You won’t believe who founded these companies

Prince Charles, Jessica Alba and even King Henry VIII are behind some of the companies you walk past every day.

Think you have to be a seasoned business person like Richard Branson or Sheryl Sandberg to found a company?

Think again. There are many well-known firms and brands from around the world that were created by the people you’d least expect to be a company CEO and yet are highly successful in their fields.

Here we profile some of the most interesting.

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Royal Mail – King Henry VIII

The history of the British postal service stretches back over 500 years to 1516 when King Henry VIII - him of many wives - knighted Brian Tuke and unwittingly created what we now know as the Royal Mail.

The first Master of the Posts, Tuke instituted a formal postal network across the country, earmarking vital postal towns.

However, for nearly 120 years, the service operated solely for the Crown’s purposes and was only opened up to the general public in 1635 by the ill-fated King Charles I, who was to lose his head 14 years later.

By 1660, the Post Office Act created the publicly-owned firm and it was only in 1784 that the service became officially known as the Royal Mail, when mail coaches became the norm.

In 1840, the first stamp – the Penny Black – was launched featuring Queen Victoria.

Fast forward to 2011 and 90% of Royal Mail was listed on the London Stock Exchange, allowing private investors to buy shares in the company.

Duchy Originals – Prince Charles

Prince Charles is better known for being next-in-line to the British throne and the ex-husband of the late Princess Diana than for his business acumen, but you’d be surprised.

In 1990, HRH the Prince of Wales commissioned research into whether there was a market for organic food.

The result was Duchy Originals, which produces Soil Association-certified organic food on the Prince’s Highgrove estate.

Named after the Prince’s Duchy of Cornwall estate, its first product was an oaten biscuit initially sold through Harrods and Fortnum and Mason’s, but with the popularity of organic food in the 2000s, Waitrose soon became the Prince’s biggest customer. 

Now a joint venture with Waitrose known as Waitrose Duchy Organic, the Prince continues his involvement with the firm which has donated millions over the years to the Prince of Wales Charitable Foundation.  

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Casamigos – George Clooney & Rande Gerber

When drinking buddies George Clooney and Rande Gerber, a nightclub entrepreneur married to model Cindy Crawford, built holiday homes next to each other in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, they created a tequila brand by accident.

Searching for a tequila brand they could enjoy with less of an after-burn and hangover-potential, Clooney suggested they create their own.

With the help of property developer Mike Meldman, they found a distillery to produce one until they ordered so many bottles that the distillery asked them to secure a business licence.

Just four years later, they sold Casamigos to beverage giant Diageo for up to $1 billion (£760m) – that’s $700 million (£533m) with a further $300 million (£228m) consideration based on the brand’s performance over the next decade.

The three founders invested just $600,000 (£457m) each initially and could net up to $333 million (£253m) each.

The Honest Company – Jessica Alba

She’s more familiar to TV fans as a superhero than a CEO, but actress Jessica Alba straddles both worlds.

The Dark Angel and Fantastic Four star founded the ethical baby product company after a baby clothes detergent brought her out in a rash.

The Honest Company markets baby, health and beauty products made without petrochemicals and synthetic perfumes in the US and Canada and now has annual sales of $250 million (£190 million). It’s not been an easy road to success, however.

It took Alba three years to find the right business partners and in recent years the company has had to contend with lawsuits over claims its baby food was falsely labelled organic (thrown out by the judge), to complaints its sun cream failed to protect against sunburn and its laundry detergent contained sodium lauryl sulfate – an ingredient the firm had promised never to use.

However, in 2017 there were rumours Alba’s firm, valued at $1 billion (£760m), could be sold to Unilever.

Latin World Entertainment - Sofia Vergara

Back in the late nineties, Modern Family and Chef star Sofía Vergara, now worth $42.5 million (£32m), was co-hosting two Spanish-language TV shows and struggling to find a specialist talent management firm to represent her professionally.

The Colombian-born actress’ solution was to start her own, Latin World Entertainment, which she co-founded with Luis Balaguer in 1998.

Now the multi-million dollar firm, based in Los Angeles, is seen as the premier talent management agency for Hispanic TV stars in the US.

Representing some of the biggest names in Spanish-language television, LWE has also expanded into marketing and in 2015 launched a Spanish-language news website with CNET.

Meanwhile, Vergara has since co-founded a lingerie subscription firm and a digital media company called Raze with Balaguer and the former president of Fox TV, Emiliano Calemzuk.