Howard Schultz

Male

White

Ashkenazi Jewish

Jewish

not established

Left a paid director-level job at Starbucks to found Il Giornale; the new venture was financed mainly by outside investors rather than his own savings or a working spouse's income.

not established

The hardship was imposed, not chosen. There was nothing to fall back on.

Father Fred held low-paying jobs including truck driver and delivery driver for a diaper service; broke his ankle on the job in 1961 and was fired with no sick pay or workers' comp. Mother Elaine worked as a receptionist.

2

Bayview Houses, a public-housing project in Canarsie, Brooklyn.

Canarsie High School, a public school, graduated 1971.

While running U.S. operations for Hammarplast, a Swedish housewares company, he visited Seattle in 1981 to see why a small coffee-bean retailer was ordering an unusual number of drip filters. That visit was his introduction to Starbucks.

Starbucks itself, then a small Seattle coffee-bean roaster with a handful of stores. He joined as director of retail operations and marketing in 1982, and it supplied the industry credibility and the early investor relationships (including a $150,000 investment from Starbucks in Il Giornale) that let him raise money for his own idea after the founders turned it down.

Capital, Credibility, Network, Idea

After Starbucks' founders rejected his espresso-bar concept, he cold- pitched 242 prospective investors himself to fund Il Giornale; 217 said no.

28

9

BA, Northern Michigan University, 1975, on a football scholarship. Sources differ on the field: some say communications, one says business administration.

Direct four-year degree, funded by an athletic scholarship rather than family money.

It needed capital up front, before it earned anything.

Needed about $400,000 to open the first Il Giornale. Starbucks itself put in $150,000 and a single investor, a doctor named Ron Margolis, put in $100,000; the rest came from the 25 of 242 pitched investors who said yes.

Bought Starbucks' assets in 1987 with investor money, then took the combined company public on NASDAQ in 1992, a raise reported at $271 million that funded doubling the store count. His personal stake was diluted through that raise and the financings that followed.

Personal experience at a prior employer. A 1983 buying trip to Milan showed him Italian espresso-bar culture; he brought the idea back to Starbucks, whose founders had no interest in it.

217 of 242 prospective investors declined to back Il Giornale before he assembled the round.

0

Outside investors, not personal savings, financed the founding round.

not established

34

A US specialty-coffee category still being invented; Starbucks had only a handful of stores when he bought it.

Bought. He acquired an existing six-store coffee-bean retailer and its name rather than building a chain from nothing, then merged in the espresso-bar format he had built at Il Giornale.

34

39

Consumer retail

3600000000

Journalistic estimate

2026

Wealth in owned, appreciating equity, primarily Starbucks stock, plus stakes built through his venture firm Maveron, rather than a fixed salary.

Credited with building the modern Starbucks and, in 1988, making it the first major US retailer to offer health insurance to part-time workers, followed in 1991 by equity grants (Bean Stock) to full- and part-time staff alike. Briefly explored an independent 2020 presidential run before withdrawing in September 2019.

2

Uncapped

On March 1, 2023, NLRB Administrative Law Judge Michael A. Rosas found that Starbucks committed "egregious and widespread misconduct" across 21 Buffalo-area stores during the 2021-22 union campaign, including illegal surveillance, restrictions on discussing wages, discriminatory transfers, and the permanent closure of one store. Seven employees were found to have been unlawfully discharged. The judge ordered reinstatement and back pay, reopening of the closed store, a bargaining order at one location, and required Schultz personally, alongside senior VP Denise Nelson, to read or be present for the reading of a workers'-rights notice to Buffalo store employees.

After

Unrelated

Civil wrong

None

As an employer he both reformed and, later, resisted the conditions he came up under. In 1988 he made Starbucks the first major US retailer to give part-time workers health insurance, a decision he's said came directly from watching his father lose his job and his coverage in the same week. In 2022-23, back as CEO, he presided over a labor board finding that the company he rebuilt fought its own workers' unionization drive through illegal surveillance, firings, and a store closure.

Mission driven, Paternalistic, Controlling

Insiders

After

Mixed

The reputation was deliberately built, through books, press, and PR.

To much of the business press and public, a self-made success story and a pioneer on worker benefits. To labor organizers and the senators who questioned him in March 2023, the face of an illegal union-busting campaign. He told Fortune he was "shocked, stunned to hear the loneliness, the anxiety" among workers organizing against him; Starbucks called the judge's remedies "inappropriate."