A small investment made at the right moment has the power to launch ordinary people to millionaire status. All it took was $1,000 and an out-there idea for Jeffrey Sprecher, the founder and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, to set his business on a path to becoming a $85 billion behemoth. “I had this idea that
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Lawrence Guerguis, a 24-year-old based in Orange County, California, who started investing in real estate in the Midwest while still in college. The following has been edited for length and clarity. I always thought I’d go into investment banking and work on Wall Street. During my
In 1979, Jerry Buss bought the Lakers and turned professional basketball into a Hollywood production: courtside celebrities, a fast, camera-ready style of play, an arena built to feel like a stage. He called it Showtime, and it worked so well it became the template every league in the world eventually copied. Forty-seven years later, the
Ryan McPherson fought hard for his piece of Austin. Back in the spring of 2022, when it seemed like everyone was angling for homes in the Texas capital, he and his wife set their sights on a tidy four-bedroom in a sprawling new development on the east side of town. They bid $20,000 above the
Jeff Layfield spent years imagining where in the US. He and his wife would retire after leaving Hawaii. Instead, they now live in a traditional house overlooking the sea in Japan. Before retiring, the couple lived in an apartment upstairs in their parents’ home on Oahu. Layfield worked in data management for the Marine Corps,
Poke, the AI assistant you text like a friend, is taking its next big step. The company behind the assistant, The Interaction Company of California, has been acquired by AI coding startup Cognition in a deal that values the startup in the “low nine figures.” The deal will bring Poke’s interaction model and personality to
