Bill Ackman’s billions began with $14,000 and a Buffett-linked book

The Story in Brief

Bill Ackman's journey to building Pershing Square Capital Management began with a $14,000 commission earned selling ads for Harvard’s Let’s Go travel guides, as reported by the Times of India. After college, he worked at his father’s real estate firm, where a colleague recommended Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor. Graham’s value-investing principles, which had shaped Warren Buffett, convinced Ackman to pursue investing. He earned an MBA from Harvard, co-founded Gotham Partners in 1992, and later founded Pershing Square in 2004, which grew into a major activist fund with stakes in companies like Chipotle and Canadian Pacific Railway.