Stories
Stories
A Random Sampling of HBS Graduates in the News
Have you heard the one about the minister and the stockbroker waiting in line at the Pearly Gates? St. Peter smiles and says to the stockbroker, "My son, take this silken robe and golden staff and enter the Kingdom of Heaven." Then he tells the minister, "Take this cotton robe and wooden staff and enter the Kingdom of Heaven."
"Just a minute," says the minister. "The stockbroker gets a silken robe and a golden staff but I, a minister, only get a cotton robe and a wooden staff? How can this be?"
"Up here, we go by results," St. Peter replies. "While you preached, people slept; his clients, they prayed."
HBS's answer to Leno and Letterman, Larry Klein (MBA '80), who fully intends to keep his day job as an investment advisor, has recently packaged that and some two hundred other jokes to help financial professionals add a humorous spark to their presentations to prospective clients. "I've been doing financial seminars for fourteen years," Klein, president of NF Communications, Inc., told Business Wire (March 22, 1999), "and I have never been able to find a good source of humor and jokes for my speeches." Klein's new book and audiotape, 200 Greatest Jokes for Financial Professionals, is available on the Internet at www.nfcom.com/jokes.htm.
HBS classmates Humphrey Chen (MBA '96) and George Searle (MBA '96) first met in the HBS parking lot when Chen helped Searle recharge his U-Haul's dead battery. So it's fitting that the two would start a business, called ConneXus, for people who spend a lot of time in their cars. Recently, Chen and Searle began market tests for *CD ("Star CD"), their new cellular-phone service that identifies songs and artists for listeners who call wanting to know more about the music they've just heard on their car or home radio. The service then offers callers the opportunity to purchase the relevant CDs. The *CD service "enables real-time impulse buying," Chen told the Philadelphia Inquirer (February 11, 1999). "It is a lost sale if you can't act on it."
Currently being tested in Philadelphia, *CD uses computerized song-recognition technology that monitors radio broadcasts and frequencies and identifies songs as they air. Songs are scanned into a computer to create a digital "fingerprint," which is then matched against music played by radio stations monitored by ConneXus around the clock. When a caller presses "*CD" on her cellular phone and reports the station and approximate time she heard a song, she receives information about the song and how to purchase the CD on which it appears.
With the troubled Salt Lake City Winter Olympics Organizing Committee sorely in need of a scandal-buster, there was little doubt about whom the committee's board of trustees was going to call: Bain Capital CEO W. Mitt Romney (MBA '74, JD '75). Although he is a Massachusetts resident, Romney's Utah roots run deep: his ancestors journeyed west with Brigham Young, his parents were raised in Utah, and he himself is a Brigham Young University graduate with a second home in Utah.
Nonetheless, according to the Boston Globe (February 12, 1999), Romney was surprised to be chosen to take on the Organizing Committee's vacated CEO position. "Never in a million years had I thought about taking this job," he said. "The idea was completely foreign to me." But as the Globe reported, "The lure of the Olympic rings, the idea of returning to Utah on a near-spiritual mission, and the challenge of straightening out a $1.5 billion corporation proved irresistible."
Looking for a case of the same champagne that's served on the Orient Express? How about a piece of jewelry shaped like one of Dennis Rodman's tattoos? If it's a higher-priced, hard-to-find product or service, chances are you'll soon be able to find it at www.buyerweb.com, the site for a new Internet company founded by Teymour Farman-Farmaian (MBA '95) and Andrew Kosztyo (MBA '95).
A busy executive at Time Warner's RoadRunner cable modem group, Farman-Farmaian had been struggling to find a specialty sofa when the idea for BuyerWeb first hit him: Why not set up an Internet site where he could request what he needed and have merchants get back to him with an offer? Farman-Farmaian and Kosztyo have made that concept a reality, with BuyerWeb currently boasting some five hundred participating merchants (mostly small or specialty businesses) from fourteen different categories of products and services, including items such as cigars, coins, wine, and sports memorabilia.
"Say I want a pinot noir from California," Farman-Farmaian explained to the New York Post (February 28, 1999). "I name a price range and can add a description." BuyerWeb then contacts the appropriate merchants who have signed up with, and pay referral fees to, BuyerWeb. It's a win-win situation: customers get to choose the best of several offers, while the merchants build an Internet customer base, an otherwise difficult and expensive proposition for small businesses.
Post a Comment
Related Stories
-
- 01 Mar 2024
- HBS Alumni Bulletin
Come Sail Away
Re: Michael Sard (MBA 2018); By: Julia Hanna -
- 18 Jan 2024
- TechCrunch
Match Game
Re: Faye Iosotaluno (MBA 2008) -
- 01 Dec 2023
- HBS Alumni Bulletin
Turning Point: Where Credit Is Due
Re: Nagi Otgonshar (MBA 2015) -
- 01 Sep 2023
- HBS Alumni Bulletin
Turning Point: Listen to the Music
Re: Marnie Tattersall (MBA 1972)