Professional Documents
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Contents // AUGUST 23, 2016 VOLUME 198 NUMBER 2
COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY
ETHAN PINES FOR FORBES.
STYLE DIRECTOR:
JOSEPH DEACETIS; STYLE
ASSOCIATE: JUAN BENSON.
ON THE COVER
62 | INSTAGRAMS BIG PICTURE
Instagram is emerging as Facebooks
growth engine, making Mark Zucker-
bergs purchase one of the greatest tech
deals of all time. But no tears for the
photo-sharing apps cofounder, Kevin
Systrom. Hes building an empireand
just made himself a billionaire.
BY KATHLEEN CHAYKOWSKI
72 | LIQUIDITY AS A SERVICE
Wall Streets newest profit center? Turn-
ing Americas top wealth advisors into
the lender of choice for the ultrarich.
BY ANTOINE GARA
PLUS: AMERICAS TOP 100 WEALTH ADVISORS
LEADERBOARD
18 | MEET THE NEIGHBORS: 834 FIFTH AVENUE
Across from the Central Park Zoo sits a limestone edice thats one of
Manhattans toniest addresses. For just $120 million you can move in.
THOUGHT LEADERS
34 | CURRENT EVENTS // AMITY SHLAES
Brexit Abbey.
STRATEGIES
40 | MONSTER GAME
The inside story of how Pokmon Go was created by a Google exec who
got lost within the giant search company and how he persuaded his bosses
to let himand all those creaturesgo free.
BY RYAN MAC
TECHNOLOGY
44 | FIND.ME.HERE.
National postal services and e-commerce rms could soon be delivering
48 to billions more people thanks to What3Words clever address system.
BY PARMY OLSON
INVESTING
50 | JUICE YOUR 529
Our state ratings, plus seven strategies to help you get the most from your
college savings.
BY WILLIAM BALDWIN
FEATURES
WITH KPMG
THE GREAT REWRITE: REVERSING CLIMATE CHANGE 70
86 86 | TURNAROUND U.
As hundreds of venerable institutions of higher education limp along,
struggling to pay their bills, a new breed of innovative, activist college
presidents are rethinking the business of education.
BY MATT SCHIFRIN
LIFE
108 | BIG HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE
After a multimillion-dollar renovation, Ted Turners New Mexico estate,
Casa Grande, is now a luxury vacation rentalbison included.
BY ANN ABEL
108
112 | THOUGHTS
On education.
8 | FORBES AUGUST 23, 2016
INSIDE SCOOP
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Steve Forbes
FORBES MAGAZINE
EDITOR
And Our Reality
Randall Lane
BY LEWIS DVORKIN
EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Michael Noer
ART & DESIGN DIRECTOR
Robert Mansield
FORBES DIGITAL
VP, INVESTING EDITOR
Matt Schifrin
SENIOR VP, STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS
Andrea Spiegel
VP, DIGITAL CONTENT STRATEGY
Coates Bateman
VP, PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
Salah Zalatimo
VP, WOMENS DIGITAL NETWORK
Christina Vuleta
ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITORS
Kerry A. Dolan, Luisa Kroll WEALTH
Frederick E. Allen LEADERSHIP
Loren Feldman ENTREPRENEURS
Tim W. Ferguson FORBES ASIA
Janet Novack WASHINGTON SOME NEWLY RELEASED FORBES magazine sta-
Michael K. Ozanian SPORTSMONEY
Mark Decker, John Dobosz, Clay Thurmond DEPARTMENT HEADS tistics landed in my e-mail box last week. The numbers
Avik Roy OPINIONS
Jessica Bohrer VP, EDITORIAL COUNSEL
transported me to a media galaxy far, far awayone that
BUSINESS
many in our business today never knew or would recog-
Mark Howard CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER nize. The year was 1985, when Rolling Stone launched its
Tom Davis CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER
Jessica Sibley VP, SALES EAST & EUROPE highly acclaimed perception/reality advertising cam-
Janett Haas VP, SALES, WESTERN & CENTRAL
Ann Marinovich VP, ADVERTISING PRODUCTS & STRATEGY
paign. A print ad featured a Volkswagen van with flower-
Achir Kalra SENIOR VP, REVENUE OPERATIONS & STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS power decals and the headline Perception. Next to it
Alyson Papalia VP, DIGITAL ADVERTISING OPERATIONS & STRATEGY
Penina Littman, DIRECTOR OF SALES PLANNING & ANALYTICS was a sports car and the headline Reality. More than
Nina La France SENIOR VP, CONSUMER MARKETING & BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Michael Dugan CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER 60 ad executions like it were to come over the next five
FORBES MEDIA
years. The goal: to show that the music magazine was as
Michael S. Perlis PRESIDENT & CEO influential with yuppies as it was with hippies. The re-
Michael Federle CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER
Terrence OConnor CHIEF ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICER sult: Rolling Stone flourished, with ad pages rising 58%.
Michael York CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER
Will Adamopoulos CEO/ASIA FORBES MEDIA Well, today is not then. Digital media have made sure
PRESIDENT & PUBLISHER, FORBES ASIA
Rich Karlgaard PUBLISHER
the magazine business will never be what it was. Still, the
Moira Forbes PRESIDENT, FORBESWOMAN numbers I saw tell a powerful story about how FORBES
MariaRosa Cartolano GENERAL COUNSEL
Margy Loftus SENIOR VP, HUMAN RESOURCES is perceived by todays new readers. In a world of social
Mia Carbonell SENIOR VP, GLOBAL CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS
media, websites and apps, our 98-year-old belief in entre-
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FACT & COMMENT
With all thy getting, get understanding
THE SOURCES
OF OUR DISCONTENT BY STEVE FORBES, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
we must take the lead on pro-growth tion of interest rates, combined with essential to guiding the economy.
reforms, such as a massive tax cut the excessive regulation of banks, has Nonsense. Since when has such
and stopping the central banks per- caused bank lending to small and new central planning ever worked?
versions of our credit markets. Other businesses to wither. Startups, es- Economies arent like an automo-
nations will follow suit, just as they sential to job creation and innovation, bile whose speed can be regulated
did more than three decades ago. are a fraction of what they should be. by an accelerator. By such logic the
And we must also actively engage Working capital to nance invento- Fed should have the power to decree
with the worldnot trying to remake ries has become less available and, price reductions for everything: Cut
it in our image but ensuring that the contrary to the Feds motives, more all prices by 50%, and watch the
bad actors are kept at bay. expensive. Ditto the money for expan- economy boom as people are thereby
sions. Remember, bonds are instru- stimulated to buy more stuf!
Price-Fixing ments for large, established businesses, But isnt cutting the cost of money
not for the everyday enterprises and a crucial tool for ghting reces-
by the Fed startups that are crucial to a well- sions? No. Economies, if not hobbled
The focus on whether the Federal functioning and expanding economy. by structural barriers, will recover
Reserve will raise interest rates raises Whether it fully appreciates it or quickly enough on their own.
a question no one thinks to ask: not, the Federal Reserve has gone But what about the Great Depres-
Should the Fedor any other central into the business of credit allocation. sion? That catastrophe wasnt caused
bank, for that matterbe in the busi- Uncle Sam and large corporations by some inexplicable failure of free
ness of manipulating interest rates in nd credit all too easy and cheap to markets but by disastrous govern-
the rst place? obtain, while the rest of the economy ment policies, namely the collapse
The answer is no. sufers. Apple has cash and nancial of global trade, which was triggered
History shows that since Roman instruments totaling more than by the U.S. enactment of the sweep-
timesand even beforeprice con- $230 billion, yet it has been issuing ing Smoot-Hawley Tarif Act and the
trols dont work. They deform mar- tens of billions of dollars in bonds retaliatory trade restrictions of other
kets, doing far more harm than good. to engage in nancial engineer- nations that followed. The debacle
President Richard Nixon imposed ing, namely buying its own stock was worsened by countries respond-
them in the early 1970s, and the result and raising its dividend. Earlier this ing to the downturn with massive
was disastrous, especially in the en- year Exxon Mobil sold $12 billion tax increases (the U.S. hiked its top
ergy eld. When Ronald Reagan, soon in bonds for buybacks, and other income tax levy from 25% to 63% and
after taking oice, removed oil-and- companies have done the same for boosted excise taxes on an array of
gas caps, the price of oil plummeted the purpose of purchasing their own items such as movie tickets).
and the gas lines disappeared. Time equity. And why not, when money is Before the Depression central banks
and time again weve seen the baleful at virtually giveaway prices? raised or lowered the rates charged to
impact that rent controls have on the Noted economist David Malpass, banks that borrowed from them only
creation of new, afordable housing. a erce and longtime critic of what to keep their currencies xed to gold.
