I love this sort of thing. One of my favourite things to read about are entrepreneurs (although they were doing this before they was even a name for it) in an

I love this sort of thing. One of my favourite things to read about are entrepreneurs (although they were doing this before they was even a name for it) in an industry that seems simple to outsiders (say, freight haulage) and building a business out of nothing. No fancy education, no world-changing technological insight, just pure hard work and business smarts to see where the opportunities lie, when and how much to bet, and building on each success to make a bigger one. It's not romantic to most people, so these kinds of stories don't get heard much, and there's a sneering snobbery about people who, when they got rich, don't have a good story which complies with the enlightened public's idea of a "genius" - they tend to assume rich people must be academically brilliant, or they could only have got rich doing something unethical. Read up on Marks and Spencers (first retailer in UK to pass £1bn in profit), founded by a poor Polish immigrant and a cashier. There are tonnes of stories like that, much better inspiration than a lot of the SV Ivy League grad gets showered with VC money story (which, incidentally, feeds into the mistaken notion that there are only opportunities for the rich and well-connected under capitalism).