Game Changers

How did a working-class boy from the Bronx named Ralph Lifshitz grow up to become billionaire Ralph Lauren, a name that is now synonymous with elegance and sophistication? Learn about his meteoric rise and how he overcame a myriad of challenges to become a global fashion icon.

You may know him as the owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, but in reality, Mark Cuban is the biggest maverick. He co-founded Broadcast.com, then became a billionaire by selling at the peak of the dot-com boom. Learn what makes Cuban tick as we explore the career of this brash entrepreneur.

Reid Hoffman, the entrepreneur who created LinkedIn, is also the embodiment of it. As the most connected man in Silicon Valley, Hoffman has leveraged his own vast web of personal and professional connections to get in on the ground floor of most of the hot tech companies of the past decade, including Facebook, Zynga, Flickr, and Digg.

Warren Buffett has, for decades, held a unparalleled position in American finance. He is not only a legendary investor with an astounding success rate, and a billionaire forty times over, he is also by far the most respected businessman in America. His company, Berkshire Hathaway, is a 164 billion dollar enterprise.

What does an NBA legend with five rings and 3 MVPs do for a second act? If you’re Earvin “Magic” Johnson, you become a super-successful serial entrepreneur with a billion-dollar portfolio of popular franchises and real estate funds. Magic announced his retirement because of HIV in 1991 and 20 years later, he’s not only healthy, but deep into a second legacy.

From Virgin Records to Virgin Airlines to Virgin Galactic, he took the power and possibilities of branding to new heights. In the process, he reinvented the role of the entrepreneur becoming his own best pitchman and turning himself into a living symbol of the Virgin brand. Along the way, Branson brought adventure back into venture capitalism.

Joanne Rowling, creator of Harry Potter, is the best selling fiction writer of all time. The first author to become a billionaire from her work, her imaginative tales of a boy wizard have generated the most popular and profitable series of books and movies ever produced, and caused hundreds of millions of kids to rediscover reading in an age of texting and Twitter.

Reed Hastings transformed the way we see movies and television, twice! In 1997, the California entrepreneur combined DVDs and the US Post Office to create Netflix, the first online DVD movie rental business. Eight years later, he reinvented his own company with a new service streaming movies and television shows directly through the internet.

Jeff Bezos didn’t just invent online shopping, he almost single-handedly turned it into a 34-billion-dollar enterprise. With the launch of Amazon.com in 1994, Bezos put online shopping on the map and Amazon.com has sold every product imaginable since the company’s inception.

Fashion Icon Anna Wintour always dreamed of being the Editor in Chief of Vogue Magazine. With a keen eye for fashion and a fearless attitude towards new and groundbreaking trends, she eventually found herself at the forefront of the fashion industry, and Vogue.

Craig Newmark, a shy guy in the tech world, wanted to make it easier for people to connect, and for businesses to put up job postings. As Craigslist came to life, so did the problems surrounding it. Crimes and lewd posts made sure Craigslist had a rocky history.

Marc Andreessen is the cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and cofounder of Internet pioneer Netscape Communications Corp. This program features interviews with Netscape cofounder Jim Clark, Jim Barksdale, former chief executive officer of Netscape, and Eric Bina, co-creator of Mosaic and a founder of Netscape.

This program features interviews with Twitter Chairman Jack Dorsey, and Mike Maples, founder and managing partner of venture capital firm Floodgate. Learn about the uprising of one of today's most popular social media platforms, changing the game in 140 characters.

His rise to global fame and fortune is even more inspiring when one takes into account the obstacles he had to overcome. Through interviews with friends, former colleagues, and business associates, discover the whole story.

Founder and CEO of Facebook Inc. and one of the world's youngest billionaires, Mark Zuckerberg, was the sly programmer from Harvard who continues to cause mischief in the cyber world. Years after Facebook's launch, privacy concerns continue to hover around the website.

His name is synonymous with ‘Corporate Titan.’ As cofounder of KKR, Henry Kravis rewrote the rules of leveraged buyouts. He and his cousin George Roberts now rule over an empire that dwarfs some of the world’s mightiest public corporations.

Follow Sergey Brin and Larry Page from their first meeting at Stanford to the new media mega-company that's replacing old media businesses of newspapers, books, movies, and television. Along the way to its astounding success, the cofounders have redefined advertising, and created a chain of products with Google at the head.

This episode focuses on Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz, now Jon Stewart, from his New Jersey boyhood through the standard struggle of part time jobs, and late night gigs at New York’s comedy clubs. See his early television shows and movies, including rare video from his early career, and witness his transformation into the dominant American commentator.

Through interviews with friends, former colleagues, and business associates, we reveal the many layers of the intensely private Steve Jobs, his style of leadership, management, and creative process.

Dive deep into media powerhouse News Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch, who created a global media empire worth more than $30 billion.

Follow Larry Ellison from his early days in Chicago, through the founding of the multi-billion-dollar software company, to his rise as the highest paid executive of the last decade with a total compensation of $1.84 billion.