NO matter how busy things get at the WCNY, I love working on the Joseph Wharton Awards Dinner. By honoring four alumni each year we celebrate the breath and depth of the Wharton Alumni Community,
which is quite amazing. Attending the dinner is a great opportunity to hear and meet these successful people in a private setting offered to no one other than Wharton alumni.
The caliber of thinking by Wharton Alumni is evident through the four extensive interviews of our 2011 award recipients in this magazine. Jay Fishman, W’74, WG’74, CEO and Chair of The Travelers Companies, shared that: “We don’t swing for the fences, we go for lots of singles and doubles.” Peter Lynch, WG’68, said: “During my years at Fidelity, sometimes… I had a few good ideas. But I always wanted to hear other points of view”. Dr. Mehmet Oz, WG’86, M’86, shared his concern about his patients:” If only I had been able to get a key bit of information to them perhaps a few months ahead of time, their condition could have been averted.” Nat Turner, W’08, who co-founded Invite Media, explained his investing approach: “When angel investing, I prefer personalities, who are more reserved and who take time to learn things on their own, instead of making rash assumptions.”
The Wharton Club of New York began in earnest in 1971 thanks to a confi-dent, young graduate, Bob Bedell, W’68, and an enthusiastic team of volunteers. We are chronicling the history of the club in a series of articles beginning in this issue. Be sure to let us know what you know about the club’s history, as this series continues.
Carl E. Rosen, WG’77, recognizes Wharton alumni’s abundant capacity to make a difference. Carl wrote about an event held by the Club’s Career Develop-ment Division on how to get placed on a nonprofit board and why you should want to.
Two key volunteers, who helped the club so much in past years, continue to propel it forward in their new positions. Regina Jaslow, W’97, and Jennifer Gregoriou, W’78, share their thoughts on their hopes for the club.
Speaking of involvement, you may wish to become a Contributing Member of the Club. Please read about the benefits of becoming a Contributing Member and how to register.
On a personal note, my good friend and the honorary chair of the 2011 Joseph Wharton Awards Dinner, William P. Carey, W’53, passed away in December. The JWD was his last public appearance. What a great man, friend and alumnus.`
Finally, you know I am going to tell you: TAKE THE CALL! Review the postings on the inside back cover and visit this hyperlink, www.whartonny.com/forum.html to post your own! Remember Wharton Alumni help, hire, invest in, and buy from Wharton Alumni; and if a fellow alumnus calls… you take the call! It is this enlightened self-interest that is the ultimate power of the Wharton commu-nity. The Wharton Alumni network continues to be your most powerful tool for business, social, career and intellectual growth. Use it! Take the Call!
ALL alumni should attend at least one Joseph Wharton Dinner. Preferably often, for three reasons. First, the selected honorees are exceptional business leaders (Jon
M. Huntsman, W’59, H’96, James David Power III, WG’59, James Tisch, WG’76, to name a few) in both their accom-plishments and thinking. Their acceptance speeches lift you up as a member of the Wharton family.
Second, the environment is replete with friendly, alumni who focus on achieving their dreams and are fascinating to get to know. Finally, as an alum, you will walk out feeling inspired, challenged, and proud.
The 2011 Joseph Wharton Dinner, held at The Metropolitan Club, at One 60th Street, surpassed expectations. The four honorees, interviewed in the following pages, were gracious in their time talking to fellow alumni before and after the dinner, and gave thoughtful talks as one amongst friends.
The Joseph Wharton Award for Leadership for the Whar-ton alumnus/a, who embodies the highest standards of leader-ship in both business and society, was given to Jay Fishman, W’74, WG’74, Chairman and CEO of the Travelers Com-panies. The Joseph Wharton Award for Lifetime Achieve-ment for the Wharton alumnus/a, who has had tremendous positive and sustained impact on business and society over the course of their careers, was given to Peter Lynch, WG’68, Vice Chairman of Fidelity Management and Research. The Joseph Wharton Award for Social Impact for the alumnus/a who has had the greatest impact in public service, social enterprise or philanthropy, was awarded to Dr. Mehmet Oz, WG’86, M’86, heart surgeon and host of The Dr. Oz Show. The Joseph Whar-
ton Award for Young Leadership for the Wharton alumna who, early in his/her career, has demonstrated the greatest potential for leadership and lasting impact, was awarded to Nathaniel Turner, W’08, Co-Founder of Invite Media.
Benjamin Franklin wrote: “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” Conversely these honorees all succeeded by preparing well. From Peter Lynch who from age 11, learned about picking stocks as a golf caddy, to Nat Turner who was on his sixth start-up by the time he co-founded Invite Media as a senior at Wharton. The chairman of the event, William Polk Carey, W’53, likewise embodied that ethos, as an innovator in real estate finance. Mr. Carey pioneered the sale-leaseback and other financial instruments that at-once provided hundreds of companies with needed working capital and steadily grew his portfolio to 850 properties worth over $5 billion. He has since given away hundreds of millions of dollars to found several new business schools in his own name.
Over 320 alumni convened to congratulate and reconnect. Jamie Rich, C’93, WG’01, a managing director at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., shared that “The awards dinner was a unique evening with perspectives on leadership and success shared by an incredibly diverse set of honorees from investment legend Peter Lynch to health guru Dr. Oz.” George Bradt, WG’85, a managing director of PrimeGenesis, an executive onboarding firm, confirmed that “the Joseph Wharton dinner evening is special because of the people in attendance. This includes the award recipients of course, but also the award presenters, spon-sors, volunteers and dinner attendees each of whom has his or her own unique story - well worth hearing.”
The 2011 Joseph Wharton Dinner
Over 320 attendees enjoy conversation and cuisine at the magnificent Metropolitan Club in Manhattan
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An Interview with Jay Fishman, W’74, WG’74, Chairman and CEO of The Travelers Companies, Inc.
TO lead your Dow Jones 30 company unscathed through a major financial crisis and recession, a CEO must converse. You may have the “best management
team in the industry,” but you must be able to engage them, advance ideas, listen, and learn.
You can have a conversation with Jay Fishman. It helps that, while he takes his responsibilities seriously, he tries not to take himself too seriously. In his too short acceptance speech at the 2011 Joseph Wharton Awards Dinner, Jay regaled us with a vivid memory from his undergraduate days at Wharton. “Where they cut the men from the boys in those days was cost accounting. I was struggling with the course tremendously and had been studying for the final for weeks. I went in and sat down, and read the first question on the exam, then quickly went to the second because I had no idea what the first was talking about. I rapidly came to the con-clusion that I must have the wrong exam, because none of it made any sense to me. I kept that bluebook as a reminder of that wonderful class, and that it’s been a wonderful struggle.”
It also helps that Jay possesses an unguarded sense of wonder, often chuckling at something he just realized, pep-pering his conversation with “gosh” and “oh boy!” These at-
tributes complement the thoughtful business approach that has been the hallmark of Jay Fishman’s leadership at Travel-ers, as well as his participation on the Board of Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania.
At the Joseph Wharton Awards ceremony, you announced that Travelers would make a $100,000 contribution to the Wharton Club of New York, beyond its co-sponsorship of the Joseph Wharton Awards Dinner. What was behind that? It is certainly a first in the club’s history.
I wanted to acknowledge Ken Beck and the rest of the group for their remarkable success in reinvigorating the club. Ken, in particular, has invested so much time and so much energy. What an organization needs to thrive is someone who is truly interested in both the organization and its members. Ken is an unabashed advocate. The funny thing was, I was being recognized for leadership, and that was very nice and gracious, but events like this are always interesting. Someone is being honored, but 100% of the time, if you peel the onion, you’ll find there is someone else at the center who is also deserving of the recognition and the honor. In this situation, that person was clearly Ken.
In your acceptance speech, the word “gratitude” comes up again and again, in such a way that it seemed to characterize your approach to life. When you’re leading an organization the size of Travelers, does that quality come into play?
