Leader Board

摘要

"You know the saying 'Some people are born with a silver spoon'? I didn't even have a spoon," says 75-year-old Donald Friese, seated in a sterile corporate conference room in his Los Angeles offices. Friese escaped a poverty-stricken boyhood in rural Pennsylvania only by enlisting in the Army straight out of high school in 1958. Three years later, a civilian once again, he moved to California ("The girls were prettier") with $125 in his pocket to find a job. He landed in the warehouse of C.R. Laurence, a small-time distributor of glass-industry supplies such as cutters and drills. Its annual revenue: $240,000. As it grew, Friese climbed the ranks-eventually getting steadily larger equity positions in the company. When his partner retired in 1997, he bought the 50% he didn't already own.