. Sam Walton
It’s almost ironic that Walmart is often criticizing underpaying its employees and using competitive plans to maximize profits. Sam Walton, Walmart’s founder, had almost nothing to his name himself. When he started his first general store back in 1945.
The Success Story of Sam Walton is he relied on a $25,000 loan from his father-in-law. To fund that initial purchase and was an instant success in the retail industry. The first official Walmart was opened in 1962. In Rogers, Ark and by 1976, Walmart was worth more than $176 million. At one point, Walton was considered the wealthiest man in the United States.
5. George Soros
Though you could describe the Success Story of George Soros as an investor more than an entrepreneur. There are few better rags to riches stories than that of George Soros. When Soros was a teenager in Hungary in 1947, he flees Nazi bullying to live in England. Having less money to fund his efforts, he attended the London School of Economics, through university to obtain his degree.
He then moved to the United States in the 1950s. And became an investment manager for a number of major firms. Finally starting his own hedge fund and building his own company. His most famous move was shorting the British pound in 1990s which made him $1 billion in a single day.
