Bloomberg Game Changers

What does an NBA legend with five rings and 3 MVPs do for a second act? If you’re Earvin “Magic” Johnson, you become a super-successful serial entrepreneur with a billion-dollar portfolio of popular franchises and real estate funds. Magic announced his retirement because of HIV in 1991 and 20 years later, he’s not only healthy, but deep into a second legacy that could put his legendary basketball career in the shade. Magic got there by combining his own healing process with a desire to revive dying minority communities. Determined to radically improve the urban American landscape-- and his own bottom line-- he launched a pioneering series of Urban Funds, including the billion-dollar Canyon Johnson Fund III, which uses private investment money to renovate shopping centers, housing projects, office hi-rises and more in distressed urban neighborhoods communities nationwide.

Reid Hoffman, the entrepreneur who created Linked In, is also the embodiment of it. As the most connected man in Silicon Valley, Hoffman has leveraged his own vast web of personal and professional connections to get in on the ground floor of most of the hot tech companies of the past decade, including Facebook, Zynga, Flickr, and Digg. Last year’s Linked-In IPO made Hoffman a billionaire, but he’s now busier than ever, holding down two full-time jobs – Executive Chairman at Linked-In, where he oversees the exponential growth of a site that is adding two new members every second, and Partner at the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Greylock.

How did a working-class boy from the Bronx named Ralph Lifshitz grow up to become billionaire Ralph Lauren, a name that is now synonymous with elegance and sophistication? Learn about his meteoric rise and how he overcame a myriad of challenges to become a global fashion icon.

Warren Buffett has - for decades – held a unparalleled position in American finance. He is not only a legendary investor with an astounding success rate, and a billionaire forty times over; he is also – by far - the most respected businessman in America. His company, Berkshire Hathaway, is a 164 billion dollar enterprise encompassing more than 70 different companies, and a stock price well over 100 thousand dollars a share. And to add to his singular status, the "Oracle of Omaha" has done it all while living and working far away from the centers of finance in New York or California.

You may know him as the owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, but in reality, Mark Cuban is the biggest maverick. He co-founded Broadcast.com, then became a billionaire by selling at the peak of the dot-com boom. Learn what makes Cuban tick as we explore the career of this brash entrepreneur.