Clarence Wooten
The serial entrepreneur started his journey when he was 28 years old and co-founded ImageCafe.com, a firm that serves up custom Web sites for small businesses on a tight budget, according to the Washington Post.
He started Envision, a company that built three-dimensional animated computer models for architects, and went on to establish other ventures, including ImageCafe.com.
According to Forbes, Wooten was inspired into entrepreneurship by successful businessmen like Bill Gates and Reginald Lewis – who is reportedly the first African American to build a billion-dollar company and was regarded as the richest African American in the 1980s.
In 1999, Wooten was preparing to raise a big venture round when Network Solutions swooped in and acquired ImageCafe.com for $23 million; seven months after launch and just before the dot com bubble popped.