Get to know the self – made billionaire who purchased a nearly bankrupt company from Warren Buffett for $1,000 and transformed it into a $98 billion colossus

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A timely small investment has the potential to catapult ordinary individuals. For Jeffrey Sprecher, the founder and CEO of [company not specified], all it took was $1,000 and an unconventional idea to put his business on the track to becoming a $98 – billion colossus.

“I came up with the idea that one should be able to trade, buy, and sell electric power on an exchange,” Sprecher told the Rotary Club Of Atlanta. However, there was a major catch: He “had absolutely no clue how to do that. I’d never worked on Wall Street, and I’d never engaged in trading.”

At that time, Sprecher had learned that Continental Power Exchange, which was owned by Warren Buffett’s electric utility firm, MidAmerican Energy, was on the verge of bankruptcy. Even though Buffett’s business had injected $35 million into it, the company was still struggling. So, Sprecher saw this as an opportune moment to step in and pursue his entrepreneurial dream.

“I purchased the company for a dollar per share, and there were a thousand shares. So, I bought it for $1,000, and I used that as the foundation to build Intercontinental Exchange.”

Thanks to his quick thinking and business acumen, Sprecher now has a net worth of $1.3 billion. But the path to the top was far from glamorous.

Living in a 500 – ft studio and driving a used car while growing the business

That paltry $1,000 investment made in 1997 served as the springboard for Intercontinental Exchange, which was founded just three years later. In 2000, a small team of nine employees set out to develop the technology. Setting up in Atlanta, Georgia, Sprecher and his staff went all – out to rebuild the business from its previous downfall.

Everyone was involved, and even as the founder and CEO, Sprecher was doing the mundane tasks to keep everything running smoothly. With money being scarce, the entrepreneur lived in a small apartment and drove a used car to the office to keep Intercontinental Energy going.

“I bought a 500 – foot, one – room studio apartment in Midtown…I bought a used car that I kept and would go to the office occasionally,” Sprecher explained, adding that he “took out the trash, turned off the lights, answered the phone, and bought staplers and paper for the photocopier. That’s how the company got started.”

Nearly 26 years later, the company has a market capitalization of $98 billion and a team of over 12,000 employees—and has proudly owned the NYSE for more than a decade.

Entrepreneurs who made a crucial investment at the right time

Some of the wealthiest entrepreneurs amassed their billions by identifying the perfect moment to make a small investment and reap large rewards.

Take Kenn Ricci as an example: The serial American aviation businessman and chairman of private jet company Flexjet became a billionaire thanks to his intuition [action not specified] four decades ago. After being put on leave from his first pilot job after leaving the Air Force, he turned a difficult situation into a 10 – figure [outcome not specified].

“I worked for [airline] Northwest Orient for a short while. I got furloughed. Unemployed, I went back to live with my parents,” Ricci told the Wall Street Journal in an [interview not specified], recalling how he made his first $1 million.

But instead of giving up, he spotted a golden opportunity. Ricci took a contract pilot job at Professional Flight Crews, and one of the companies he flew for was private aviation company Corporate Wings. The budding businessman was intrigued when its owners put the business up for sale at $27,500 in 1981—and seized the opportunity to buy it. By the early 1990s, the business was earning $3 million a year.

But people don’t have to buy and expand a company to make a worthwhile investment; millennial investing expert Martin Mignot has achieved success thanks to his ability to spot unicorn companies before they become big. One of his greatest successes was an early investment in Deliveroo—when the business was just a small, London – based operation.

“They had eight employees. They were operating in three London boroughs. Overall, they had a few thousand users up to that point, so it was very, very early,” Mignot told [publication not specified] last year. “They didn’t have an app. To be honest, their first website was really bad and ugly, but the delivery experience was amazing.”

Sure enough, Deliveroo grew into a $3.5 – billion company with millions of global customers. As a partner at Index Ventures, Mignot is part of a team reaping billion – dollar rewards from forward – thinking investments in tech businesses such as Figma, Scale AI, and Wiz. Apart from his day job, Mignot has also strategically invested in iconic European start – ups like Revolut, Trainline, and Personio. Before he was even 30, he established himself as a well – known investor—and advised others that “It’s about owning equity, and that’s the key.”