Curated playlist
American financial company founders
- Eric SchmidtEric Schmidt ran Google while taking a base salary of just $1 a year. That pay lasted from 2004 through 2010.
- J. P. MorganA visit from J. P. Morgan, one man said, left him feeling "as if a gale had blown through the house." The American financier had that effect on people. He was physically large, with massive shoulders and piercing eyes. His nose was swollen…
- Leon BlackLeon Black paid $119.9 million in May 2012 for a pastel by Edvard Munch, one of the four versions of The Scream. At that moment, no work of art had ever sold for a higher price. The buyer was an American private equity investor, born on…
- Michael BloombergMichael Bloomberg was on the ballot in New York City's Republican mayoral primary when voting opened on the morning of the 11th of September 2001. Later that day, officials postponed the primary because of the attacks on the city. The…
- Sam Bankman-FriedSam Bankman-Fried played League of Legends while pitching investors. Sequoia later put in more than $200 million.
- Warren BuffettWarren Buffett's yearbook photo called him a future stockbroker. He was seventeen and liked math.
- George SorosAt 14, George Soros posed as the Christian godson of a government official to survive the Nazi occupation of Hungary.
- Steve BannonSteve Bannon still earns money every time Seinfeld airs. His bank took a stake in five shows instead of a fee.
- Bernie MadoffBernie Madoff told his own sons in December 2008 that the fund he ran was "just one big lie." Bernard Lawrence Madoff was an American financier, born in 1938, who had once served as chairman of the Nasdaq stock exchange. He admitted to…
- Scott BessentScott Bessent won Senate confirmation as United States secretary of the treasury on the 27th of January 2025, by a vote of 68-29. On that same day, a man carrying several Molotov cocktails and a knife, who intended to murder him, was…
- Marc AndreessenMarc Andreessen was earning $6.85 an hour as a programmer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications when he helped build the tool that made the internet feel like a place. He was born in 1971, and he is now an American…
- Jim SimonsJim Simons, born James Harris Simons, once explained his dislike of publicity by borrowing a line from Benjamin the Donkey in Animal Farm. "God gave me a tail to keep off the flies. But I'd rather have had no tail and no flies. That's kind…