You bet. There is a personal and a professional aspect for its relevance. First, I come from an extraordinarily modest background. My father was a small-business owner; he ran a tiny printing business, and I was part of the first generation in my family to have the opportunity to go to college. So, I do have a deep sense of gratitude and appreciation. Profes-sionally, that emotion and dynamic translate perfectly into the corporate realm. You asked how one manages such a large firm. Never alone! This is a place that requires a group of people, each of whom is really talented and capable, and you’ve got to invest in them, trust them, partner with them, listen to them and do all of the things that good partners do. I refer to the people who I work with on the senior team as “partners.” Some may think that is a little hokey, but that’s how I feel. I may be the titular leader, and it’s a function, so I get a lot of the credit. But publicly, I try to share the credit with all of them. I do very much stand on their shoulders.
Joseph Wharton Award for Leadership 2011 Jay Fishman, W’74, WG’74
Robert Kapito, W’79 presenting the award to Jay Fishman, W’74, WG’744
Jay S. Fishman is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Travelers Com-panies, Inc., a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, with assets in excess of $100 billion and revenues in ex-cess of $25 billion. Travelers offers a wide range of property and casualty insurance products and services to businesses, orga-nizations and individuals in the U.S. and selected international markets.
Mr. Fishman first became associated with Travelers when he was named the in-surer’s CFO in 1993, upon the company’s acquisition by Primerica, where he served as an executive. Primerica later became Citigroup.
He was named President and CEO of Travelers in 1998 and Chairman in 2000. From early 2000 until October 2001, Mr. Fishman also served in a number of Citigroup senior positions.
He joined The St. Paul Companies in October 2001 as Chairman, President and CEO. In April 2004, The St. Paul Companies merged with Travelers Prop-erty Casualty Corp., which had since been divested by Citigroup. Mr. Fishman was named President and CEO of the merged company in April 2004 and, in 2005, was also named Chairman.
Mr. Fishman is an alumnus of the Uni-versity of Pennsylvania, having graduated with a bachelor’s degree in economics, magna cum laude, in 1974, and a master’s degree in accounting from the Wharton School, also in 1974. He remains active at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is a member of the Board of Trustees, the Board of Overseers for the School of Veterinary Medicine, and the Industry Advisory Board of the Financial Institu-tions Center for The Wharton School. He also serves as Chairman of the Travelers/Wharton Partnership for Risk Management and Leadership to provide risk management leadership and policy research, risk analysis, and outreach.
In addition, Mr. Fishman serves on the Board of Directors of ExxonMobil, is the Chairman of the American Insurance Association and is an active member of The Business Council. He also serves on the Board of Directors of The Philhar-monic-Symphony Society of New York and is a Vice Chairman of the Kennedy Center Corporate Fund Board in Wash-ington D.C.
Mr. Fishman and his wife, Randy, have two children.
Travelers is well-known for having averted the 2008 financial crisis.
We did. The decisions at the root of it occurred in 2004. None of us were prescient enough to see the real estate crisis. But what we do think about all the time is the relationship of risk and reward. There was a remarkably narrow gap in the re-ward produced by less risky assets versus more risky investment options. In many cases, that spread had never been narrower, so you really weren’t being paid to hold more risky financial assets. For example, by the end of 2004, we had a total of just about $200 million in subprime, residential mortgage-backed securities, which was small compared to our entire investment portfolio of about $70 billion. And we stopped buying them. The dynamic that made that decision such an easy one for us was that the difference in yield that you were paid for owning a Fannie Mae mortgage-backed security versus a residential mortgage-backed security, of equal rating and tenor, was 25 basis points. Institutionally, we’re pretty good at thinking about risk and reward, and the trade-off between them. The decision to step back from real estate was driven by the environment that existed then, and you had to have the courage of your convictions. For a couple of years, people thought we were not aggressive enough. But our analysis turned out to be pretty good.
Was your approach to investing informed by your approach to providing insurance? Would you have approached those risky investments differently if you had not been in the insurance business?
That’s a very substantive and sophisticated question. Some insurance companies think of themselves as asset management firms that generate their cash by selling insurance. Some are very successful at that, and they tend to have more aggressive investment profiles. Then you’ve got us and others like us. We are an insurance company first, and an asset management com-pany second. We take only the amount of risk on the asset side that will allow us to be a successful insurance company. That’s a very important risk-and-reward discipline, and the right one for us.
From the perspective of risk management, what are your thoughts on our national debt?
Actually, we have been vocal on this topic. If you spend time with the numbers — not the stories but the numbers themselves — the picture is deeply concerning. For instance, total federal revenues for the fiscal year just ended were $2.3 trillion. In 2020, only eight years from now, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid alone will exceed $2.7 trillion, accord-ing to the Congressional Budget Office. When you recognize the stress that alone will put on the economy, you understand
Jay Fishman, W
’74, WG
’74YOU ASKED HOW ONE MANAGES SUCH A LARGE FIRM? NEVER ALONE!
PETER Lynch, WG’68, is still eager to learn. In his lifetime of achievement, recognized at this year’s Joseph Wharton Awards Dinner, he
has created vast opportunities, broke through business models, expanded business exponentially, employed, enriched, written, taught and inspired, but he doesn’t see it that way. Asked about his brilliant insights, he tells you about his terrific boss. Requested to share his breakthroughs he tells you he was lucky. The phrase ‘I don’t know’ is his favorite. When interviewed celebrities are too willing to drivel on about the nation’s economy, why can’t the eminently qualified Peter Lynch provide just one paragraph of insight? It was not to be. What he did share was a glimpse of his eminently practical approach to investing, to giving, and of his youthful enthusiasm for life.
How did you get started in your field?
Well, I grew up in the 1950s. I started caddying when I was 11. That would have been 1955 and the '50s turned out to be a great decade for the stock market. I caddied at a very nice club out in West Newton, Massachusetts.
It had a lot of corporate executives, and some of these were buying stocks and I remember them talking about it. They would mention the names of companies they invested in and I'd go home and look for those stocks in the newspaper and then look it up a month later, and a year later, and I noticed they were going up. I didn't have any money to invest but I said to myself, "Gee, this makes a lot of sense."
I only took one job interview in my life, for a summer internship, in 1965. The person I'd caddied for, for 10 years, became the president of Fidelity. When they heard I was accepted to Wharton they were excited and said, why don’t you come in for an interview?
There were 75 candidates for 3 spots, but I was the only person who had caddied for the president.
You are a proponent of common sense ("Behind every stock is a company. Find out what it's doing."). What is your common sense prescription for the economy?
It’s the question everyone asks in the beginning, the middle, and the end of the day. You could get 30 Nobel Prize winners in a room and you still wouldn’t get the answer on this recession. I don’t know. It would be lovely to get a copy of next year’s Wall Street Journal. I just deal with what is going on currently. If you want to invest, choose companies that can do ok in a difficult environment and if things get better they’ll do great, and if things get worse, they have a decent balance sheet so they won’t go to zero.
How did you respond in a past recession?
The worst recession we had was 1980-1982. Double digit inflation, double digit unemployment, a 20% prime rate, we were worried that Japan was going to take over the world, and books were being written that the future of America was dim. At that time I made Chrysler my biggest position, 5% of the Magellan Fund. 99 out of 100 people if they had really looked at Chrysler would have bought it, but for some reason, people had prejudices. During a recession, you need to look at the company’s balance sheet. It would be a tragedy to invest in a company that goes bankrupt just as the economy is turning around. Yes, Chrysler was losing money, but they had enough money for the next couple of years. When
Joseph Wharton Award for Lifetime Achievement 2011 Peter Lynch, WG’68
Peter Lynch, WG’68, receiving the Joseph Wharton Award for Lifetime Achievement from someone who knows how to give out awards, James David Power III, WG’59
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Chrysler went from losing $6.00 per share to losing $2.00 per share investors were not attracted by that $4.00 increase in earnings per share. They should have said that’s terriffic in this terrible environment! But when Chrysler went from -$2.00 per share to +$2.00 per share, their stock tripled. Go figure! Another factor was that the UAW was not going to let Ford and GM off of the hook, but they didn’t want to see Chrysler fail.
