Segregation, Homelessness, Neglect: 10 Billionaires Who Beat The Odds
Forbes Daily Briefing
Forbes
4.6 • 12 Ratings
🗓️ 11 January 2025
⏱️ 5 minutes
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Summary
Forbes is highlighting a handful of the wealthiest entrepreneurs in the U.S. who started with next to nothing.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Saturday, January 11th. Today on Forbes, segregation, |
| 0:08.1 | homelessness, neglect, 10 billionaires who beat the odds. It seems like luck is forever in |
| 0:15.5 | America's billionaires' favor these days, with a record number of them, richer and more |
| 0:19.9 | powerful than ever, and the stock market |
| 0:21.9 | is continuing to ride high. But quite a few didn't start out that way. While plenty of these |
| 0:27.6 | moguls were born rich, or had big head starts in life through family connections, dozens of |
| 0:32.4 | others came from little to nothing. True rags to riches stories that show just how far someone can go in one generation. |
| 0:40.5 | Take Frank Vanderslut, founder of the wellness company, Melaluka, who spent his childhood |
| 0:45.9 | working on a farm in Idaho and could only afford college by living in a laundromat. |
| 0:51.3 | Recounting his favorite childhood Christmas gift, Vanderslute once told Forbes, quote, |
| 0:55.9 | My folks didn't have much money, but I was very excited when I was about eight, and my dad |
| 1:01.1 | brought me home a cardboard box with holes in it, so I knew something was alive. There was a |
| 1:05.7 | pigeon inside. He worked on the railroad, so he had caught it and brought it home. |
| 1:18.6 | Now Vanderslut is worth an estimated $3.2 billion, a fortune that could buy a pet pigeon for every child in the United States. |
| 1:24.6 | When Oprah Winfrey was a kid living with her single mother on welfare, presents were far from guaranteed. |
| 1:29.2 | One year, when Winfrey's mom told her they couldn't afford to celebrate Christmas, she remembers dreading the moment she'd have to tell her peers that she didn't |
| 1:33.9 | receive a single gift. But when a few nuns showed up at her house unexpectedly to offer food and a doll, |
| 1:41.0 | became the best Christmas of her life. Winfrey, now worth an estimated $3 billion, |
| 1:47.1 | has tried to repay the favor by donating toys to tens of thousands of disadvantaged kids. |
| 1:53.6 | Banderthalut and Winfrey are hardly the only billionaires whose childhood holidays were humble. |
| 1:59.0 | Just a few weeks ago, Forbes recounted 10 tales of billionaires who grew up more like |
| 2:03.6 | Tiny Tim than Mr. Scrooge. |
... |
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