Setting interest rates is no different. the Fed and other central banks have The most constructive act the Fed
They are the price that lenders pay been doing, has pointed out that could put in place would be to declare
borrowers for money. The question the proportion of bonds to the U.S. that at a date certainsay, a few weeks
is, how much damage will the central economys total credit has surged from nowit would cease interest rate
banks machinations wreak on the from 39% a decade ago to 53% today. manipulation. Borrowers and lenders
economy? Manifestly, this isnt healthy, as the alone would determine the price of
That question has become espe- global economic situation testies. money. The only rate the Fed would
cially acute since the economic crisis The reliance on central banks to gin set would be its discount ratethat is,
of 200809, when the Fed went from up growth has allowed governments the price it charges nancial institu-
suppressing short-term rates to sup- to avoid making badly needed struc- tions that wish to borrow from it.
pressing long-term rates as well. The tural changes, such as cutting tax None of this, of course, would take
Bank of Japan (BOJ) has been playing rates, reducing bloated public sectors, away from the Federal Reserves role
this game since the 1990s. Today the liberalizing antigrowth labor laws as lender of last resort.
BOJ and the European Central Bank and easing sufocating regulations. Freeing interest rates from these
(ECB) have gone to negative inter- Economists will cry that interest current shackles would benecially
est rates on bonds. The impact of all rates are diferent, that manipulat- impact todays warped, ill-function-
this has been horrible. The manipula- ing the price of lending money is ing credit markets. F
Parkside
Paradise
ACROSS THE STREET from
the Central Park Zoo sits
834 Fifth Avenue, a limestone
sanctuary of Manhattans elite
for nearly a century. Almost
from the moment its doors Philippe Lafont
PURCHASE PRICE:
opened in 1931, the Art Deco- $27 MILLION (2012)
style masterpiece has been one Hes one of billionaire Julian
Robertsons tiger cubs,
of the citys most prestigious
and when the closing bell
addresses. Gaining access to sounds, Lafont, who now
834 Fifthhome today to bil- runs Coatue Management,
lionaires and Wall Street exec- can return to either his
utivesis tough; the moneyed two-story duplex or his
apartments on the fth and
bastion has just 24 units. One
tenth oorsall three of
is newly available following which he bought in 2012.
the death of Salomon Brothers
legend John Gutfreund this
past March. Even by New York
standards, the property has
an eye-watering asking price:
$120 million.
John Gutfreund
LISTED PRICE: $120 MILLION (2016)
As a bond trader, Gutfreund knew no limits,
and he lived that way, tooa marble-
ensconced existence within a two-story,
12,000-square-foot apartment. Among
its extravagances: 12.5-foot-high ceilings,
a walk-in steel safe, a butlers pantry and
walls adorned by meticulously preserved
17th-century leather. Beyond the 7 bedrooms
and 10 bathrooms lies a 50-foot-long living
room made homey (a little) by two replaces.
Ive been doing this for 30 years, and its
the most special Fifth Avenue ofering Ive
ever encountered, gushes John Burger, the
apartments listing agent. Its currently the
most expensive residential property on the
18 | FORBES AUGUST 23, 2016 market in New York City.
Mark Rachesky
PURCHASE PRICE: $33.5 MILLION (2007)
The former Carl Icahn lieutenant and current Lionsgate
chairman picked up his duplex near the height of the market.
Len Blavatnik
PURCHASE PRICE: $77.5 MILLION (2015)
Billionaire Blavatniks purchase of his 14-room duplex (from New
York Jets owner Robert Wood Johnson IV) set a Manhattan
co-op record. What the Ukrainian-born billionaire got was 6,700
square feet, 5 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms and 3 maids rooms.
J. Tomilson Hill
PURCHASE PRICE:
$30.5 MILLION (2015)
A few oors below Tony James
lives Hill, Blackstones billionaire
vice chairman. His 2-bedroom
apartment (reportedly with
11.5-foot-high ceilings) boasts a
terrace, wood-burning replaces
and a wine vault.
Laurie Tisch
PURCHASE PRICE:
$29 MILLION (2009)
Tisch, whose father, Preston
Robert Tisch, helped build Loews
BRYAN CHRISTIE DESIGN; PORTRAITS BY BRIAN TAYLOR
Wendi Murdoch
PURCHASE PRICE: $44 MILLION (2005)
BY CHLOE SORVINO
BEFORE THE BIG PLUNGE in oil prices, Bryan Sheield had few months, pushing Sheields 20% stake north of $1 billion.
already decided to move the headquarters of his Parsley Energy Sheield, 38, founded Parsley during oils record run in 2008
from dusty Midland, Tex. to a brand-new oice tower in hipper after taking over 109 old Texas oil wells that his grandfather had
Austin. Now hes a little sheepish about his birds-eye view of drilled around Midland back in the 1960s and 70s. There was still
kayakers on the Colorado River. This is a $100-a-barrel-of-oil plenty of oil underneath those wells, and Parsley picked up more
oice, he says. Oil sells at half that today, so how exactly has he leases for a song during the brief price crash in 2009. Five years
gotten so comfortable in his new seat of power? later, Sheield took the company public.
Parsley controls 120,000 acres in the Permian Basin, which With Grandpa Joes wells smack-dab in the middle of one of
DARREN CARROLL FOR FORBES
stretches from West Texas into New Mexico. You can still turn Americas last prosperous oil patches, Parsley has sold more than
BY CHRISTOPHER HELMAN
a prot there with $50-a-barrel oil thanks to existing pipeline- $1 billion of new stock in the past year to nance its ambitious
and-drilling infrastructure. Plus, much of the basins reserves had production goal: a 50% increase from a year prior, to 34,000
remained out of reach until recent technological advances made it barrels per day. We are fortunatelucky, Sheield says. It
possible for Parsley and others to drill horizontally. That lucrative comes down to having the best rock inside the best play in the
combo has enabled shares in the company to double over the past United States.
6. CORNELL
9 ZACH LATTA
7. PRINCETON HACK CLUB | 18
7 Nerds, unite! Hack Club
helps high schools form
8. COLUMBIA
coding clubs, providing
6 software and guidance to
8. DARTMOUTH budding hackers (about
1,500 so far) who dont want
6 to join the lacrosse team.
8. UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
6
11. DUKE HEEJAE LIM
5 TALKINGPOINTS | 29
Lims tech helps teachers commu-
11. MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE
OF TECHNOLOGY nicate via translated text messages
with parents who dont speak
5 English. To date, TalkingPoints
11. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, has enabled more than 100,000
LOS ANGELES conversations.