At that time the auto industry was fairly predictable. Every 36 to 48 months people bought a new car. After four years of below average car purchases, miles driven had not decreased, so you had to know there had to be a rebound. It wasn’t just cheap. I was going to send bumper stickers to all of our analysts that said, “Cheap Sucks”. Cheap makes a good research list, but it’s not a reason to buy. Chrysler’s stock was cheap, but it had some things going for it. I got lucky, at that time they came out with the mini-van; I didn’t expect that to happen. It was a huge profit maker.
What character traits were helpful in your career? Self discipline? Persistence?
Flexibility. I watched a lot of other people. I think there is a fine line between persistence and being stubborn. You have to be careful. Wharton alumni are more used to getting As and Bs in school, but in the business world and the stock market you get a lot of Fs. It is good for keeping your hubris down. You just have to say “if I am right 6.5 out of 10x, then I’m doing well”. You can’t keep saying “I’m right, the market is wrong”. Persistence is okay, but stubborn is a bad adjective.
Remember this is not pure research. You’re not a chemist who spends years trying to discover the answer. In studying companies, you have to make decisions without perfect information. By the time you have all of the information on the company, the stock could have doubled and tripled.
The stock market is very similar to the game of bridge in that there’s an element of luck, whereas the game of chess everything is in front of you – there are no surprises - everything is known. It’s all strategy. Warren Buffet and Jimmy Cayne, both successful stock investors, are avid bridge players. In bridge, you have to make a lot of educated guesses. Sometimes you’re wrong. You don’t know exactly what cards the other players have in their hands.
Flexibility also in looking at companies with unions, without unions, at utilities, at companies in bankruptcy. Some people look only at growth companies, I looked everywhere. You can make money on a company going from crummy to mediocre, but if a company goes from terrific to a little more terrific there is not much money to be made.
continued on page 18
Peter Lynch is Vice Chairman of Fidelity Management & Research Company -- the investment advisor arm of Fidelity Investments -- and an Advisory Board Member of the Fidelity Funds. Mr. Lynch was portfolio man-ager of Fidelity Magellan Fund, which was the best performing fund in the world under his leadership from May 1977 to May 1990. When he took over Magellan Fund, it had $20 million in assets. By the time he retired from the fund, it had grown to over $14 billion in assets and had over a million sharehold-ers. Every single year Magellan beat the average fund, and grew larger to become the largest fund in the world in 1983, and it continued to outperform all other funds for the next seven years.
Author of the bestseller, One Up on Wall Street, Mr. Lynch completed his second book in March 1993. His book, Beating The Street, remained No. 1 on The New York Times best-seller list for eight weeks, and was translated into 15 languages. Before joining Fidelity, Mr. Lynch served as lieutenant in the U.S. Army for two years.
Born in 1944, Mr. Lynch received a Bachelor of Science degree from Bos-ton College in 1965 and an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1968. In 1994, he was named Outstanding Alumnus by The Wharton School. Mr. Lynch is an elected fellow with the American Acad-emy of Arts and Sciences (of which Ben Franklin was an early member) and a member and former director of the Boston Society of Security Analysts.
Mr. Lynch is actively involved with a large number of civic and not-for-profit organizations. He has been recognized with several awards for his efforts, and received honorary degrees from 15 col-leges and universities. For twenty one years he served as chairman of the Inner City Scholarship Fund, raising over $100 million in partial scholarships for children living in the inner city of Boston and attending Catholic schools. The ICSF continues to be his number one philanthropic endeavor.
Peter Lynch, WG
’68THE STOCK MARKET IS VERY SIMILAR TO THE GAME OF BRIDGE IN THAT THERE’S AN ELEMENT OF LUCK, WHEREAS THE GAME OF CHESS EVERYTHING IS IN FRONT OF YOU – THERE ARE NO SURPRISES - EVERYTHING IS KNOWN. IT’S ALL STRATEGY.
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DR. Mehmet Oz is omnipresent. Even if you never turn on a television; listen to the radio; or read newspapers, maga-
zines and best-selling books. It doesn’t matter, because your mother, daughter or friend does, and that health advice they’re giving you likely came straight from Dr. Oz. Also, someone you know may even know one of the 100 patients per year who see Dr. Oz for heart surgery.
The Wharton Club of New York celebrated Dr. Oz’s compassion for others and the national impact he’s made on the health of so many Amer-icans. After reading the startling bio of Dr. Oz to those gathered at the Joseph Wharton Awards Dinner, Samuel T. Lundquist, Associate Dean of External Affairs for the Wharton School, asked the audience: “So, what have you done lately?” People have asked questions like that ever since Mehmet Oz pursued joint MBA and MD degrees at Wharton and Penn, while serving as class presi-dent. I mean, who does that? That would be like going to Harvard and being captain of the football team. Yes, he did that too. Following are some thoughts he shared about his path and passion to heal others.
Dr. Oz decided to attend graduate school in Philadelphia, not Boston, because he recognized that, for a joint degree, Wharton and Penn were the best in their fields of business and medicine. Dr. Oz explains, “I wanted to be a doctor, but you couldn’t change medicine if you didn’t understand how the money worked. I thought that I would learn accounting, and marketing, but what I actu-ally learned was how to think differently about the world.”
Once in medical practice, he became in-trigued by the disconnect between the people he was taking care of and the surgery he was performing on them. “I’m a heart surgeon. That means I take people down that long hallway to the operating suite where I’m going to put a band saw through your chest bone. Rarely do patients appreciate that the things I’m about to do to them are largely preventable.
Joseph Wharton Award for Lifetime Achievement 2011 Dr� Mehmet Oz, WG’86, M’86
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If only I had been able to get a key bit of information to them perhaps a few months ahead of time, their condi-tion could have been averted.
“My Wharton education played an important role in helping me think differently about how to talk to people about their health. I experimented with different ideas in the media, and realized that, if you could not talk to people in a way that they would change their minds, you would never be effective. How could I get across just one piece of key information that might save their lives? Washington can’t get it done. I remember being invited to a conference at the Department of Health and Human Services to look at childhood obesity in this country. We came up with 17 wonderful ideas, but none of them were practical. I returned that weekend to the hospital where I practiced and saw a 25-year-old Latino woman who had been overweight her whole life, and had a quadruple bypass procedure. The day after surgery, she was sitting with her two young kids, who, to celebrate, brought her a Big Mac, two large fries and a soda. We laugh, but it’s a tragedy. I thought that the only way to make an impact was to go out and get involved in these communities.
“As I worked with people and, later, began speaking daily to audiences in the millions through Oprah Winfrey’s program, the insight that I gained was that people do not change based on what they know. They change based on what they feel. If you get them to think differently, you may not get very far, but you will if you get them to feel differ-ently. When you turn that TV on, and I become a guest in your home, if I can get you to believe for a moment that you really don’t know, then I can create a conversation and make an impact on your health.”
– KT
Dr. Mehmet Oz, WG’86, M’86 the Daytime Emmy Award-winning host of “The Dr. Oz Show,” is Vice Chair and Professor of Surgery at Columbia University. He directs the Cardiovascu-lar Institute and Integrative Medicine Program at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. His research interests include heart replacement surgery, minimally invasive cardiac surgery, complemen-tary medicine and healthcare policy. He has authored over 400 original pub-lications, book chapters and medical books; has received several patents; and performs more than 100 heart surgeries per year.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Dr. Oz was raised in Delaware and received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University (1982). He went on to obtain a joint MD and MBA (1986) from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Wharton School of Busi-ness. He was awarded the Captain’s Athletic Award for leadership in college and was class president during medical school. He lives in northern New Jersey with Lisa, his wife of 25 years, and their four children.
Dr. Oz has authored six New York Times bestsellers, including You: The Owner’s Manual, You: The Smart Patient, You: On a Diet, You: Staying Young and You: Being Beautiful, as well as the award-winning Healing From the Heart. His newest book is You: The Owner’s Manual for Teens. He has a regular column in Time, AARP magazine and O magazine, and his article Retool, Reboot, Rebuild was awarded the National Magazine Award for Personal Service in 2009.
