Acquired · Monday, September 14, 2026
Home Depot's story features co-founders Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank, who, despite difficult upbringings and limited savings, conceived of the revolutionary warehouse-style home improvement store. Marcus, initially aiming to be a psychiatrist, became a pharmacist and then a retail executive, while Blank was recruited as CFO for their venture.
“It is an unlikely story of two guys who got unceremoniously fired from their old jobs with little savings and no retirement funds, who then had a revolutionary idea to build a home improvement store in giant warehouses, five times more square footage than any other hardware store at the time, which seemed risky at best, unthinkable maybe.”
“So Bernie, despite his, you know, rough upbringing and gang experience on the streets of Newark, he's super smart and he ends up being the first person in his family to go to college.”
“So Bernie's now a corporate executive at Daylin. He has no equity in the company. He's just an employee, but it's a stable job.”
“So once Bernie becomes CEO of Handy Dan, he quickly recruits another younger company man from within the Daylin empire, a financial whiz named Arthur Blank, to come over to L.A. and join him as his CFO at Handy Dan.”