5
14. MICHIGAN STATE
ESTHER
4 TRICOCHE
NEWSCHOOLS
14. NEW YORK UNIVERSITY VENTURE FUND | 29
4 At NewSchools
Venture Fund,
14. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Tricoche invests in
BERKELEY
entrepreneurs who
4 make better tech
JERELYN RODRIGUEZ tools for public
ILLUSTRATIONS BY PATRICK WELSH
schools, includ-
30 UNDER 30 BY KATHRYN DILL
THESE WELL-HEELED wordsmiths Patterson topped our list for the third straight year, earn-
earned a combined $269 million over the last 12 months, ing $95 million, while childrens author Jef Kinney (Diary of
proving that the written word isnt deadalthough television a Wimpy Kid) placed a distant second, earning $19.5 million.
and movie adaptations often help drive sales. To wit: Game of Near-misses include kids favorite Rachel Rene Russell
Thrones creator George R.R. Martin beneted from clamor- (Dork Diaries) and The Martian scribe Andy Weir; newly of
ous interest in the hit HBO series based on his fantasy novels, the list are Gone Girls Gillian Flynn, The Hunger Games Su-
while Zoo, a thriller from the inescapable James Patterson, zanne Collins and mystery novelist Janet Evanovich, who all
scored a second season on CBS. saw sales of their catalogs take a dive.
FALSE
NARRATIVES
When a books ostensible
facts are shown to be false,
ever since reports surfaced in a Time (2006) Heroine (2008) Imagine: How Creativity
late June that his new work, JAMES FREY Human-traicking Works (2012), How We
Reports in 2011 alleged
The Voyeurs Motel (which A Million Little Pieces philanthropy tale victims memoir not Decide (2009), The
was published just two weeks (2003) contained inaccuracies quite from memory, Decisive Moment (2009)
later), is marred by substan- Drug memoir exposed and Mortensons charity per 2014 accusations Self-plagiarism
tial inconsistencies. Bad news as largely ction in 2006. misused funds. that she denied. discovered in 2012.
for publisher Grove Atlantic 710,000 15,600 100 25,000
SALES, MONTH BEFORE SCANDAL
and for DreamWorks, which SALES, MONTH BEFORE SCANDAL SALES, MONTH BEFORE SCANDAL TOTAL SALES, MONTH BEFORE SCANDAL
Talese familys first brush with 2.04 MIL 3.05 MIL 314,000
TOTAL SALES BEFORE SCANDAL TOTAL SALES BEFORE SCANDAL TOTAL SALES BEFORE SCANDAL TOTAL SALES BEFORE SCANDAL
scandal: Gays wife, Nan, was
863,000 74,000 400 37,000
the publisher of A Million Lit- TOTAL SALES AFTER SCANDAL TOTAL SALES AFTER SCANDAL TOTAL SALES AFTER SCANDAL TOTAL SALES AFTER SCANDAL
tle Pieces, James Freys 2003
58% 98% 99% 88%
memoir of drug abuse. TOTAL SALES CHANGE TOTAL SALES CHANGE TOTAL SALES CHANGE TOTAL SALES CHANGE
24 | FORBES AUGUST 23, 2016 All earnings are for fiscal year June 1, 2015 through May 31, 2016, before taxes and other fees. All book-sales data are
sourced from Nielsen BookScan, which tracks 85% of the domestic print market.
haveKINDLE willTRAVEL
HOEDSPRUIT, SOUTH AFRICA RICHARD BRANSON, SCREW IT, LETS DO IT @ AMAZONKINDLE
LeaderBoard
UNICORN METER ENTERTAINMENT
Stale Start
GROCERIES-IN-A-BOX startups
are food-fightingand Instacart
already looks like a combatant past
its sell-by date. So says a FORBES
poll of our Midas List, a group of the
worlds greatest venture capitalists.
4 FUTURE BLUE CHIP
Titans of Twang
AS NASHVILLES sound becomes
ever more mainstream, our annual
Cash Kings ranking finds country
3 TEN-BAGGER musics top earners filling arenas
once reserved for more traditional
acts, collectively earning a half-billion
dollars over the past year.
2 SOLID EXIT
LeaderBoard
in 1925; his heirs sold a 50% stake to the
Tisch clan in 1991 for $75 million. The two
families split ownership to this day.
SPORTSMONEY
GIANTS: AL BELLO/GETTY IMAGES; MADRID: MATTHIAS HANGST/GETTY IMAGES; ARSENAL: STUART MACFARLANE/ARSENAL FC/GETTY IMAGES; KNICKS: NATHANIEL S. BUTLER/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES;
1-YEAR
2016 VALUE VALUE
RANK TEAM OWNER(S) ($MIL) CHANGE
PACKERS: WESLEY HITT/GETTY IMAGES; DODGERS: JIM MCISAAC/GETTY IMAGES; RED SOX: BILLIE WEISS/BOSTON RED SOX/GETTY IMAGES
opened their cofers to 7 NEW YORK KNICKS Madison Square Garden 3,000 20 NBA the rst year
sign ace David Price was worth
(above) to a seven-year, 8 WASHINGTON REDSKINS Dan Snyder 2,850 19 NFL $100 million.
$217 million deal, the richest 9 NEW YORK GIANTS Mara family 2,800 33 NFL
contract ever for a pitcher.
10 LOS ANGELES LAKERS Buss family 2,700 4 NBA
10 SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS Denise DeBartolo York, 2,700 69 NFL
John York
12 BAYERN MUNICH Club members 2,678 14 soccer
2. REAL MADRID
13 NEW YORK JETS Woody Johnson 2,600 44 NFL The 11-time Champions
League champs had revenue
14 LOS ANGELES DODGERS Guggenheim 2,500 4 MLB
of $694 million in the
Baseball Management
201415 season, the most of
14 HOUSTON TEXANS Robert McNair 2,500 35 NFL any sports franchise.
16 CHICAGO BEARS McCaskey family 2,450 44 NFL
BY KURT BADENHAUSEN, MIKE OZANIAN AND CHRISTINA SETTIMI
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LUXURY LINEAGE
Caesars Palace
A brief history of the legendary Las Vegas
hotel, which turns 50 this month.
JAY SARNO CHANGED LAS VEGAS forever in August
1966 when he opened its first themed resort: Caesars Palace. 2016
Borrowing elements from the Roman Empire, Sarno fol- Over its ve-decade existence Caesars has changed hands several times;
lowed the principle that no amount of excess was enough. owners have included Hilton, ITT and Harrahs, which paid $9.4 billion in
In its first 50 years Caesars Palace has expanded from an 2005. Today the hotel is owned by Caesars Entertainment Corp., with
opulent 14-story hotel with 700 rooms to a small city with six minority stakes held by Apollo Global Management and Paulson & Co.
towers, 4,000 rooms, a 636,000-square-foot shopping mall, a Although the casino group led for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2015, Sarnos
grand vision still reigns. Last year the hotel opened a Mr. Chow restaurant,
4,300-seat theater and nearly a dozen celebrity-chef restau-
and the Colosseum theater is now headlined by Celine Dion, Elton John and
rants. You can also still do a little gambling there.
Mariah Carey. Fifty years on, the bacchanal continues.
1964 2009
Using a $10.6 million loan from the As part of their bachelor
Teamsters Central States Pension Fund, weekend in The Hangover,
Atlanta hotelier Jay Sarno leased land on Bradley Cooper and crew
the Las Vegas Strip owned by Kirk Kerkorian checked in to Caesars Palace,
to build his new hotel, originally called where Zach Galianakis
the Desert Cabana. Four years later, with Alan asked the immortal
Caesars Palace a success, he purchased the question: Did Caesar live
plot from Kerkorian for $5 million. here? He did not.
1966
Even though rooms were still being built, Caesars Palace opened
its doors on Aug. 5 with a lavish $1 million party attended by
guests such as Johnny Carson and Jimmy Hofa. The Teamsters
boss didnt stay long. The next day Hofas suite, the new resorts
best, was given to a 24-year-old up-and-comer who would later
become an emperor of Las Vegas: Steve Wynn.