Dr. Oz has been named Forbes third most influential celebrity in 2010 and 2011, and honored as a Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum (1999-2004), as well as received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor (2008). He won the prestigious Robert E. Gross Research Scholarship, and has received an honorary doctorate from Istanbul University. He was voted “The Best and Brightest” by Esquire magazine, a “Doctor of the Year” by Hippocrates magazine and “Healer of the Millennium” by Healthy Living magazine. Dr. Oz is annually elected as a highest-quality physician by the Castle Connolly Guide, as well as other major ranking groups.
Dr� O
z, WG
’86, M’86Samuel T. Lundquist, Associate Dean of External Affairs
for the Wharton School presents award to Dr. Mehmet Oz., WG’86, M’86
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NAT Turner, W’08, was already a seasoned entrepreneur when he entered Wharton undergrad. By his sophomore year, he and
classmate Zach Weinberg began and sold an online grocery-ordering firm, EatNow.com. In his junior year, Nat co-founded with Zach and two other classmates what would become Invite Media, which three years later in 2010, sold to Google for a reported $81 mil-lion. Nat Turner received the 2011 Joseph Wharton Award for Young Leadership and, here, shares wisdom beyond his 25 years.
How do you like working at Google? Are you still the CEO of Invite Media?
At Google, things are functional — there is no single business unit leader at Google, but we still all work closely together as a single company. Everyone at Google is ridiculously smart, which I was surprised at, only because most big companies get diluted as they grow bigger. It’s managed to build a pretty awesome team, for having 25,000 people. It is very good at en-gineering products, which is the most important thing in my opinion, so I like it.
There aren’t many successful firms founded by a single person. Perhaps a single leader evolves like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, but they start out as teams. Why is that?
To start a brand new company and grow it, you need intelligence, the ability to take risk, paranoia and, to some degree, cockiness. We had four co-founders. A couple of us were shy and reserved and questioned everything, and a couple others were very cocky but had the ability to back it up. This combination allowed us to roll the dice yet not be blinded to every risk. Of course, you also need a crazy work ethic, which we had, to be able to think far ahead and focus on one thing for months toward that vision.
We do a lot of angel investing now, and it’s rare for one person to contain all the needed qualities. You can be shy and passive and not take risks, or be risky and not willing to question yourself. You can be good at coding but not good at selling business deals, etc. A few qualities are crucial — you have to have them in the initial founding team, or you’re not going to get past
the first year, and figure out how to pivot the company.Another thing that helps is if the co-founders share
the same lifestyle. If one is moonlighting, and the other is working full-time, or if one has a family, and one doesn’t, you’re more likely to be butting heads.
What characteristics did you bring to the team?
All four co-founders brought a ton of different qualities to the table. I think, for me early on, it was being generally grounded and having product and graphic design experience. My tendency is to look at things realistically, see the risks and second-guess. So I prefer personalities, when angel investing, who are more reserved and who take time to learn things on their own, instead of making rash, quick assumptions. At Invite, we kind of quietly built the company under the radar, not making a lot of noise about doing it, but we were confident that what we were building would be better. Then, suddenly, we gained a ton of momen-tum for what we were doing and, ultimately, were very successful.
Joseph Wharton Award for Young Leadership 2011 Nat Turner, W’08
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Once you had your initial idea, how many iterations did it go through?
We changed the business end-over-end four times, yet there was a valuable connection between each of these four, although each connection was different:
1 Our first idea was to let small businesses build a video ad like a 30-second TV spot with their voice and with up-close photos of their stores. Our application would let them build the ad and then run it on a site like YouTube. So right before a video starts, your video ad would show. The name “Invite” came from that, since it was like an in-vitation that popped up, inviting you to learn about your local dry cleaners, but we discarded it because it was very difficult to sell anything to small businesses.
2 The next idea was a Facebook application in 2007. We built a video app that let you post your favorite videos from YouTube to your Facebook page. It was pretty cool, and it got a bunch of users, but it didn’t go past that.
3 The third idea was to optimize which videos we showed on that app, to maximize views, and then we realized that the data we had was valuable, about who you are: gender, what your favorite bands were, what classes you are tak-ing, etc. So we said, “Let’s see if we can optimize the ads around these applications we built and license it to other Facebook app developers.” So we built some algorithms with the help of some Penn professors. It didn’t work, because, let’s say you like Neil Young. It doesn’t necessar-ily mean that you will click on an ad for Coca-Cola off of Facebook.
4 In the fourth generation, we decided to stay in advertis-ing and license technology and thought, “Let’s figure out a platform that helps marketers buy ads more effectively.” That was the general vision, and we narrowed it toward what we do today. It still ended up using “data,” albeit differently from our third iteration, and catered more to advertisers themselves as opposed to app developers or publishers.
Did you realize there was some genius there?
No, there was never a light bulb moment. Without real-izing, we just kept moving on. When we made that fourth-generation concept, we didn’t really think we had a business for two more years. We were making progress; there was some traction; and people enjoyed working with us. But to a fault, we were very paranoid that we would run out of money, that someone would figure out how to make something better than we could or that a client would leave. It was about three years from the day we started the company to when we were acquired, but it felt like 20. You can just hit walls forever.
While you were building Invite Media, how long were you at Wharton?
Half of the time. By the time we graduated, we had crys-tallized Invite Media. We had built most of the first version of the product, but we still didn’t know the customers and didn’t know how to explain it, and nobody was really using it.
Nat is the Co-Founder and CEO of Invite Media, an advertising technol-ogy company headquartered in New York City.
In 2006, Nat was named a Wharton Entrepreneurship Fellow, an award given to foster “Ambassadors of Entrepreneurship” for The Wharton School. In 2007, Nat received the Wharton Venture Award, which is given to Wharton students pursuing entrepreneurial ventures.
In 2009, Nat, along with his co-founders — Zach Weinberg, W’08, Michael Provenzano, EAS’08, and Scott Becker, EAS’08 — were named on Business Week’s list of Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25. And in 2010, Nat, along with his co-founder Zach Weinberg, were named a finalist in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the New York metro area.
Nat is now also an active angel inves-tor and advisor and has invested in several startups in the technology space located in New York City and California.
Nat Turner, W
’08
continued on page 20
NO, THERE WAS NEVER A LIGHT BULB MOMENT. WITHOUT REALIZING, WE JUST KEPT MOVING ON. WHEN WE MADE THAT FOURTH-GENERATION CONCEPT, WE DIDN’T REALLY THINK WE HAD A BUSINESS FOR TWO MORE YEARS.
11WHARTON CLUB OF NEW YORK | WINTER 2012 | WWW.WHARTONNY.COM
“YOU bet. I’ll be glad to do it!” With those words, David Mahoney, W’45, WEV’47,
chairman of Norton Simon, and a lead-ing business executive in New York, agreed to become the honoree of the first Joseph P Wharton Dinner in 1972. Bob Bedell, WG’68, the Club’s first president had asked David, explaining that the Club wanted to establish an an-nual dinner as a pre-eminent New York event and make it a major fundraiser for the Club. That first dinner was held in the Starlight Room of the Waldorf
Astoria and over 500 business people were in attendance. The keynote speaker was Gus Levy, who in 1933 had led the one man trading department at Gold-man Sachs.
Until 1970 Wharton alumni had met only socially. That year at a general meet-ing of alumni an open invitation was made for someone to take on the chal-lenge of developing a formal organiza-tion in New York. Bob Bedell, recently graduated from Wharton and a brand manager at Avon in Manhattan, stepped up to the plate. Over the next year he wrote the constitution and bylaws, and then established a structure within which any alumni who wanted to, could participate in the Club. By the second year 45 alumni became volunteers, including 10 VPs and a few senior VPs. The volunteer management team met once a month to discuss and advance each of their areas of focus.
After a long search, I tracked down Bob in Hilton Head, South Carolina and asked him some questions about the Club’s founding.
What were some of the Club’s initial challenges?
