BEDC

"There's a 1-in-100,000 chance that a kid will become successful as a rapper or athlete, but a 1-in-10 chance that he'll become successful in business with the same effort," says Magnus Greaves, cofounder of 100 Urban Entrepreneurs.

Greaves, 37, knows whereof he speaks: A self-taught trader, the Vancouver native left college early, moving to London in 1994 to stake his claim in the British capital's cutthroat financial sector. Rising rapidly, he soon cofounded MacFutures, an independent firm that presciently seized on the global shift toward electronic trading. By 2003, MacFutures had expanded its operations to Paris, Chicago and Montreal; that year, Greaves sold the firm to Refco, an industry giant at the time.