1992
Caesars opened a 280,000-
square-foot luxury shopping mall
and featured the rst celebrity-chef
1967 restaurant in Las Vegas, Wolfgang
On Dec. 31 Caesars Palace hosted the Pucks Spago. The Forum Shops
rst of many spectacles when Evel was later expanded to 636,000
Knievel convinced Sarno he could square feet and now includes more
jump his motorcycle over the hotels than 150 boutiques, including
fountains. Knievel, shown above, landed Cartier, Tifany & Co. and Van
badly, crushing his pelvis and femur, Cleef & Arpels.
and remained in a coma for a reported
29 days. In 1989 his son Robbie Knievel
successfully completed the jump.
1970
UPI/NEWSROOM; LAS VEGAS NEWS BUREAU (2)
O F T H E R ESTAU R A N T
YO U J UST O PEN ED.
I T S L I K E T HAT.
TH E 2017 M K Z.
Every so often, life affords you a moment of
pure exhilarationa fact that hasnt been lost
on the new Lincoln MKZ. With its striking presence
and smooth delivery of 400 horsepower,*
youre in for an unforgettable drive no matter
where the road may take you.
Lincoln.com/MKZ
FAST-FORWARD
All in the Family
1984: Saul Steinberg
(below) ranks as one of
Americas most feared
takeover artists. Even a
failed Walt Disney Co.
assault results in a
multimillion-dollar score.
49,950
We made more HOWARD P. VOGEL, VIA
than Maroon 5? LINKEDIN: I have loads
says the bands of respect for celebrities
Cannabis Capitalist: Scotts Miracle-Gro CEO Bets Big on Pot Growers
front man. Did not who work hard, are humble,
know that. My mom appreciate their fan base and
39,405 is in charge of my
keep their political opinions to
earnings.
Inside Googles and Microsofts Race to Catch Amazon in the Trillion-Dollar Cloud
themselves.
39,133
His latest idea: Invest
half a billion in the pot DAVID LAMB, VIA LINKEDIN:
This Utah Company Has Emerged as the Biggest Smart Home Player business, he says. It is The Rock is an incredible
the biggest thing Ive example of pivoting from
29,719 ever seen in lawn and one career to another and
garden. how your second act can be
BY ALEXANDRA WILSON
THE BOMB
806 VIEWS
BREXIT ABBEY
AMERICANS DONT HESITATE to Sybil, expires from complications of eclampsia.
express strong views when it comes to At Downton Abbey faraway courts rate as
guns, wars or taxes. But they turn humble unreliable as faraway doctors. Lord Grantham
when the matter is international eco- judges his valet Bates to be innocent of a
nomics. If business leaders, Davos geeks, charge of murder, but a British court convicts
the Treasury secretary and the President him. Later, information materializes that ex-
condemn Brexit, U.S. citizens do, too. onerates Bates and vindicates the patriarch.
After all, Americans arent sure why Brit- Europe, by contrast, favors faraway law
ons voted to leave the EU or what they over local law, custom and regulation. A pre-
themselves make of the Brexit drama. Brexit-vote EU plan to ban some popular ap-
There is, however, a British show pliances, including a tea drinkers favorite, the
Americans do understand and, indeed, high-powered electric kettle, set Britons aboil.
love. It is Downton Abbey, one of the cheesiest, most anachronistic and Downton Principle III: Suspect high taxes.
most popular historical drama series in television history. You could hear The unexpected death of a Downton heir
the sighs across the Lower 48 last March when the image of the rump of triggers a tax liability so great that it jeop-
Lord Granthams light yellow Labrador rolled for a final time in the final ardizes the estate anew. Today Britains tax
episode of the finaland sixthseason. This spring was also the time when burden represents 33% of gross domestic
the formal contest between Leave and Remain opened, but public tele- product. Britons dont love the idea of going
vision fans scarcely noticed, so busy were they snatching up Downtoniana. to, say, 45%, Frances level.
Still, Downton Abbey and Brexit do have something in common. Downton Principle IV: Look West. In this
Indeed, to trace the principles that animate Downton is to understand show Europe is where young men go to die
more of what drives Britons who voted Leave. or vacation; the U.S. is a source of ideas and
Downton Principle I: Property comes first. Really firstbefore free- those occasional and crucial capital infusions.
dom, equality and love. As the show opens, every character, down to Downton Principle V: Britain improves
the last footman, knows that the Downton estate has stayed together Britain best. Lord Grantham tempers his ob-
only because Lord Grantham in his youth took the drastic step of noxious Toryism over the seasons, eventually
marrying a Cincinnati dry-goods heiress. noting, If we dont respect the past, well find
So precious is the accumulation of capital that the characters all it harder to build our future. This shift so en-
accept (not agree with) the rule of entail, under which the entire dears viewers that they forgive even the worst
estate must pass, part and parcel, to a male descendant, even if that anachronisms (Edwardians said pander,
means skipping the daughters of Lord Downton and handing over the not suck up; light yellow Labradors werent
mansion to a third cousin once removed. In the Downton narrative common until much later). Downton evolves
the resounding emphasis on property benefits all, leading (eventual- from Little England toward meritocracy.
ly) to justice, equality and romance: Lord Grantham long ago came to To be sure, other impulses, including un-
love his dry-goods lady, the beautiful Cora. And the next generation staged, unexpected populist rage and great
of Crawleys get to stay in their house because that third cousin in the concern about immigration, motivated Brex-
end marries a Crawley daughter. it. Yet often pro-Brexit citizens articulate the
The EU respects no entail. Indeed, the Charter of Fundamental connection. One of these is Downtons creator
Rights relegates property to a status so low it would make Thomas Jef- and screenwriter, Julian Fellowes. I believe
ferson uncomfortable. Dignity, equality, solidarity (Whats that? we should be out. Its about philosophy, Fel-
one can hear Lady Violet demanding) and freedoms get marquee sta- lowes has said.
THOMAS KUHLENBECK FOR FORBES
tus. Property rights are minor, buried in a mere articleand No. 17 at that. In short, Americans have something to con-
Downton Principle II: Downton (Britain) takes care of its own. When fess, if only to their TV sets. If they approve of
Lord Grantham ignores his own instincts and calls in a specialist rather Downton Abbey, they understandand perhaps
than the family doctor to attend the birth of a grandchild, he is punished even approve ofBrexit. But no one said the
with tragedy: The specialist makes the wrong call, and the babys mother, globalists upstairs have to know about that. F
AMITY SHLAES, PRESIDENTIAL SCHOLAR AT THE KINGS COLLEGE AND CHAIR OF THE COOLIDGE FOUNDATION BOARD; PAUL JOHNSON, EMINENT BRITISH HISTORIAN
AND AUTHOR; AND DAVID MALPASS, GLOBAL ECONOMIST, PRESIDENT OF ENCIMA GLOBAL LLC, ROTATE IN WRITING THIS COLUMN. TO SEE PAST CURRENT EVENTS COLUMNS, VISIT OUR
WEBSITE AT WWW.FORBES.COM/CURRENTEVENTS.
Fishing nets used to catch some of our favorite seafood catch, injure and kill
thousands of sea turtles every year. For species like the Kemps Ridley, extinction is
too close for the government to ignore the problem. Stand with Lauren and Oceana.