We needed office space to organize ourselves. One wonderful alumnus, John Main, WG’59, gave us office space for three years. We hired an executive director of the Club who ran the of-fice. By the end of three years we were putting on 75 programs per year, and eventually it became too much for one person to handle. From the begin-ning our funding came only from dues, thus our biggest challenge was raising money to run the Club correctly, and to expand it. So looking to the future we did two things. First we created a board of directors. I sought out Whar-ton alumni who were the most visible senior executives in New York, and asked if they would sit on the board and come
to a meeting once per month. Second, we came up with an idea for an annual Joseph P. Wharton Award Dinner. The board’s primary job was to help us select and invite award recipients and keynote speakers for the dinner. After the dinner, we didn’t have many financial challenges. Of course, someone had to be a cheer-leader.
Another challenge was that in the first 10 years of the Club, we sometimes had difficulty getting people out of their office over to an event. So we opened our events to Harvard alumni and they reciprocated, because it’s discouraging for a speaker to show up with 15 people there. At a later point the Harvard and Wharton clubs parted ways.
Was the dinner always held in the Starlight Room?
Because we exceeded capacity that first year, we moved next year to the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria and held it there for the next 20 years. Generally speaking we had 600 and 1000 people in the room.
We started at $1,000 per table and over the years increased it to $3,000 per table. Over that period we were able to generate a profit of $200,000 to $300,000 per year. This was critical be-cause we needed the money very badly. Once we had a little money in the bank we established our own office and had up to two to three people working there.
The dinner went along just fine for years. Then in 1992 there was a huge ef-fort by the University of Pennsylvania to establish the Penn Club in Manhattan. Let me say that I agree with the Univer-sity’s point of view that its focus should have been on the Penn Club. No doubt about it. There was an active campaign for senior alumni to step up and support the Penn Club. In that year and the next they tried to hold the Joseph P. Wharton Award Dinner, but senior alumni lost
YES, IT WAS SO MUCH FUN. EVERYONE HAD A GREAT TIME WORKING FOR THE CLUB. WHEN YOU CAN GENERATE THAT KIND OF ENTHUSIASM AND PRIDE IN THE SCHOOL, ...THEN IT’S WORTH IT.
12 WHARTON CLUB OF NEW YORK | WINTER 2012 | WWW.WHARTONNY.COM
ministers due to a rash of kidnappings in their countries. Fortunately, we had made an alternate plan for Don Kendall, the CEO of Pepsi, to be the key note speaker. He filled in and did a great job.
“Minutes before the evening ended, I received an 11 page telegram from Kissinger’s office. As I read his words, you could have heard a pin drop in the Waldorf Astoria ball-room. Kissinger’s final words about Rockefeller were: He thus exemplifies the finest of executive ability, and is therefore a most fitting recipient of this award. All these qualities – and many more – are a matter of com-mon knowledge and public record. But, Nelson Rockefeller, my personal friend, is as deserving of praise and admiration as Nelson Rockefeller, statesman and public servant. I know of no finer, more inspiring, more compassionate human being— Henry A. Kissinger.’”
This is the first in a series of articles on the history of the Whar-ton Club of New York. If you have any information or photos about these early years, then please send it to Kent Trabing at [email protected]
focus on it and the Wharton Club basi-cally went into hibernation by 1995.
Why did you think you could pull it off?
In fact, I wasn’t sure we could pull it off. Until I got the first 10 volunteers to work at the officer level, and until I got such a positive response from senior executives to be on our board, then I thought, “You know what? We can do this.” This took about one year. There was no leadership above me until I formed the board, but they didn’t want to be involved at the Club level. The second year we awarded Don Kendall, CEO of Pepsi, and our keynote speaker was John Connally, former governor of Texas (who was in the car with President Kennedy when he was shot). John knocked them dead, and received multiple standing ovations. If you get a few dinners like that behind you, then you build momentum.
Do you have good memories of those early years?
Yes, it was so much fun. Everyone had a great time working for the Club. When you can generate that kind of enthusiasm and pride in the school, and camaraderie amongst the officers, then it’s worth it. We enjoyed such a positive re-sponse from those we asked to participate in meetings, CEOs and keynote speakers. I remember George Will, our key note speaker one year, kept running out to take a phone call to see if he had to write a column that night.
I also located E. Donald Challis, C’64, WG’66, President of the Club
in 1977. He currently is SVP and CMO of BES INC. Don shared a few memories of his own. “Bob Bedell was terrific, not only as President of the Whar-ton Club of NY, but also as an athlete, scholar, and gentleman. A few friends, including Bob, used to play football in Central Park. On one occasion, after Bob asked me to get involved in the Club and to help with the awards dinner, I agreed to do it.”
“In 1974, we were able to secure the longtime gov-ernor of New York Nelson Rockefeller as the guest of honor of our Joseph P. Wharton Award Dinner. At that time he was chair-ing the National Commis-sion on Critical Choices for America. Earlier, we had ap-proached Secretary of State Henry Kiss-inger to be the Dinner’s keynote speaker, but he had declined. Upon receiving Rockefeller’s acceptance, one of our board members went back to Kissinger. When he heard the honoree was Rockefeller, he enthusiastically agreed to be the keynote speaker. We were elated because of the important international role Kissinger was then playing. But the day before the dinner, I received a call from his office that Kissinger would be unable to attend because he was required to return to Washington on the day of the dinner for a meeting with South American prime
Leon Nad, WG’48, Nelson Rockefeller, Donald Kendall, Donald Challis, C’64, WG’66, Bob Moran, WG’65
13WHARTON CLUB OF NEW YORK | WINTER 2012 | WWW.WHARTONNY.COM
Carl E. Rosen, WG’77, is responsible for the Wharton Club’s board placement ini-tiatives and Director of Career Networking. He has been serving in leadership positions of non-profits since high school. He recommends that Wharton alumni increase their experience with non-profits, which can lead to improved professional and leadership skills, career and social networking opportunities, and personal development. “Each board or committee should be better for your having served, and you should be a better individual as a result of your participation.”
In addition to his work for the Wharton Club of NY, he has served as President of his synagogue. He is a trustee of the Tufts University Alumni Association; is a board mem-ber of JFS, a countywide social services organization; and chairs numerous committees. Carl was the Chief Operating Officer of Bulova Corporation and President of Bulova Swiss, S.A. He is a Principal at Shelter Rock International, LLC, which specializes in consulting services to the luxury goods sector.
Nonprofit Boards — A Rewarding ExperienceWCNY Career Development and BoardAssist Team Up
A significant number of Wharton graduates serve on non-profit boards and find the experience to be both personally satisfying and professionally
important. However, many do not understand the roles, responsibilities, obligations and expectations of being a non-profit board member, or even how to get started. To meet this need, the Career Development Division of the Wharton Club of New York initiated a program to edu-cate Wharton alumni and facilitate their placement onto the boards of non-profit organizations. Wharton alumni, widely recognized in the business world, have a respon-sibility to use their intellectual capital to become leaders and role models in their communities.
Earlier this year, the Career Development Division invited Cynthia Remec to lead a program on the subject. She is the Founder and Executive Director of BoardAs-sist (www.boardassist.org), a New York non-profit board matching service that works with non-profits that range from start-ups to well-seasoned organizations with annual budgets of over $100 million. “You don’t need to have a trust fund or a Roman numeral at the end of your name to serve on a non-profit board,” Cynthia Remec assured the group.
Three Wharton alumni served as panelists for the pro-gram: Susan Katzke, W’86, a philanthropist and former Head of Financial Services Research at Credit Suisse; Jose Gonzalez, W’89, General Counsel at Torus Insurance; and Carl Rosen. They reflected on their experiences serving on many non-profit boards, such as a national Alzheimer’s disease foundation, a national education initiative and a local religious organization. They emphasized the personal
satisfaction, the networking possibilities and the opportuni-
ties to grow professionally by serving on non-profit boards. They all spoke of having been enriched by the experience, while helping others.
Non-profit boards and committees enable individu-als to follow their passions and provide a balance in life. It is very important to choose the right organization and understand the dynamics of the board, the financial expectations and time commitments. Often, committee assignments are aligned with professional skills; however, this can be an opportunity to learn new disciplines and gain exposure to areas outside of one’s corporate respon-sibilities.
