Kevin Plank, CEO and founder of Under Armour

Kevin Plank comes from a middle class family in Maryland. He is the youngest of five and loved football. In college while playing for the University of Maryland he became frustrated with the heaviness of his cotton t-shirts soaked in sweat and would often change multiple times to keep them from weighing him down. According to friends and family he was always tinkering in new businesses and concepts and decided to go to a fabric store to see if there was a material that would work better than cotton. He found a synthetic material that wicked the moisture away from the skin keeping the shirt weightless and athlete cool. He then marketed these shirts to pro-football player friends and convinced them to hand them out in the locker rooms.