4 Inspiring—Yet Widely Overlooked—Entrepreneurs And How Their Stories Shaped Our Modern World

Everyone knows Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates…but there are so many other ambitious and smart entrepreneurs hiding in plain sight. Today, to honor World Entrepreneurs Day, we’ll be diving into 4 overlooked businessmen and women whose careers and life stories will hopefully inspire you. 

Lori Greiner

With more than 120 US patents and a 90 percent rate of success in her investments, Shark Tank judge Lori Greiner didn’t always have it easy. She attended Loyola University in Chicago, where she grew up. In an interview with Forbes, she said she always started projects, but never finished them, and she would then see her ideas become a success, which reassured her she was on the right track and just had to follow through. 

She tried this new perspective with a jewelry organizer that could hold 100 earrings. Many people were skeptical about her product’s success, which she took out a 300 thousand loan to be able to make. In the end, she paid the loan back in 18 months and she set out to create many other inventions that would solve everyday problems.

Greiner later joined Shark Tank in 2012 as a guest investor and became a permanent shark a year after for season 4. 

Her famous slogan: ‘I can tell instantly if it’s going to be a hero or a zero’ is not just a phrase: she is unsurprisingly considered by many the smartest shark, with a love for competition while maintaining her sympathy. 

Some of her biggest investments on the show include Scrub Daddy—yes, there’s also a Scrub Mommy and Scrub Baby (the whole family pack) —which helps clean the kitchen in a more efficient way—you can even use the smiley mouth to clean cutlery on both sides at once—; the Squatty Potty—the slogan ‘the number 1 way to number 2’ does the explaining— and Everlywell, which focuses on selling collection lab testing kits. 

Because she is considered ‘the QVC queen’, pitchers often prefer to choose Lori to work with, as it is not only the money she is providing in the deal, but the connections she has to thousands of retail stores, which are guaranteed to make the real money and get your product everywhere. 

Greiner is the perfect example of a persistent woman who never gives up and believes she should have the same opportunities as other male entrepreneurs around her. 

Jan Koum

As a Ukrainian who emigrated to California at age 16, it was sometimes hard for Jan Koum to find motivation to pursue his dreams. The first few weeks after he settled in the US, he and his mom barely had money to buy any food and had to live off charities and soup kitchens.

Although he wasn’t a great student, he soon found his passion in computer science and coding. Because it is currently a part of Meta, many people believe—like with Tesla and Elon Musk—that Whatsapp was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, when it was actually created by Jan Koum (with his friend and partner Brian Acton). 

The ironic part is, when he applied for a job at Facebook, he was rejected, and ended up years after signing a deal to sell Whatsapp for 19 billion dollars with Zuckerberg. What Jan Koum teaches the young generation of entrepreneurs facing adversity is that, if you encounter rejection but keep working hard, one day, the person you looked up to will want—or even need—something from you. 

Rhianna

The 38 year old woman born in Barbados isn’t just a singer with 61 billion Spotify streams, a Super Bowl performance and 9 Grammy awards: she is the founder of Fenty Beauty, a cosmetic company valued at 2.8 billion dollars and net annual revenue past 600 million dollars. 

What makes Fenty Beauty different? As a black woman, Rhianna understood that many other huge makeup companies weren’t making products with darker skin tones. When she identified the gap in the market, she started to work. She also realised that other companies were also lacking paler tones, so she added them too. She said the goal of Fenty Beauty was to appeal to ‘every type of woman’. As everything that is both ground-breaking and successful, other cosmetic companies soon followed and created a wider range of tones in their products. 

Hamdi Ulukaya

Ulukaya was an immigrant who grew up in Eastern Turkey, and enjoyed his life in upstate New York. However, he was frustrated because in order to get a decent pack of Greek yogurt, which was a reminder of home to him, he often had to travel to other cities since he couldn’t find any in local grocery stores.

So, in order to solve this problem, he bought an old plant and founded his company Chobani. In spite of focusing on dairy products, the business also offers vegan alternatives, like probiotic plant-based drinks and oat milk. It is valued at 20 billion dollars and holds over 20 percent market share in the US yogurt industry. Additionally, he is ranked number 219 in Forbes’ 2026 World Billionaire List.

Driven by his immigrant history, he focuses on hiring other immigrants, improving their living conditions and motivating them to work effectively for his business.