Business entrepreneur Ken Langone entertained a Palm Beach Civic Association audience on Wednesday with a zestful recollection of highlights and relationships from his career as co-founder of The Home Depot.
Langone, who is 90 years old, was interviewed by Jonathan Harris, a family friend and CEO of the New York-based investment firm AIM13. The two men discussed Langone’s career as a Wall Street investor during the Signature Series luncheon attended by more than 100 people at the Beach Club.
Langone was born in 1935 to Italian American parents and grew up poor in a small town on the North Shore of Long Island. His father was a plumber and his mother worked in the school cafeteria.
Langone landed jobs in door-to-door sales, construction, and digging ditches on the Long Island Expressway in the 1950s to help pay for his education.
He recalled an early sales job that he gave to himself, selling cardboard from boxes discarded by a liquor store. “I was always a bit of an entrepreneur, and I had fun doing it,” he said.
He described his childhood as “tough,” but expressed no regrets.
“I was raised in what I consider to be an ideal environment,” Langone said. “One thing I knew: I had my mother’s and father’s love … we were a typical Italian family, where you express your emotions.”
His willingness to work hard, ability to read people, and instinct for spotting financial opportunity propelled Langone from his humble blue-collar origin to a business career of stratospheric success and storybook wealth.
Langone earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Bucknell University and began his career in the early 1960s at a Wall Street financial services company named R.W. Pressprich. In 1968 he met Ross Perot and secured a deal to take Electronic Data Systems public. The next year, Langone was named Pressprich’s president.
In 1974, Langone formed the venture capital firm Invemed Associates, where he continues to preside as chairman and CEO. He organized financing for Bernard Marcus and Arthur Blank to found The Home Depot in 1978.
Today, the chain of home improvement superstores can be found at more than 2,300 locations in the United States, Canada and Mexico, with about 475,000 employees. In 2024, the company generated nearly $160 billion in sales.
Forbes has estimated Langone’s net worth at upward of $9 billion.
Langone said he invests with a long-term outlook and believes a company’s success almost entirely boils down to the integrity and wisdom of its people.
“I learned to develop a knack for reading people,” he said. “Everything that I think about that I’ve done always revolves around great people.”
In 1978, Perot was offered a 50-70 percent stake in The Home Depot in exchange for a $2 million investment but declined. Langone estimated that investment would be worth about $60 billion today.
Langone attributes Home Depot’s success to its employees. He calls them “the kids with the orange aprons” (he said he refers to anyone younger than 90 as a kid).
“You go to a Home Depot, you can easily get lost,” he said. “It’s complicated. We encourage the kids to show the customers we’re grateful if they come to our store.”
Langone said Home Depot still employs 3,000 “kids” who joined the company when they were 18 years old or younger. Long-term Home Depot employees holding company stock over decades have historically seen massive returns.
“They started out pushing carts in the parking lot and today they are multi-millionaires,” he said. “That was our dream. We wanted our people to own the business. We wanted them to feel that it was theirs.”
Langone said he has never sold any of his Home Depot shares in the 48-year history of the company, though he has donated some to charity.
He and his wife Elaine have donated upwards of $750 million to NYU, primarily supporting NYU Langone Health, making them the institution’s most generous supporters.
“It’s the most expensive thing I’ve ever done but there is nothing that has given me more satisfaction,” he said.
Harris, who interviewed Langone during Wednesday’s program, is the son of the late J. Ira Harris, who was a longtime Civic Association director, and Nicki Harris, a Civic Association director from 1994 to 2007 and from 2022 to present.
Wednesday’s program was sponsored by Northern Trust Bank.
See the full program video HERE
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