Help save sea turtles at www.oceana.org/saveseaturtles
THOUGHT LEADERS RICH KARLGAARD // INNOVATION RULES
Ego Is the Enemy packs a ton of personal performance tips, insight August vacation. But as a future vacation idea,
and wisdom into a small book. Even more remarkable is the author. try a Forbes Cruise for Investors. As Steve
Holiday, 29, is a college dropout who became a Hollywood rock music Forbes says, well give you investing tips that
might well pay for the cruise. Go to moneyshow
RICH KARLGAARD IS THE PUBLISHER AT FORBES. HIS LATEST BOOK, TEAM GENIUS: THE NEW SCIENCE OF HIGH-
PERFORMING ORGANIZATIONS, CAME OUT IN 2015. FOR HIS PAST COLUMNS AND BLOGS VISIT OUR WEBSITE .com and click on Cruises. Scroll to the Forbes
AT WWW.FORBES.COM/KARLGAARD.
cruises in November 2016 and March 2017. F
36 | FORBES AUGUST 23, 2016
Human moments,
delivered 2,000 times
per minute.
centurylink.com/yourlink
Services not available everywhere. 2016 CenturyLink. All Rights Reserved. The CenturyLink mark, pathways logo and certain CenturyLink product names are the property of
CenturyLink. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.
BEFORE YOU DECIDE 2016
TECHNOLOGY
MAPPING THE PLANET
WITH WORDS 44
ENTREPRENEURS
REINVENTING THE PHONE BOOK 46
CANADAS MOST INNOVATIVE
INCUBATOR 48
Monster Game
The inside story of how Pokmon Go was created by a Google exec
who got lost within the giant search company and how he persuaded
his bosses to let himand all those creaturesgo free.
BY RYAN MAC
I
ts not hard to spot players of the most down. But Google had the wisdom to let
popular smartphone game of all time. Hanke seek outside investors and spin the
They have a peculiar way of carrying company out. That paved the way for Hanke
their devices in front of them with one to approach Nintendo and the Pokmon
hand, says John Hanke, the technology Co., which oversees the brands intellectual
whiz behind Pokmon Go, as we stroll along the property, and make the smartest mobile-
waterfront of San Diegos Seaport Village the gaming deal of all time.
day before his appearance in front of 7,000 fans For Google the arrangement has worked
at Comic-Con. out in spades. Google owns just under 30%
Theyre playing, says the 49-year-old, of Niantic, whose game might hit $5 billion
nodding at a couple holding hands while in annual revenue, according to a Macquarie
their eyes fixate on their phones. That guy Group analyst.
standing with the backpack. Those people If Google kept it all to themselves, Im not
sitting over there. sure you would have Pokmon Go, at least
Since its July launch Pokmon Go, a free not at the speed at which we got it, says Gil-
augmented reality game by Niantic Labs man Louie, a Niantic board member.
in which players capture virtual characters Hanke has long loved videogames, having
mapped to real-world locations, has piled up taught himself to code his own on his Atari
superlatives. Apple said the game had more 400 computer in Cross Plains, Tex., a town of
downloads in its first week than any other 1,000 with a single stoplight. A self-described
app in history. One in ten Americans plays hick from the sticks, Hanke graduated from
Pokmon Go daily, according to App Annie, the University of Texas, Austin and eventu-
and SurveyMonkey estimates that the game ally wound up at Haas Business School at
is hauling in as much as $6 million a day from UC Berkeley with a view to starting a gam-
in-app purchases in the U.S. alone (the game
is available in 37 countries). Beyond the num-
bers, Hillary Clinton has invoked the game
on the campaign trail, Justin Bieber has gone
Pok-hunting in Central Park, and a reporter
was publicly chided for playing it at a State
Department briefing.
It almost didnt happen. Just 12 months
ago Hanke was an increasingly restless
Google employee (he launched Google
Earth, among other things) and his company,
Niantic, was an overlooked gaming skunk-
works lost in the search giant. As Google
reorganized itself into Alphabet, Nian-
tic looked likely to be rolled back into the
companys Android division or simply shut
geospatial software rm that provided users of the companys geo team. In his time there
with satellite imagery of any locale on Earth. he oversaw the 2005 launch of Google Earth,
That technology caught the eye of Google negotiated the placement of Google Maps on
cofounder Sergey Brin, who was infatu- the original iPhone with Steve Jobs and built
ated with maps. In one meeting with Google Maps into Googles second-largest product by
CEO Eric Schmidt and other executives, traic, behind search.
But by 2010 Hanke wanted out and meeting. Hanke wanted to know if Pokmon
hoped to reignite his passion by explor- would be interested in making an actual mo- BY THE
ing the possibility of combining maps with bile game. By May 2014 Hanke was in a con- NUMBERS
gaming. Persuaded to stay at the company ference room with Pokmon CEO Tsunekazu
by Googles other cofounder, Larry Page, he Ishihara, anked by translators and discuss- AT YOUR
was given personnel and resources to cre- ing, of all things, Ingress. A devoted Ingress SERVICE
ate a secret gaming division within Googles player, Ishihara immediately grasped how
BUSINESS SERVICES
San Francisco oice. Hanke named his powerful location could be for a mobile game ADMINISTRATIVE WORK,
company Niantic Labs, after a ship that had involving Pokmon. With the blessing of MIDDLE MANAGEMENT, LAW,
MARKETING AND MORE
taken miners to the Bay Area during the the late Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, Hanke NOW MAKE UP THE LARGEST
1849 gold rush. began development of Pokmon Go that sum- HIGH-WAGE PORTION OF
THE ECONOMY, EMPLOYING
After dabbling in an augmented-reality mer, agreeing to split game revenue with the NEARLY 20 MILLION AT AN
product that allowed users to learn about Pokmon Co. and Nintendo. (Hanke declined AVERAGE SALARY OF $30 AN
HOUR. TECH-RICH METROS
city landmarks via mobile devices and the to reveal the specic terms.) HAVE CREATED THE MOST
ill-fated Google Glass, Niantic released Meanwhile, back in Silicon Valley Niantics SUCH JOBS SINCE 2010. THE
TOP FIVE METRO AREAS:
Ingress in late 2013. It was Hankes rst at- position within Google had become tenuous.
tempt at a location-based game and allowed As the company decided how to reorga-
players on two teams to claim certain loca- nize itself into Alphabet, Googles leaders
tions around the world using their phones. wondered what to do with the dangling
Although it gained traction with serious chad of Hankes group. There was talk
gamers, Ingress was not considered a break- of rolling the company into the Android
through inside Google. group, though the idea of falling back into
By the spring of 2014 Niantic CEO Hanke the bureaucracy of Googles massive orga- 1.
was dreaming of applying location-based nization had little appeal to Hanke. NASHVILLE, DAVIDSON,
gaming to a well-established intellectual Instead, he broached the possibility of MURFREESBORO,
FRANKLIN,
property that would entice more users. Both a spinof and was given permission to go TENN.
Mario and Donkey Kong were considered, out and seek funding for an independent BUSINESS SERVICES
but one name that kept coming up was Pok- company. He met with several venture EMPLOYMENT GROWTH
RATE, 201015
mon, a franchise that hit Millennials hard capital rmsamong them Andreessen
in the late 1990s with videogames, trading Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins Caueld & 47.2%
cards, movies and a television cartoon. As Byersthough all balked at the companys 2.
of May 2016 Pokmon products had grossed valuation of around $150 million. One inves- SAN FRANCISCO,
$45 billion in lifetime sales. tor from those meetings recalls that Hanke REDWOOD CITY,
SOUTH SAN
Fortuitously, an engineer in Hankes for- discussed only Ingress and made no men- FRANCISCO,
mer Google Maps division named Tatsuo No- tion of the upcoming Pokmon title. Eventu- CALIF.
mura was quietly concocting a plan around
Pokmon, but for an entirely diferent reason.
ally Hanke was able to cobble together a $35
million round at an even higher valuation
45.7%
With April Fools Day approaching, Nomura (around $175 million) from Google, Ninten- 3.
AUSTIN,
had an idea to ofer mobile users a way to do, the Pokmon Co. and angel investors ROUND ROCK,
hunt for Pokmon while perusing Google no big VCs invested. TEX.
Maps. Through a friend he was able to set
up a meeting with the Pokmon Co., an en-
In defense of those that passed, Pokmon
Go is barely a month old and history has
42.3%
tity that is partially owned by Nintendo and not favored mobile-game makers like Zynga 4.
