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.<\/p>\n
\n
\u201cI had this idea that you should be able to trade electric power, buy and sell electric power, on an exchange,\u201d Sprecher recalled at the Rotary Club Of Atlanta earlier this year. But there was a huge caveat: He \u201chad no idea how to do that. I\u2019d never worked on Wall Street, I never traded.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
At the time, Sprecher had heard that Continental Power Exchange\u2014owned by Warren Buffett\u2019s electric utility company, MidAmerican Energy\u2014was about to go bankrupt. Despite Buffett\u2019s business pumping $35 million into it, the company was still struggling. And so Sprecher saw this as an opportune moment to swoop in and pursue his entrepreneurial vision.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI bought the company for a dollar a share, and there were a thousand shares,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I bought it for $1,000, and I used that as the basis to build Intercontinental Exchange.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thanks to his quick thinking and business savvy, Sprecher currently boasts a net worth of $1.2 billion. But the journey to the top was not very glamorous.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Living in a 500-ft studio and driving a used car while scaling the business\u00a0<\/h2>\n
That measly $1,000 investment made back in 1997 served as the launchpad for Intercontinental Exchange, founded just three years later. A small team of nine employees set off to build the technology in 2000; setting up shop in Atlanta, Sprecher and his staffers went all-in on building the business up from its former demise.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was all hands on deck, and even as the founder and CEO, Sprecher was doing the menial labor to keep everything in order. With money being tight, the entrepreneur lived in a small apartment and drove a used car to the office to keep Intercontinental Energy afloat.<\/p>\n
\u201cI bought a 500-foot, one room studio apartment in Midtown\u2026I bought a used car that I kept and I\u2019d go into the office from time to time,\u201d Sprecher explained, adding he \u201ctook the trash out, shut the lights out, answered the phone, bought the staplers and the paper for the photocopier. That was the way the company started.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nearly 26 years later, the company boasts a market cap of $85 billion and a team of more than 12,000 employees\u2014and has proudly owned the NYSE for over a decade.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Entrepreneurs who made a key investment at the right moment<\/h2>\n
Some of the wealthiest entrepreneurs made their billions by spotting the perfect window to invest small and earn big.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Take Kenn Ricci, as an example: The serial American aviation businessman and chairman of private jet company Flexjet is a billionaire thanks to his intuition to buy a struggling business four decades ago. After being put on leave from his first pilot job out of the Air Force, he turned a sticky situation into a 10-figure fortune.<\/p>\n
\u201cI worked for [airline] Northwest Orient for a brief period of time. I get furloughed. Unemployed, back living with my parents,\u201d Ricci told the Wall Street Journal <\/em>in a 2025 interview, reminiscing on how he made his first $1 million.<\/p>\nBut instead of throwing in the towel, 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\u2014and jumped on the opportunity to buy it. By the early 1990s, the business was pulling in $3 million a year.<\/p>\n
But people don\u2019t need to buy and scale a company to make a worthwhile investment; millennial investing wiz Martin Mignot became a self-made millionaire thanks to his ability to spot unicorn companies before they make it big. One of his biggest wins was an early investment in Deliveroo\u2014back when the business was just a small, London-based operation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey had eight employees. They were in three London boroughs. Overall, they had a few thousand users to date, so it was very, very early,\u201d Mignot told Fortune <\/em>last year. \u201cThey didn\u2019t have an app. Their first website was pretty terrible and ugly, if I\u2019m frank, but the delivery experience was incredible.\u201d<\/p>\nLo and behold, Deliveroo grew to become a $3.5 billion company with millions of global customers. And as a partner at Index Ventures, Mignot is part of a team reaping billion-dollar rewards from forward-thinking investments in tech businesses including Figma, Scale AI, and Wiz. Aside from his day job, Mignot has also strategically put money towards iconic European start-ups including Revolut, Trainline and Personio. Before he was even 30, he solidified himself as a notable investor\u2014and advised others that \u201cIt\u2019s about owning equity, that is the key.\u201d<\/p>\n
A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on January 16, 2026.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n#Intercontinental #Exchange #CEO #bought #Warren #Buffetts #nearbankrupt #company<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A small investment made at the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2411,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[479,101,4679,269,283,1405,623,4676,1149,2492,1406,1315,635,3822,4677,788,698,4678,642,4680,2576,645,4132,4130,81],"class_list":["post-2410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-billionaires","tag-bought","tag-buffetts","tag-business","tag-ceo","tag-chief-executive-officer-ceo","tag-company","tag-energy-industry","tag-entrepreneurs","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-evergreen-refresh","tag-exchange","tag-founders","tag-intercontinental","tag-intercontinental-exchange","tag-investing-advice","tag-investing-strategy","tag-investment-strategy","tag-millionaires","tag-nearbankrupt","tag-nyse","tag-personal-finance","tag-warren","tag-warren-buffett","tag-wealth"],"yoast_head":"\n
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