Feedback from the large group of attendees was ex-tremely positive. One attendee commented, “The infor-mation the panel gave was very constructive and relevant. They did a superb job explaining what really matters in board roles, both for joining a board and being on one.” A number of the attendees have since followed up with BoardAssist to further develop their interest to serve on a non-profit board. The Career Development Division will continue efforts to encourage non-profit board service through ongoing programming and communications on board service opportunities.
Contributed by Carl Rosen The Career Development Division is headed by WCNY
Vice President of Career Development, Chuck Forgang, W’78, assisted by Carl E. Rosen, Director of Career Net-working, and William Saliy, WG’02, Director of Career Speaker Series. All programs are targeted to support Wharton graduates, including those in transition, through-out their career. Watch for our future Career Development events at the WCNY website.
Recently two of our steadfast volunteers have stepped up to important new positions in the club. Their initiative
is contagious. Read this and you might get motivated to step up yourself!
Jennifer Gregoriou, W’78, knows how to get things done. More importantly, she knows how to help others get things done quickly, quietly and with sang-froid. It is, after all, what she does as the owner of a personal/virtual assistance and small-business consulting company, www.jennifergregoriou.com
What good luck that Jennifer accepted the promotion to become Vice President of Programming for the WCNY, building on Regina Jaslow’s foundation. In her new role, she oversees University Relations, the Social and Special Events Committee (including the Joseph Wharton Awards Dinner), Community Partnerships, and the Speaker Series, (including the President’s Forum). Jennifer formerly chaired the Speaker Series Committee and was a contributing member of the Social and Special Events Committee and the 2006 launch of the Joseph Wharton Awards Dinner.
“I look forward to working with several great people in the Programming Division,” Jennifer says. “The Speaker Series’ new Chair, Sandra James, W’78, will deliver programs to intellectually stimulate the alumni network. This committee is composed of Author events, Entrepreneurial events, Special Interest events and Business Leadership events. Sandra has been a member of this committee for the past four years and is an excellent candidate to take over as Chair.”
“The Social and Special Events Committee develops and implements activities to entertain the alumni network culturally, socially and intellectually. This Committee is thriving under the leadership of Jeannette Chang, W’08, and I’m thrilled
to work with Jeannette as we move forward. The Community Partnership Committee provides opportunities for Wharton alumni to have an impact on not-for-profit organizations. Jeannette, who has been a co-chair of this committee, will chair the committee until a new Chair is selected.”
“The University Relations Committee, chaired by Gilles Guillon, WG’04, and Ade Adedeji, WG’06, develops, implements and coordinates all communications and relationships with the University of Pennsylvania, as well as with other alumni clubs and alumni. My goal is to assist Gilles and Ade as they continue the amazing job they have done for this committee. The solid relationship they have established with the Wharton School’s MBA Admission Office is unparalleled and key to driving prospective students to enroll in the Wharton program.”
Jennifer explains, “I enjoy working with people and see my role as a facilitator for Wharton alumni to meet and interact with one another. I want to ensure that each committee is suitably staffed and that each has a committee Chairperson in place. You will see me at volunteer receptions, alumni meet-ups and various committee events. And I plan to work with the various Chairs to ensure that the many inquiries that come into the club are handled and resolved. I look forward to meeting our alumni!”
Two Executive Volunteers Step Up!
continued on the next page
Jennifer Gregoriou, W’78
15WHARTON CLUB OF NEW YORK | WINTER 2012 | WWW.WHARTONNY.COM
REGINA Jaslow, W’97, brings valuable experi-ence to her new volunteer role as Vice Presi-dent of the Business Development Division for
the WCNY. She and her husband, Jason Jaslow, W’95, EAS’95, built their own business, Mimosa Digital, a growing, innovative printing service. Regina also develops business and an award-winning environment for the Penn Club on West 44th Street as its Director of Member Marketing.
Within the WCNY, Regina continues to serve on the Board of Directors and as an officer of the Steering Committee for the Joseph Wharton Awards Dinner. Her previous responsibilities include Vice President of Programming from 2004 to 2011, and Chair of the University Relations Committee from 2003 to 2004.
In her new role, Regina will oversee the Club’s Wharton Investment Resource Exchange (WIRE), Leads Councils and Affinity Groups. “The major initiative for this division is to help produce tangible results for its members,” explains Regina. “I’m excited about the opportunity to help make this a reality for our alumni.” For example, under WIRE, the Wharton Angel Network brings together early-stage investors and entrepreneurs, while at the Wharton Investor Network, investors who are looking for quality invest-ments can connect with more established firms who are looking for funding. Thank you, Regina!
Two Executive Volunteers Step Up!continued from previous page
that time is of the essence. The longer we kick this down the road, the harder and more painful the resolution will be.
In accepting the Joseph Wharton Award for Leadership, you spoke only about the leadership of others, Sandy Weill and Jamie Dimon. Could you share some of your personal insights on leadership?
First, one’s own view of leadership changes with time; you learn more, you see more, and you grow and under-stand more. A few things are important. Great leaders create an environment where a lot of people can succeed, as opposed to business environments that are highly com-petitive internally. The natural human instinct to compete should be outwardly focused, not inwardly. That’s a big deal.
Then, I think really good leaders periodically ask themselves if they are doing things that matter. I sit down with my calendar, and I look at what I’ve done over the past three months, as a self-imposed, midcourse correction.
I read something just this morning, something by Larry Lindsay, that sometimes we respond to the urgent, not the important. I love that expression.
I also think the more you lead, the more you have to listen. Listening doesn’t mean agreeing; it just means lis-tening. If you surround yourself with the best and bright-est people you can find but don’t listen to them, you’re just wasting their talents. The best leaders I know, includ-ing Sandy and Jamie, were terrific at listening to people around them. It doesn’t mean they abdicate decisions or that they have to find consensus. Quite the contrary. Decisions by consensus are often the worst. The more you listen, the more you know, and the better decisions you will make.
Then lastly, in business, analytics will point you in the right way. Jamie would often say, “If we analyze problems correctly, the answer will be self-evident.” It’s not always true, because there are circumstances where you must decide with less-than-perfect information. I find that this perception that we have instinctive knowledge is an illu-sion. We read; we listen; we incorporate; we think; and we
Jay Fishman–continued from page 5
Reg
ina
Jasl
ow, W
’97
Regina Jaslow, W’97 and her husband Jason Jaslow, W’95
16 WHARTON CLUB OF NEW YORK | WINTER 2012 | WWW.WHARTONNY.COM
get smarter. When an issue arises where we have to make a decision, then we analyze.
Robert Kapito, W’79, the 2009 recipient of the Joseph Wharton Leadership Award, in introducing you, said that you have “a very special ability to listen, to counsel, to read a situation and adjust quickly and appropriately, while making every person feel comfortable and welcome.” How do you promote that quality throughout the upper management of a large company?
It’s a great question. It’s certainly an important cultur-al value at Travelers. It’s an element that I look for in the people around me, and my presumption and expectation is that they look for it in the people around them. I do think that our leadership team can set a tone. You may say we’re big, but we’re only 30,000 people. We’re big, but we’re not so big that we can’t make human connections.
When one thinks of the number of variables to be considered in creating and pricing insurance products, it seems that insurance must be one of the most intellectually stimulating and mentally demanding businesses.
You’re exactly right. I do think that it is a remarkably intellectual challenge, because it is all about the future. We’re trying to sell an insurance policy and make esti-mates of losses so that we can price the product correctly. We’re trying to see the future, or a better way to say it, to produce insurance outcomes. It’s not gambling. In gam-bling, it’s, “I win, and you lose.” With insurance, we should both win. We strive really hard not to be in the gambling business so we can produce insurance-type outcomes. It is demanding.
What’s the best metaphor for Travelers Companies?
I can think of a sports metaphor that might come close. We’re not swinging for the fences. While other busi-nesses do, and perhaps it’s appropriate for them, I think a well-run insurance business is comfortable with lots of singles and doubles. We look to be successful a little bit at a time with lots of transactions, as opposed to being successful with a few very big ones that have a high risk of loss associated with them.