SAN JOSE,
conveniently shared the same oice complex (Farmville) and King.com (Candy Crush), SUNNYVALE,
with Google Japan in Tokyos Roppongi dis- which serve as a warning to any viral-game SANTA CLARA,
maker. At this point Hanke is just trying to CALIF.
trict. Their CEO liked the deal immediately,
Nomura remembers. There was not any real keep the servers running. With bags under 36.4%
negotiation. his eyes, hes had little time to do much of
RAINER GROSSKOPF/GETTY IMAGES
5.
The success of the April Fools prank anything else, not even play his own game. DALLAS,
caught the eye of Hanke, who reached out What level is he at? PLANO,
to Nomura to see if he could set up another Im, like, level 5, he says sheepishly. IRVING,
TEX.
FINAL THOUGHT 28.9%
After a certain point, money is meaningless. Its the game that counts. ARISTOTLE ONASSIS
Find.Me.Here
Billions more people could finally get home deliveries if
the world adopts What3Words clever address system.
BY PARMY OLSON
I
n a fast-growing suburb outside New and have cut missed
Delhi, young women hail pink motor- deliveries by 83% since
cycle taxis through an app called Bikxie. January. What3Words
Launched in January, Bikxie has a novel has raised $14.5 mil-
feature: It pairs women drivers with lion from investors
women customers. And soon it will have an- like Intel Capital and
other. Its users in Gurugram, where rapid con- Aramex, the Middle
struction has created a confusing mess of loca- Easts equivalent of
tions, wont need a street address. Instead, says FedEx, which has
Bikxie founder Divya Kalia, riders will simply asked big local retailers
type three ordinary words to identity the nine- to add a What3Words
square-meter parcel of land where they want box to checkout pages.
to be dropped of. For example, the entrance to In all, more than 250
Bikxies oice in New Delhi is artichoke.recruit- businesses globally use
er.snif. Beyond India, FORBES New Jersey What3Words, though
headquarters is gold.wink.esh. The front door it isnt protable yet.
to the White House? Length.grab.torch. Sheldrick, 35,
Bikxie is pulling this data from a unied wants What3Words to
global addressing system devised by a company become a global stan-
ttingly named What3Words. The London- dard, the comprehen-
based startup, launched in 2013 by Chris Shel- sive x to the addressing problem that several Chris Sheldricks startup
drick, a former music and events organizer, national governments, like Ghanas, have tried has divided the globe
into a grid of tiny blocks,
has divided the entire planet into 3-meter-by- and failed to solve. He started the company including this square in
3-meter squares (the size of a small bedroom) after seeing some of his musical acts get lost in Hyde Park, London.
and assigned each a three-word string. The Italian villages and miss their gigs. Latitude and
goal: Make it easier to nd the homes of the longitude coordinates failed to solve the prob-
more than half of humanity who live in poorly lem. Mess up one of the 18 numbers, and you
marked areas, like many urban slums, or are could end up 20 miles from your destination.
among the 4 billion people who have no ad- In January 2013 he began discussing the
dress at all. Much of Costa Rica, for instance, problem with Jack Waley-Cohen, an old friend
doesnt have street names or house numbers. from his chess team at Eton, the elite British
In some countries home delivery for post boarding school. If only someone could make
doesnt happen, Sheldrick says. People are GPS coordinates easy, he remembers say-
used to going, I live behind the yellow lamp- ing over tea in his London at. They needed a
post near the cofee shop. sequence of, ideally, three things, something
In Rio de Janeiros favelas, a local mail-de- everybody could remember, he adds.
livery company, Carteiro Amigo, already uses Words would do the trick. The pair divided
What3Words to nd homes. Mongolias national the globe into 57 trillion squares that require
postal service signed up last May to use the about 40,000 diferent words to identify them
system for deliveries to the countrys 3 million all. They assigned short words to locations on
citizens. Drivers with Direct Today Couriers land and longer ones to those on bodies of water.
in the U.K. use a What3Words-powered app To turn this clever idea into a business,
packed the formula into 10 MB of space, mak- Robots dont understand street addresses, says
ing the service easy for businesses to incorpo- Starship COO Allan Martinson. We may use
SHOES AND BELT BY TODS. STYLE DIRECTOR: JOSEPH DEACETIS; STYLE ASSOCIATE: JUAN BENSON.
rate into their apps, run from their own servers What3Words as part of that address, but it must
and use in areas with no mobile data coverage. be widely used. Starships sensor-laden robots
Sheldrick now faces several challenges. already create their own maps across city streets,
One is getting people to adopt a completely he adds, just like Googles Street View cars do.
new way of defining location. Thats a big ask, Amazons drones may end up doing the same.
isnt it? Theres plenty of behavior-changing Either way, the startup may not remain in-
platforms, Sheldrick says, noting that Airbnb dependent for long. What3Words is a perfect
seemed creepy at first but is now second nature candidate to be taken over in a couple of years,
PHOTOGRAPHED BY LEVON BISS FOR FORBES.
to travelers. As you get more businesses push- says Martijn de Wever, founder of Force Over
ing this, it becomes de facto, he says. Were Mass Capital, which recently invested. He sees
talking to all the large global logistics firms. Google, Apple or Amazon being particularly
Business customers like Aramex are crucial interested. They could integrate it fully within
to helping What3Words get companies to com- their current mapping technology.
FINAL THOUGHT
My country is the English language. KILDARE DOBBS
The Fraud
Detective
Alex Algard risked everything he
owned to turn his struggling business,
Whitepages, into a fast-growing tech
company he expects to generate
$150 million in revenue next year.
BY AMY FELDMAN
E
very day thousands of consumers
go to Under Armours website and
click buy on a T-shirt or a pair of
running shoes, transactions that
total an estimated $500 million a
year. To those customers it may seem as if their
transactions are processed instantly. But in that
half-second or less, Under Armour, with the
help of a Seattle-based tech company called
Whitepages, makes the decision whether to
trust the consumer and complete the sale.
Under Armour is just one of more than 2,000
businesses, including Wells Fargo, Saks and
American Airlines, that rely on Whitepages
subscription-based service, Whitepages Pro,
to assess millions of transactions each day. Is a
buyer trying to pass of a fraudulent credit card?
Or using a prepaid phone card and shipping to a
Mail Boxes Etc., a red ag for fraud? As busi-
nesses crank up their online salesand consum-
ers move to mobile phones, which are tougher
to connect to real addressesthe database that
Whitepages began building nearly 20 years ago
as a simple online phone directory has become The son of a Swedish father and a Korean Sitting pretty: Alex Algard
left Goldman Sachs
increasingly valuable. mother, Algard was born in Stockholm, moved because he was making
It has taken most of those 20 years for Alex to Vancouver as a teenager and studied eco- more on his side venture.
Algard, Whitepages 42-year-old founder nomics and engineering at Stanford. During the
and CEO, to transform what started as a side dot-com boom, he landed an internship with
hustle into a real business with $70 million in Morgan Stanley in Silicon Valley. While there,
revenue last year. That transition required guts in 1996, he had an idea for an online directory
and a steadfast belief in the business. In 2010 and thought to call it Whitepages.com after the
the companys two biggest clients cut back, its soon-to-be-obsolete phone book. When he typed
revenues plunged, and its investors decided in the URL, he saw a coming soon notice, so he
they wanted out. I was dreading going to contacted its owner and ew to Los Angeles to
RICK DAHMS FOR FORBES
board meetings, Algard says. We were ght- negotiate the purchase, paying just $900.
ing about whether to invest in the business. It After graduation Algard took a job as a junior
was a very painful process. And there was no analyst at Goldman Sachs in New York, tinker-
guarantee the business would survive. ing with the online phone directory in his lim-
ited free time. In those days, before the advent sure on us to magically go nd prot. It really
of open-source technology and cloud-based got to the point where I was thinking we would GO,
software, building a database of phone num- end up suing each other. CONSIDER,
bers would have been prohibitively expensive, By 2012 Algard saw two options: He could STOP
so he wrote some code that pulled data from nd a buyer for Whitepages, or he could come
American Business Information (now part of up with some $80 million to buy out the VCs
Infogroup) in real time. It cost just $5,000 a year himself. He chose the latter. While Whitepages
in licensing fees and allowed users to search na- had cash on hand he could put toward a deal,
tionally rather than having to go state by state. he was still roughly $30 million short. To bridge
Before long Algards hobby, which generated the gap, the company took out a bank loanand
revenue by displaying ads, was producing more Algard pledged his familys house, savings ac-
income than his day job. Eleven months into his counts and other personal assets as collateral.
