He negotiated his first salary up by $500. Now he owns a $400 million yacht

Stephen Schwarzman’s early life looked very different from the one he leads today. He grew up in the Philadelphia area, helping at his family’s dry goods store, where he spent Saturdays folding towels, curtains and bed linen. He has spoken openly about disliking retail work, and the experience motivated him to pursue another career.

One of his earliest jobs was aboard a Scandinavian ship, where he spent long hours cleaning grease inside an engine room that reached temperatures of around 120 degrees Fahrenheit. The contrast with stepping aboard one of the world’s largest privately owned yachts, decades later, is difficult to miss.

After graduating from Yale University, Schwarzman joined the financial industry and earned a reputation as a determined negotiator. One often-told story from the start of his career involves his first salary negotiation: rather than accepting an annual salary of $10,000, he successfully negotiated it to $10,500 because he wanted to earn slightly more than another graduate entering the industry.

He later co-founded Blackstone with Peter Peterson in 1985, starting with just $400,000 in seed capital. The firm has since grown into one of the world’s largest alternative investment firms, with interests spanning private equity, real estate, infrastructure, credit and insurance, and today manages around $1.4 trillion in assets. Schwarzman has now taken delivery of Destiny, a custom-built 101.2-metre superyacht estimated to cost around $400 million — roughly 1,000 times Blackstone’s original starting capital.