That’s not to say that’s the only way to be success-ful in the insurance business. It’s a matter of figuring out what your organization is capable of doing: What is the richness? What’s the content? What does it understand? What risks can it evaluate? What is beyond its expertise?
This brings up another item of leadership, which is “know your organization.” The metaphor for that is, “You can’t get blood from a stone.” We try to be aware of our company’s limitations. What can it do? What can’t it do?
Where does it go beyond its skill base? It’s so important. I think so much of what happened to many companies in 2008 is a reflection of businesses that got beyond their real expertise and limitations.
Does Travelers only identify, assess and price risk, or do you try to help clients manage risk?
We are committed to helping our clients manage risk. Travelers has a significant risk management organization of 700 engineers and other professionals who actually go into our clients’ factories, offices and stores, and we help customers with fire systems, ergonomic layouts of office environments and a wide range of other risks.
You started a scholarship fund for UPenn with $250, when you didn’t have much money. What gave you the confidence to do so?
From the earliest days, I felt an enormous sense of gratitude. I was so appreciative that many opportunities that I had early in my career were because of my Wharton degree. After graduating, I recognized that I was inter-viewing for jobs and being considered for jobs that were far beyond what I previously felt I would achieve in my professional life, and I was so thankful and appreciative. I just felt a real responsibility to begin to give back so that others might have the same opportunities.
You’re known as someone who loves music. What kind of music do you enjoy?
I love classical music, and at the other extreme, I also love jazz, traditional jazz. I’m on the board of the Philharmonic here in New York. One of the things I tell people when they go to see performances is to watch the orchestra. There is joy in just watching the music at a live performance, the movement, a pattern that evidences itself. As for jazz, I was born into it.
Can you offer some advice to Wharton students?
Keep in mind that it is all a journey. Sometimes, in the push of business, you think there is a destination. You lose the opportunity to grow, to develop, to bloom. Your first job won’t be your last; there will be success and less than success. If you see it as a journey, it can be a lot of fun, especially with that wonderful Wharton name behind you.
– KT Jay Fishman, W’74, WG’74
17WHARTON CLUB OF NEW YORK | WINTER 2012 | WWW.WHARTONNY.COM
I don’t think curiosity is part of it, it’s more not being narrow minded. I didn’t come up with this philosophy. I’m just reflecting on what I did for 40 years.
During my years at Fidelity, sometimes I had some decent performance, and I had a few good ideas. But I always wanted to hear other points of view. When you gathered your own information, you want to hear the bad side too: did I already discount it, or maybe they sold that division.
The key thing is that I had one of those kitchen timers. I said it was set to three minutes but I really set it to two minutes. If someone couldn’t tell me why I shouldn’t be buying a company in two minutes … because there are only so many minutes in the day.
There were people working with me, but there also were 50 or 60 fund managers and analysts outside Fidelity that I really respected. So I had people call them and ask: “What do you like?” Once they had a full position they could tell you. When we had all of the shares in Chrysler that we could buy, then we could share that. So you get good ideas.
Then maybe at church if I saw someone with a Chrysler mini-van, I would ask “How do you like it?" They’d say, “Well I like it except for the engine.” Then I’d ask, “Would you buy another one? What are the weaknesses? Why did you buy it?”
When you buy companies, what is your role?
When you buy companies, when you invest, you are not running McDonalds, you’re not running The Gap. You’re more like an observer flying over a battlefield,
or like a referee in a soccer game. It’s very passive. If an investor thinks they can do something about it… things happen in companies that make them very dynamic. They can go from terrific to rotten fast. So you have to watch everything. Whoops, Stock 22 just got worse. Stock 12 got better. You have to keep up to date on competitive conditions. We had this one fashion company, which went bankrupt after the movie, Bonnie and Clyde came out. Hemlines went down 8” to 10”, and everything this company had in their inventory didn’t sell. They tried to respond the second year, but most women didn’t like the new style either, so that inventory was useless as well, and they went bankrupt. How can you predict that one?
When people say watch the stock, it doesn’t mean you watch the price, it means you watch the company behind the stock. Every stock is a story happening. There may be five reasons to own a stock, but those reasons can change, and they may have nothing to do with the economy. Of course the economy may over-ride all those factors, then you have to reconsider your position.
Do you pay attention to the management of a company?
Management is critically important, and you should spend time to know the management, if you are making private investments to own and hold a private company for 15 years, or if you are buying an entire division. Then you interview 10 people who really know retail, or insurance, and you can make the effort to do all of the background checks. You are an insider.
But that wasn’t my position as an investor in public companies. I was just a small investor, sometimes a little bit bigger, but I couldn’t be an insider. In a couple of interviews, I don’t have the ability to understand if they are good vs. very good vs. poor. Maybe I could see if someone is intelligent, if they can win Jeopardy, I mean some people are very bright, like Jimmy Carter or Richard Nixon, it doesn’t mean they can make good decisions. Management requires wisdom, not just intelligence. Often the best thing a CEO can do is nothing, but that’s not human nature.
I’d rather invest in the business with a good outlook. If you took Jack Welch or Lee Iacocca and sent them to run Bethlehem Steel any five year period during the thirty years beginning in 1970, they would have struggled. Between a terrible industry and a great manager, the industry will prevail. I’ll tell you that Jack Welch and Lee Iacocca were great managers, and I knew both very well, but their management skills were frosting on the cake, it’s not the reason you invest in a company.
How did you select your own people?
We’ve had a lot of kids from Wharton. We’ve been very lucky. There we spent a lot of time.
We’d interview 500, narrow it down to 20, and
Peter Lynch – continued from page 7
18 WHARTON CLUB OF NEW YORK | WINTER 2012 | WWW.WHARTONNY.COM
make 6 job offers, so we get to see them in action. We don’t hire bio-chemists or an actuary, we just hire raw meat, and say, you get banking, you get consumer staples, you get medical equipment. We just hire bright people, and see how they do.
You were an exceptional student of investing. What is your approach to learning a trade?
Well, I was lucky to join a firm where the boss understood those rules, such as: You’re not always right. Things are dynamic. You have to report when things are starting to slump in one industry. I was lucky to join a terrific firm, Fidelity and they let me have a go-anywhere fund. I could buy any company so I had the right firm and the right platform. Fidelity believes in the individual’s responsibility. They monitor results but don’t hamstring people. The way you want to manage a fund manager is to say “you have 120 stocks, why do you have stock 18, why do you have stock 49?” They better have a well thought through story for why they own it.
Can you offer advice to those just graduating from Wharton?
I would say that if you are interested in the stock market, you could put together a model portfolio. Say you are buying 5 companies. It’s important not to say you are buying Xerox or Pfizer, but why you are buying them. Find out what you are good at. Maybe you are good at retailers, or energy companies or turnarounds. Have real reasons for buying something, not because it’s on the new hotlist, or in the most exciting industry. Then after monitoring several years, you might find out “Gee I’m good at this.” It might help you to go through a recession, to see how you do.
What are your thoughts on the Wharton School?
It’s a great school. It changed my life. In Boston everyone talks about B school (business school), I tell them I went to the ‘A’ school. When I went there it was much more quantitative. Everyone was working so hard, I was working 3 afternoons a week at the faculty club and 4 nights a week at an Italian restaurant. There wasn’t much time to buddy up with the guy next to you in class. Now their approach is to have you work on a team, and of course, that’s what you have in business, teams. You don’t become the CEO during your first few years, so as teams if everyone does well, you all get promoted.
Also, it’s been proven those employees who volunteer have less absenteeism, and that the company wins, the shareholders win, and the community wins. I hope that is being pushed at Wharton.
You made a choice to make substantial contributions to the education of
children. Why are you passionate about education?
Until 1990, I wasn’t involved as much because I was working 6 days a week. My wife and I both attended public schools and received a fine education. Thus we assumed that today, students were getting a good education as well. But someone born in America today is less likely to graduate from high school than their parents. That’s not true of any other country. It’s a terrible situation. Kids who are 10, 11, and 12 are dropping out and have very poor prospects. People talk about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates dropping out, but they were young adults, and it wasn’t because of their bad grades. They saw an opportunity that might not be there in two years. So many kids today just aren’t prepared …It’s one of these fairness things. Everyone wins if nobody drops out.
