A small funding made on the proper second has the ability to launch unusual folks to millionaire standing. All it took was $1,000 and an out-there thought for Jeffrey Sprecher, the founder and CEO of Intercontinental Trade, to set his enterprise on a path to changing into a $98 billion behemoth.
“I had this concept that you must be capable to commerce electrical energy, purchase and promote electrical energy, on an change,” Sprecher recalled just lately at the Rotary Membership Of Atlanta. However there was an enormous caveat: He “had no thought how to do this. I’d by no means labored on Wall Road, I by no means traded.”
On the time, Sprecher had heard that Continental Energy Trade—owned by Warren Buffett’s electrical utility firm, MidAmerican Vitality—was about to go bankrupt. Regardless of Buffett’s enterprise pumping $35 million into it, the corporate was nonetheless struggling. And so Sprecher noticed this as an opportune second to swoop in and pursue his entrepreneurial imaginative and prescient.
“I purchased the corporate for a greenback a share, and there have been a thousand shares. So I purchased it for $1,000, and I used that as the idea to construct Intercontinental Trade.”
Because of his fast pondering and enterprise savvy, Sprecher now boasts a web value of $1.3 billion. However the journey to the highest was not very glamorous.
Dwelling in a 500-ft studio and driving a used automobile whereas scaling the enterprise
That measly $1,000 funding made again in 1997 served because the launchpad for Intercontinental Trade, based simply three years later. A small workforce of 9 staff set off to construct the know-how in 2000; establishing store in Atlanta, Georgia, Sprecher and his staffers went all-in on constructing the enterprise up from its former demise.
It was all palms on deck, and even because the founder and CEO, Sprecher was doing the menial labor to maintain every little thing so as. With cash being tight, the entrepreneur lived in a small condominium and drove a used automobile to the workplace to maintain Intercontinental Vitality afloat.
“I purchased a 500-foot, one room studio condominium in Midtown…I purchased a used automobile that I stored and I’d go into the workplace infrequently,” Sprecher defined, including that he “took the trash out, shut the lights out, answered the cellphone, purchased the staplers and the paper for the photocopier. That was the best way the corporate began.”
Practically 26 years later, the corporate boasts a market cap of $98 billion and a workforce of greater than 12,000 staff—and has proudly owned the NYSE for over a decade.
Entrepreneurs who made a key funding on the proper second
A few of the wealthiest entrepreneurs made their billions by recognizing the proper window to take a position small and earn huge.
Take Kenn Ricci for example: the serial American aviation businessman and chairman of personal jet firm Flexjet is a billionaire due to his instinct to purchase a struggling enterprise 4 a long time in the past. After being placed on depart from his first pilot job out of the Air Power, he turned a sticky scenario right into a 10-figure fortune.
“I labored for [airline] Northwest Orient for a quick time frame. I get furloughed. Unemployed, again residing with my dad and mom,” Ricci advised the Wall Road Journal in a 2025 interview, reminiscing on how he made his first $1 million.
However as an alternative of dropping out, he noticed a golden alternative. Ricci took a contract pilot job at Skilled Flight Crews, and one of many firms he flew for was personal aviation firm Company Wings. The budding businessman was intrigued when its homeowners put the enterprise up on the market at $27,500 in 1981—and jumped on the chance to purchase it. By the early Nineties, the enterprise was pulling in $3 million a yr.
However folks don’t want to purchase and scale an organization to make a worthwhile funding; millennial investing wiz Martin Mignot grew to become a self-made millionaire due to his means to identify unicorn firms earlier than they make it huge. One among his greatest wins was an early funding in Deliveroo—again when the enterprise was only a small, London-based operation.
“That they had eight staff. They have been in three London boroughs. Total, they’d just a few 1000 customers so far, so it was very, very early,” Mignot advised Fortune final yr. “They didn’t have an app. Their first web site was fairly horrible and ugly, if I’m frank, however the supply expertise was unbelievable.”
Lo and behold, Deliveroo grew to change into a $3.5 billion firm with tens of millions of worldwide prospects. And as a companion at Index Ventures, Mignot is a part of a workforce reaping billion-dollar rewards from forward-thinking investments in tech companies together with Figma, Scale AI, and Wiz. Other than his day job, Mignot has additionally strategically put cash in direction of iconic European start-ups together with Revolut, Trainline and Personio. Earlier than he was even 30, he solidified himself as a notable investor—and suggested others that “It’s about proudly owning fairness, that’s the key.”
This story was initially featured on Fortune.com
