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Starting with $5,000 in savings, no fashion experience, and a self-written patent, Blakely built Spanx from a pantyhose hack into a billion-dollar brand — becoming the youngest self-made female billionaire in history when Blackstone valued it at $1.2 billion in 2021.
Sara Blakely founded Spanx in 2000 with $5,000 in savings after cutting the feet off her pantyhose, wrote her own patent, and personally sold the first product to Neiman Marcus.
By 2012 she was the youngest self-made female billionaire, and in 2021 Blackstone took a majority stake valuing Spanx at $1.2 billion. When the deal closed she gave every employee two first-class plane tickets and $10,000.
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