David Xanatos started life as the son of Petros Xanatos, a Greek immigrant who worked a fisherman from Bar Harbor, Maine. Young Xanatos received an anonymous letter that contained a set of valuable 10th-century coins. He sold the coins for $20,000 and invested the money in a series of successful ventures, thus pulling himself out of poverty in the process. He would later embark on a business career, the first steps toward building his own company, Xanatos Enterprises. Despite his father's belief that Xanatos did not deserve the gift that had launched his career, Xanatos continued to claim that he would one day prove himself a self-made man.