Another example of an incredible bootstrapper. He started his company when the studios did a bad job with one of his early films. All his ventures (THX, LucasArts, ILM) came out of being in the Valley of Death and the need to create effects that matched the vision he had for Star Wars. In fact, it would have been a much more boring path if he remained just a director, like so many of his peers. He certainly wouldn't have a multi-billion $ empire! One of his genius moves early on, was to secure the merchandising rights to Star Wars. This itself is a gigantic business. Pixar was born here too.
The recent article in Wired is especially good: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.05/
