Richard Schulze
Bonita Springs, Florida
Diploma, High School
United States
Best Buy
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Best Buy, Self Made
$4,100,000,000
568
3
#568 Billionaires 2019
#163 Forbes 400 2018
Richard Schulze founded Sound of Music in 1966, which he eventually transformed into a chain of superstores and renamed it Best Buy.Schulze served as the company's CEO from 1983 to 2002 and stepped down as chairman in 2012, when a scandal erupted around his hand-picked CEO. A former Minnesota Air National Guard, he worked as an electronics components salesman before opening his first stereo equipment shop.Schulze reportedly took out a second mortgage on his home to fund the venture that became Best Buy.
Still Best Buy's biggest individual shareholder, Schulze aims to give away $1 billion of his fortune in his lifetime, through his family foundation.Though he never went to college, he became a trustee and donor to the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, where he enrolled before joining the Air National Guard.
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