Thats a ballsy move that I really respect, says HOW TO HIRE A
career he stunned his colleagues and bosses by FELON
quitting Goldman to pursue the dot-com dream. Whitney Bouck, chief operating oicer at Hello- ZANE TANKEL, CEO OF
(Some at the rm were further stunned when Sign and a Whitepages board member. (Were APPLE-METRO, WHICH
OWNS 36 APPLEBEES AND
they mistyped his URL and found themselves on glad this worked out well for Alex and our inves- 2 PIZZA STUDIOS IN NEW
Whitepage.com, then a porn site.) tors, said a Providence Equity Partners spokes- YORK CITY AND ENVIRONS,
HAS BROUGHT ON DOZENS
Whitepages quickly became a cash cow. person; TCV declined to comment.) OF FORMER INMATES AND
Consumers could save on directory-assistance The deal left Algard with the task of turning PROMOTED MANY TO
MANAGERIAL ROLES.
charges by looking up numbers online, and Whitepages into a sustainable business. Now HIS ADVICE:
advertising followed. An early win came from fully engaged, he shifted the companys business
deals that rewarded Whitepages.com generous- model, culminating this year with turning of the
LEARN THEIR
ly for forwarding searches for local businesses advertising on the consumer sideWhitepages AHA MOMENT
to Yellowpages.com and Superpages.com. The primary source of revenueand switching to a Pre-promotion, Tankel
contracts produced $15 million a year by 2005, subscription model. For a monthly fee of up to does a surprise in-person
and those results attracted investors. $29.95, users can get details on anyone theyre interview to ask when the
In 2005 Technology Crossover Ventures trying to nd, including mobile numbers and employee realized he was
ready to go straight. He
(TCV) and Providence Equity Partners invest- bankruptcy records. For business users, Algard
expects a reply from the
ed $45 million for a minority stake. Revenues created Whitepages Pro. It keeps our fraud gut: no smooth talk, no
continued to grow almost efortlessly, reaching rates low, which is really, really important for platitudes.
$66 million in 2008. But online business models our business, says Matt Oppenheimer, CEO of
were changing, Google was horning in on local currency-transfer startup Remitly.
PRUDENCE AND
business search, and the companys fortunes Algards early insight was to link peoples GUIDANCE
were tied to the contracts with Yellowpages and identities to their mobile phones rather than Tankel spends his days
Superpages. We saw the writing on the wall, to their landlines and to work the data into an visiting restaurants,
says Max Bardon, who served as Whitepages identity graph that ties together phone num- schmoozing workers
CEO during a period when Algard stepped bers, addresses, e-mail addresses, social net- and keeping tabs on their
progress and setbacks.
down to focus on a second fast-growing startup, working proles and the like. He has also spun
My role is to keep them
an online community for car enthusiasts. We of a division that uses the phone data to identify moving forward.
started building our own business-search capa- mobile-phone spammers. Called Hiya, the spin-
bility instead of outsourcing to those guys. of has deals with T-Mobile and Samsung.
But the new model required better engi- Algard refused to say what impact he expects WORKPLACE, NOT
JAILHOUSE, MORES
neering and design, and couldnt match the these changes to have on revenue this year but
Tankel once hired a dozen
easy revenueand 99% prot marginsof the did say he expects it to surpass $150 million next former inmates at one
business-search deals. When Yellowpages and year. A poker player, he says he has no regrets location. They hung out
Superpages cut back, their payments dropped about borrowing millions to buy out his inves- together, swapping prison
from $33 million in 2008 to $7 million in 2010. tors, though the company is still paying of the tales, until one by one
they went back. Lesson
It felt like an asteroid had hit us, says Algard, loans and his house is still on the line. You must
learned. Theyve got
who had by then returned as CEO and had to try take risks to win, he says. If you do not take to get absorbed by the
to calm his VC investors. They put a lot of pres- risks, you do not win. culture, he says. They
cant be the culture.
FINAL THOUGHT
A.F.
Telephone books are, like dictionaries, already out of date the moment they
are printed. AMMON SHEA
S
han Tejani often uses the pronoun asked a couple of graduate students to demon-
we when discussing his exploits as strate a device they had designed to test glucose
the founder of more than 20 startups levels. I saw the market size and the market
and an investor in dozens more, as in opportunity, Tejani says. Diabetes is global.
Were making a big push into Eu- Its borderless.
rope. Technically he is an executive committee Its also out of his comfort zone, which is
of one, but he is building a team of sorts. why he sought the counsel of Elliott, a clinician
He recently sat down for a meeting in a with two decades of experience. Ultimately the
conference room in the Vancouver oices of BC doctor expressed skepticism, but Tejani had
Diabetes, the practice of Dr. Tom Elliott. While woven another strand into the web of startups
Tejani is investing about $400,000 in a ven- he is building. In the past two or three years,
ture with Elliott to develop a genetic test that he has seeded an eclectic portfolio featuring
predicts how diabetics will respond to the drug some of Vancouvers top young entrepreneurs.
liraglutide, his real purpose on this day was to Through an investment entity called Victory
RICK DAHMS FOR FORBES
get Elliotts reaction to a product demonstration. Square, he has supplied time, knowledge, sup-
Thirty-nine and preternaturally afable, Te- port services, access to his network and nan- Shan Tejani takes a
different approach to
jani, who greets almost everybody as brother cial assistancegenerally not more than several startups: I go in planning
partners, friends, the waiter at lunchhad hundred thousand dollarsto some 16 startups. to win every time.
British Columbias technology companies Within a year Tejani and Chandola sold the
there are more than 9,700 of thememploy company for $1 million to a Brazilian private TRENDING
more people than the natural resources compa- equity fund. Then they started a mobile gaming
WHAT THE 45 MILLION
nies that once dominated the region, according company, V2 Games, that today employs more FORBES.COM USERS
to the BC Tech Association. Tejani has seen than 40 and is protable on nearly $3 million in ARE TALKING ABOUT.
