Schwab founded the Charles Schwab Corporation, a brokerage and banking firm, and is today worth about $6 billion, according to Forbes. He tells Stanford's alumni magazine that he had the entrepreneurial spirit from a young age.

Schwab grew up in an upper-middle-class family in Sacramento, California, but wanted to make his own money. As a kid, he bagged and sold walnuts and raised chickens in his backyard, selling some and using others for eggs to sell.