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Steven Murch: Philanthropist-in-Training
Murch: from high-tech success to hands-on development (photo courtesy of Steven Murch)
Another in a series of occasional articles on HBS graduates who have taken a leave from their careers to explore nonbusiness endeavors.
After building his fortune in the virtual world, Steven D. Murch (MBA '91) has taken up a hammer to build a lasting legacy in the real world.
“My dream is to create a foundation that helps people,” says Murch, a Microsoft veteran and Internet entrepreneur who shares that vision with his wife, Heather, a sixth-grade teacher. The pair live in Seattle with their infant son, Collin. “But before that, I want to work at many different nonprofits — to sample what it's like and to see how well they apply resources to their cause.”
To that end, Murch took a two-month sabbatical last fall from his post as a vice president at Internet travel giant Expedia to become a philanthropist-in-training. His “teacher” has been Seattle's chapter of Habitat for Humanity, where he has been busy helping to build interest-free, at-cost homes for needy families in his community.
“I chose Habitat because I've always loved to build things,” Murch remarks. “It's refreshing, especially after years of e-mail, meetings, and working on electronic stuff. High technology is so ephemeral. For all you know, what you work on today is going to be obsolete in three years. So it's really gratifying to nail in a foundation floor for a house that you know is going to provide shelter for a family for many years, especially when you're hammering in boards alongside the people who will be living there.”
The fleeting nature of ones and zeros aside, Murch knows he's been fortunate in his career to have been in the right field at precisely the right time. Upon adding an MBA to his computer science degrees from Carnegie Mellon and Stanford, Murch (who graduated from HBS as a Baker Scholar) went straight to Microsoft. For more than six years, he had a hand in the development and release of several software programs and CD-ROMs, including a travel title called Expedia, which was later spun out of Microsoft as an Internet IPO.
With the rise of the Internet, Murch led Microsoft's online games division and produced the hugely popular MSN Gaming Zone before he got an idea for his own Internet company. He wrote his business plan, found a partner, and left Microsoft in 1997 in order to start VacationSpot, an online reservations network for consumers seeking to rent vacation properties.
“We worked hard on it for three years,” states Murch. “It was during the dot-com gold rush, and it was fairly easy to get financing and build a network of 25,000 vacation properties.” VacationSpot's success appealed to Murch's former colleagues at Expedia, who bought it in March 2000 for $82 million in stock options and brought Murch back on board as vice president. Recognizing his good fortune, Murch says he decided last summer that the time had come to “start looking outward before I get too old to do anything” and find his own way to give back to the world.
Murch's leave from Expedia ended in January, but he's decided not to return for now. Instead, he's agreed to become a leader for Global Village, Habitat's traveling volunteer program. He took on the new role after returning from a February trip to New Zealand, where he worked with a family for three weeks to build their home.
And Murch has found yet another way to help. To keep his programming skills current, he has made a hobby of writing software and recently created PocketShop, a grocery shopping list program for the Pocket PC. Available at www.sdmventures.com, Murch notes that all profits will go to Habitat and the World Wildlife Fund.
Working with Habitat, observes Murch, “has helped me to see more clearly the need in the world for affordable housing, as well as the positive impact individuals can have by working as a team. Getting to know more about Habitat's smart model will help me immensely in thinking how to build a lasting contribution.”
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