"I think we have a unique opportunity to build it into a nationally recognized retail company," he said.

Prosecutors said that Wedtech had bribed officials to get government contracts as it built itself into a company with $100 million in revenue each year.

He has built Supercomputer Systems into a company with 300 employees, no sales and plenty of mystery.

In less than a decade, he built Columbia into a $20 billion company with about 350 hospitals and hundreds of other treatment centers.

And that is when Mr. Frischman said he was forced to build 999 into a company.

"I want to build this into a major company that will specialize in the aging population," he said.

In 1989 he founded the firm Microvena, which he built into a company valued at over $170 million.

I could have built it into a great company.

Woodruff built Coca-Cola into an international company, establishing a foreign department in 1926.

"I want to build Rockport into a $1 billion company," he said.