What is your specific focus in education?
For the last 21 years my wife and I have been supporting inner city schools here in Boston. They are parochial schools, but open to everybody. The tuition used to be free when the nuns taught there, but now have tuition of $4,600 for third grade. While that is much less than the $14,000 it costs per pupil in the public schools, it is still a lot to pay because 70% of the families of our students are single parent households.
I write letters and beg money from people, contact new donors, and ask previous donors to renew. Last year we raised $6,000,000 for tuition for 5,000 of these kids. It’s a great program, because the important grades are K through 6. American has the best colleges in the world, but that’s not a carrot for these kids struggling in these key grades. If you talk to educators, they can tell by age 10 –where a kid is headed. Recently they re-opened 6 or 7 parochial schools in Memphis, which is surprising because Tennessee is less than 6% Catholic, but people recognize that these schools work. The kids hear fewer pejoratives, we congratulate them more, plus their families pay to go there so they care about it. They learn the three R’s, Respect, Responsibility, Religion, which are I think, good things to live your life by.
– KT
19WHARTON CLUB OF NEW YORK | WINTER 2012 | WWW.WHARTONNY.COM
Outside of your founding team, who were the major influencers, advisors?
We had, looking back, a really strong group. I’m so thank-ful that we had those guys. There were four professors at Penn who were very helpful the first six months, especially with some of our early pivots. After our third iteration, we brought in professional investors and guys from the ad tech (advertis-ing technology) space.
Brian O’Kelley was from the ad tech space. He helped us learn that small world, and introduced us to the right people. He also believed in it and invested his personal money as an angel. He spent countless hours with us teaching us the indus-try, how things were built and why, and where the opportunity was.
David Brussin had started several companies in the past and helped us with entrepreneurial decisions, how to recruit, how to manage people, etc. This advice was invaluable from a general entrepreneurial and startup-building perspective.
Josh Kopelman and his partner at First Round Capi-tal, Chris Fralic, taught us how to fundraise and, eventu-ally, how to sell the company. They led Invite Media’s first round of funding. I owe my life to Josh from before as well, as he gave me my first summer internship at First Round Capital and then a job at a portfolio com-pany of theirs in San Francisco the next summer. Josh is one of the most helpful and generous people I met at Wharton.
When did you get your first investment?
We raised money in November 2007, right in the middle of the second iteration, well before the fourth iteration.
Generally, when you raise money from a VC, you create a board, which we did. Ours wasn’t big — just Zach and I, and Chris Fralic from First Round Capital. We brought on David Brussin as an independent board member. It was helpful for us, because Chris and David were former entrepreneurs. Generally, it’s best to bring in the VCs after you have stopped pivoting (changing your busi-ness model), and the product/market fit has been decided. You know what you are building, and it’s all about revenue, hiring and growth — that’s when VCs can help most.
For us, the board meetings were informal for the first six months. We weren’t making a profit yet, so our conversations were about where we were in terms of the business model and how much money we still had in the bank.
The first two years were pretty rough. The last year, we turned a corner, and grew the team from about 20 to 50 in six months. We were making many millions per month a good eight months before Google approached us.
Any advice for Wharton students/recent alums?
If you’re talking about a tech startup, then get technical as young as you can. I’m a big proponent of fostering en-
trepreneurship under 21, because that’s when you have the ability to develop technical skills and, in general, learn new things quicker. You also haven’t developed any bad habits and probably don’t have too many life obstacles, such as worrying about a mortgage, kids, etc. The more of those you pick up, the higher the fence you’ll need to jump to get started.
The university is a free and supportive environment to start a company. There are tons of kids who can be potential co-founders. Plus, your parents are paying for your rent.
Second, stop planning and writing, and start building. Ideas are so cheap; it’s all about execution.
Third, find a co-founder. If you’re not an engineer, find one as a co-founder, and don’t think you can just outsource the code writing. Zach and I were very lucky to meet our two other co-founders at Penn, who were more technical than we were. Zach and I were already working together since our freshman year. As an example of how to do this, purely for fun, we started an entrepreneur society called Genesis. Out of the entire university, about 15 of us met every Wednesday night and shared ideas. As it happened, that’s where we met our co-founders, Michael and Scott!
Invite Media created a sophisticated solution to a problem that you couldn’t know about, being college students. Was this like Apple elegantly solving a problem that nobody knew they had? Or were you searching for a problem to solve in the digital ad space, and found those who could articulate a problem to you?
Very much the latter. We engaged with very smart people/advisors who knew way more about the space and were will-ing to spend time with us. We knew how to build things, but because it was such a “behind the scenes” and opaque industry, no one can really walk into it knowing what to build unless you’ve spent years in the space. Since we hadn’t, and since we knew we wanted to tackle the digital media space, we took a shortcut by working with some really great people.
– KT
Nat Turner – continued from page 11
20 WHARTON CLUB OF NEW YORK | WINTER 2012 | WWW.WHARTONNY.COM
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The Wharton alumni community is one of the most exclusive and powerful net-works in the world. One key element of our success is the willingness of alumni to help other alumni. Take the Call is a simple concept: Wharton alumni should buy from, hire from and help Wharton alumni. And if a Wharton alum calls us for any reason, we Take the Call.
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Blume Ventures, one of India’s few mi-cro-VC funds is looking for interested investors. We’ve been super active with over 18 checks in Year 1 ($50-$250K). Please see some of the portfolio at www.blumeventures.com Cheers, Karthik Reddy Bezawada, WG’01.
St. John’s University, one of the nation’s largest Catholic universities is seeking an experienced and innovative leader to direct its Office of Business Affairs and serve as the Chief Financial Officer of the university. [email protected]
Cambia Health Solutions is seeking a Senior Corporate & Business Develop-ment Associate. This position will iden-tify, implement, and manage strategic growth initiatives for Cambia. Please apply to job# 19316 on-line: https://cambiahealth.com/careers/
Evisors is an online marketplace for expert insights. We are looking for professionals with career backgrounds in finance to join our network of highly qualified experts and serve as part-timer career mentors. www.evisors.com
CEO Connection is looking for “Mem-bership Co-Chairs” to make phone calls to CEOs to encourage them to join CEO Connection. This is an indepen-dent, flexible, commission-based selling role. [email protected]
Component Sourcing International, LLC (CSI) is seeking a Supplier Quality Engineer. Responsibilities include: (1) engineering analysis; (2) serving as a liaison between customers and suppliers. Please send resume to [email protected].
My company, Truveon, is introducing the first technology able to determine the ROI for home energy efficiency projects. I am currently looking for in-vestors. Dan Kauffman, WG’07 [email protected].
KM Harris is looking for profitable, growing, small companies who need assistance entering new markets, or in growing their existing base in new ways. We provide hands-on, B2B, business de-velopment. Please contact Scott Tornek, C’87, WG’95, at [email protected].
Take the Call Forum
As a Wharton friend and SPIRE member, I have led and continue to host joint networking events with Wharton professionals
working in real estate for SPIRE. I understand the unique needs of the Wharton demographic and have worked with Wharton alumni in a challenging market to find their ideal apartment--whether for a primary residence or an investment property.
As a Wharton friend and SPIRE member, I have led and continue to host joint networking events with Wharton professionals
working in real estate for SPIRE. I understand the unique needs of the Wharton demographic and have worked with Wharton alumni in a challenging market to find their ideal apartment--whether for a primary residence or an investment property.
As a Wharton friend and SPIRE member, I have led and continue to host joint networking events with Wharton professionals
working in real estate for SPIRE. I understand the unique needs of the Wharton demographic and have worked with Wharton alumni in a challenging market to find their ideal apartment--whether for a primary residence or an investment property.
As a Wharton friend and SPIRE member, I have led and continue to host joint networking events with Wharton professionals
working in real estate for SPIRE. I understand the unique needs of the Wharton demographic and have worked with Wharton alumni in a challenging market to find their ideal apartment--whether for a primary residence or an investment property.
