In 1990, Steward founded World Wide Technology (WWT) with an aspiration to create a leading systems integrator and technology solutions provider. The early days were not easy. He invested his personal savings and maxed out his credit cards to keep the fledgling business afloat. Cars were repossessed. Creditors called constantly. He kept going anyway.

By 2023, WWT’s revenue had soared to $17 billion, serving an impressive roster of clients, including Citi, Verizon, and the federal government. Today, WWT employs approximately 10,000 people and is valued at over $20 billion. No Silicon Valley backing, no venture rounds.

Tope Awotona, The Black Billionaire Who Bet His 401(k) on a Scheduling App

Tope Awotona was born in Lagos, Nigeria. At 12, Awotona witnessed his father get shot and killed in a carjacking. The family immigrated to Atlanta. He studied management information systems at the University of Georgia, then spent years in corporate software sales at IBM and other companies.

Before Calendly, he tried and failed with a dating site, a projector e-commerce store, and a grill sales business. None of them worked. But a single frustration, the endless back-and-forth emails just to schedule a meeting, gave him his real idea.

He emptied his bank account and drained his 401(k) entirely to get it off the ground. He launched Calendly from Atlanta Tech Village in 2013. When he needed more capital, he went to VCs. Every single one turned him down. As Awotona told Inc. Magazine: “I watched other people who fit a different ‘profile’ get money thrown at them for shitty ideas. Those VCs were ignorant and shortsighted. The only thing I could attribute it to was that I was black.” 

He turned inward. He focused on the product. Calendly became profitable by 2016, before it raised a single dollar of VC funding. By 2021, from a position of strength, he raised $350 million at a $3 billion valuation. As of 2024, the Calendly app has 10 million users. Awotona is now one of only a handful of Black tech billionaires in the United States.

 Tyler Perry, Hollywood’s Billionaire Mogul

Tyler Perry’s story begins with homelessness. As a young man in Atlanta, he slept in his car. He channeled that pain into writing and eventually into creating the Madea character, a no-nonsense grandmother whose plays packed out Black churches and community theaters across the South. Hollywood didn’t discover Tyler Perry. His own community did.

Tyler Perry is a director, actor, producer, and writer who built his empire from movies and television. He owns 100% of his content, including the popular “Madea” franchise. Perry lives in Atlanta, where his 330-acre, 12-stage Tyler Perry Studios is located. 

Ownership was always the strategy. While other Black filmmakers signed studio deals that handed over rights and profits, Perry retained control of everything. That philosophy compounded over decades. With 22 films, over 1,200 TV episodes, and a massive 330-acre studio in Atlanta, Perry has created one of Hollywood’s most powerful independent production empires. His $1.4 billion net worth continues to grow thanks to long-term deals with Netflix, Amazon, and BET.  His story remains one of the most powerful examples of ownership-first wealth building in entertainment history.

Marcelo Claure, From Bolivia to Building the World’s Largest Wireless Distributor

Marcelo Claure is the son of a Bolivian diplomat. He studied in the United States and saw an opportunity that most people missed. The global wireless phone market had a massive distribution gap. Carriers and manufacturers needed a middleman who could move handsets at scale across emerging markets. In 1997, he founded Brightstar Corp to fill that gap.

Brightstar ranked as the largest Hispanic-owned business in the United States for six years. Claure built it into a multi-billion-dollar global wireless distribution empire, then sold it to SoftBank. He later became SoftBank’s COO, overseeing its Latin America fund and helping engineer Sprint’s turnaround. 

Today, through Claure Group, he runs a multi-billion-dollar global investment firm focused on technology, media, telecommunications, real estate, and sports across high-growth sectors. 

Claure’s formula was to identify an underserved market, scale with discipline, and parlay each success into the next platform. 

Jorge Pérez, The Latinx Billionaire Who Reshaped Miami’s Skyline

Jorge Pérez was born in Argentina to Cuban parents who had fled the Castro regime. He eventually made his way to Miami as a teenager and studied urban planning at the University of Michigan. Before becoming a developer, he worked as a city planner for Miami, giving him an insider’s understanding of how cities grow and where value accumulates.

In 1979, Pérez founded The Related Group in partnership with New York real estate developer Stephen M. Ross. They initially focused on building and operating low-income, multi-family apartments in Miami. By the mid-1980s, the company had become the largest affordable housing builder in Florida.

He then pivoted upmarket. He has overseen the construction of more than 100,000 luxury and affordable residences.  Some of these are 17 million square feet of real estate, selling properties worth more than $50 billion. His projects include Icon Brickell, 50 Biscayne, and the St. Regis Residences in Miami. Known as the “Condo King” of South Florida, Pérez built his fortune the old-fashioned way, one building, one relationship, one neighborhood at a time.

Adebayo Ogunlesi, The Nigerian Lawyer Who Built a $100 Billion Infrastructure Empire

Adebayo Ogunlesi’s path to billionaire status is one remarkable journey through modern finance. Born in Nigeria, he earned his undergraduate degree at Oxford and his law degree from Harvard Law School. Then, he obtained his MBA from Harvard Business School. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. After that, he joined the elite law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore.

He eventually moved into banking at Credit Suisse, where he spent two decades building expertise in infrastructure finance. In 2006, he co-founded Global Infrastructure Partners, a private equity firm that invested in airports, energy assets, pipelines, and transportation systems. The thesis was that infrastructure with long-term, contracted cash flows is among the most reliable asset classes in the world.

In January 2024, he closed a landmark $12.5 billion deal that brought GIP under the BlackRock umbrella. This agreement included $3 billion in cash and 12 million BlackRock shares. Ogunlesi remains chairman and CEO of GIP within BlackRock’s structure. He built his fortune not through consumer apps or viral moments. Instead, he built through patient, disciplined capital allocation in the world of global infrastructure. His bold thesis, that essential assets with regulated or contracted cash flows can serve as powerful growth engines, paid off.

In 2024, Black founders received just 0.4% of U.S. venture funding — the lowest in years, despite their major contributions to innovation. This Black History Month, we’re highlighting these inequities and the need for a more inclusive startup ecosystem. https://t.co/CKNCxORSVY

— crunchbase (@crunchbase) February 12, 2025

The Bigger picture 

Their shared playbook comes down to a few themes. You have to own your product and your equity. Build for a community that is often overlooked. Use expertise as your unfair advantage. Stay profitable long before you raise outside capital. And trust that the right opportunity, built with patience and discipline, will eventually speak for itself.

Silicon Valley is one path to wealth. It is not the only one. These 6 entrepreneurs are proof of that.

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