I’m reading Douglas Brinkley’s Wheels for the World about Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company.
When the company was founded in 1903 it included 12 stockholders (including John and Horace Dodge!). One of the 12 proposed a thirteenth who wanted to invest $500. Henry Ford said no, thirteen was unlucky.
He was right. It was unlucky for the would-be investor who was denied. That $500 would have profited $1,750,000 by 1919.
(When Henry and son Edsel Ford bought out the original investors in 1919, the two Dodge brothers took $12.5 million each on their original investment of $5,000. They had also been major suppliers of engines and other components in the early years, and in fact bought the stock in 1903 not with cash, but in lieu of what Ford owed them.
But the story continues. Both Dodge brothers contracted the flu in 1919 and died the following year, John 55 and Horace 52. Their widows sold Dodge Brothers in 1925 for $146 million. Walter P. Chrysler bought the company for $170 million in stock three years later.)