FOR A DEEPER DIVE GO TO
real benets in being based in Canada. For one annual sales. Chandola has become something FORBES.COM/INVESTING
thing, his companies often pay their expenses of a junior partner to Tejani, with a stake in both
in Canadian dollars and receive their revenues Fantasy 6 and one of its main ailiates, Immer- PERSON
in American dollars. Plus, he helps his entre- sive Environment, which is building real-world PAUL M. ENGLISH
Cofounded travel search
preneurs take advantage of generous govern- interactive experiences, starting with escape
site Kayak and sold it
ment support and incentives: grants and credits rooms. Immersive is managed by another Tejani for $2.1 billion; his new
for making investments, for hiring recent col- protg, Adrian Duke, whose rst Victory Square startup, Lola, connects
lege graduates, for R&D and more. company designs water slides with a 90-degree users with live travel
He likes to call what he does venture build drop and a full loop. It built a prototype at a park agents who handle
all details and create
as opposed to venture capital. Unlike VCs, who near St. Louis and has sold four units.
itineraries. Just like old
often leave startups to their own devicesso Tejani started his rst business 20 years ago times!
long as they are hitting milestonesTejani in a dorm at what is now Western University in
showers his portfolio companies with support. Ontario, a college sophomore hoping to make COMPANY
DABADO
As a VC, youre making a bet knowing youre up for a lost scholarship. The business, iFluRtz,
When Steven Helfer and
going to get one home run and a hundred outs, was a dating quiz-and-match service that he
his brother Nicholas put
he says. I go in planning to win every time. To pitched as a fundraiser to high schools, which together a Facebook
improve his odds, he tends to think small, seek- sold the program to students. Within a few years page about dabbing
ing startups that can turn a prot in six months the business generated about $2.8 million in rev- (smoking marijuana
and that are in need of his core competencies, enue and led to a school discount program and concentrate), they
didnt expect tens of
as he calls them, in online customer-acquisition a mailing list of more than 60,000 merchants.
thousands of likesor
and software development. From there Tejani slid neatly into retail loyalty that it would become a
Lately, though, hes been thinking bigger. programs, creating and selling six companies. marketing platform for a
At the center of his eforts is a bid to stitch Meanwhile, after a friend asked him to new multimillion-dollar
together a publicly traded enterprise, called build an online gambling site, he developed a business.
Fantasy 6, that will stake out a piece of the fan- rudimentary ailiate marketing tool to track
tasy sports marketnever mind that the space traic and compensate websites for leads.
is occupied by two behemoths, FanDuel and When his friend sold the site, Tejani was left
DraftKings. Tejani purchased one company with both his tracking tool and the website ar-
outright and created a couple of others from chitecture, which he began marketing to other
scratch to ll roles in the nascent empire. He gaming sites, particularly in South America
thinks Fantasy 6 could nd a buyer in the next and often in exchange for equity.
one to three yearsa media company like He retired from online vice four years
Disney prepared to pay $150 million or more. ago with, he says, $125 million in prots
Tejanis parents, who are of Indian de- from all his ventures, as well as a back oice IDEA
scent, immigrated to Vancouver from Uganda of developers and digital marketers and a SMART CYCLING
as young adults. Most of the entrepreneurs in global address book. Darius Eghdami, CEO Blubel is a device from
a London startup that
Victory Squares portfolio are themselves rst- and cofounder of FansUnite, which will soon
attaches to handlebars:
or second-generation Canadians, many from join the Fantasy 6 family, says his associa- a combination alert bell
Asia. Even before capital, there was trust, tion with Tejani lowers his costs because a and trip planner that
says Samarth Chandola, who came from India developer who would otherwise expect a gives clear, easy-to-digest
and wound up working for a political candi- salary of $60,000 to $65,000 might take 10% directions for the safest
route.
date whose campaign rented oice space from less to work with Tejani. And he marveled at
Tejani. In 2013 Tejani agreed to stake Chan- Tejanis network of marketing and gaming
dola $25,000 to build a suite of learning games contacts. If I reached out to them, Eghdami
for children called Boximals. says, they wouldnt return my calls.
FINAL THOUGHT
CREDIT RIGHT
B
onanzas and booby traps: Plenty ofer tax deductions or other subsidies for
of both await you in the complex contributions to college accounts, and the
world of 529s. deal is usually available only to participants
Needlessly complex, since the who patronize the home-state plan. What
concept is simple. You set aside savings for should you do if your state has a lucrative
college costs, and the earnings (per sec- deduction but runs a crappy plan? The aim of
tion 529 of the tax code) escape tax. But the this article is to answer that question and to
execution is messy because 48 states plus ofer guidance on other ways to extract the
the District of Columbia compete nationally most from your account.
for the business of overseeing the accounts. Strategic Insight, which tracks the money
They have created a crazy quilt of investment management industry, counts $230 billion
choices and tax rules. in 529 assets, not including tuition prepay-
Two-thirds of states operating 529 plans ment plans. The money is driven into place
WA
ME
MT ND
$425
$1,782 $1,678
OR1 VT1 $409
MN NH $437
$348 ID NY
Invest in the SD $454
home-state $1,189 WI1 -$164 MA $437
WY $976 MI
plan $157 CT RI1 $56
$21
Maybe invest IA PA1 -$72
NE
in the home-
$253 OH1 $821 NJ $207
state plan NV $739 IL IN
UT1 $373 MDDE $437
Send your $437 $344 -$359 WV1
money to CA $188 CO VA1 $345
New York or KS MO $270 D.C.
$230 $608 $302
California $346 $527 KY $1,224 $887
NC
OK1 TN $832 $528
AZ NM1 AR SC1
$437 $639
$255 $852 -$376
MS AL GA
$1,138 $362 $500
TX LA
AK $1,350 -$174
$569 FL
HI $886
$1,841
FEES AND EXPENSES OVER 18 YEARS ON A $10,000 INVESTMENT IN HOME-STATE 529 PLAN, NET OF STATE TAX BENEFIT ON A JOINT RETURN (A NEGATIVE NUMBER INDICATES THAT BENEFIT EXCEEDS THE EXPENSE). FEES AS OF FEB. 15. TAX BENEFIT
ASSUMES STATE TAX IN HIGHEST BRACKET, OFFSET BY FEDERAL EFFECT FOR TAXPAYER IN THE HIGHEST FEDERAL BRACKET. NO CREDIT FOR TAX BENEFIT IF IT WOULD HAVE BEEN AVAILABLE ON A CONTRIBUTION TO AN OUT-OF-STATE PLAN. ASSUMES
SINGLE BENEFICIARY AND THE LOWEST-COST INVESTMENT OPTION USING STOCKS OR BONDS. 1STATE MAY PERMIT A DEDUCTION HIGHER THAN $10,000 OR MAY INCREASE IT FOR MULTIPLE BENEFICIARIES OR MAY ALLOW A CARRYOVER.
SOURCES FOR RAW DATA: SAVINGFORCOLLEGE.COM; TAX FOUNDATION.
1. ROLL-OUT not only by the tax exemption, both might be able to claim the American
THESE STATES ALLOW A DEDUCTION federal and state, on earnings, but also Opportunity Tax Credit, dont pay your
OR OTHER SUBSIDY FOLLOWED BY A by the state deductions for contribu- entire college bill with 529 money. This
ROLLOVER TO ANOTHER STATE. tions (theres no federal deduction). A federal credit hands you $2,500 toward
wealthy New Yorker can pocket state the rst $4,000 of tuition that isnt cov-
and city 529 tax breaks cumulatively ered by a 529 distribution.
worth $20,000 (assuming $10,000 in Parents with adjusted gross income
529 contributions a year for 20 years below $160,000 can get the full college
and a 10% combined state/local rate). credit. Alternatively, a student who is
As a taxpayer you might have some not claimed as a dependent on the par-
misgivings about subsidizing sheep- ents return can grab the credit.
D.C., ID, OK, RI, AFTER WAITING PERIOD.
skins, which are in oversupply. (Econo- Now lets delve into geography. Some
2. ROLL-IN mist Richard Vedder once counted states, like Michigan and New York,
THESE STATES GIVE DEDUCTIONS FOR
115,000 janitors with bachelors de- have terric deals for their citizens:
AMOUNTS ROLLED IN FROM OTHER
STATES. grees.) As a saver you might as well get low-cost funds and valuable deductions
as much of the available loot as you can. for contributions. Some, like California
The optimum 529 investment strat- and Connecticut, have one of these two
egy depends on where you live, how good features.
much youre putting in and for how Other states seem to be in the 529
long. But three rules apply no matter business for the sole purpose of pick-
what. ing savers pockets. Neither Texas nor
IL, VT, WI, PRINCIPAL ONLY. One rule is that you should do your Hawaii ofers a tax benet for contribu-
retirement saving rst, college saving tions. They both operate fee-gouging
3. HOT MONEY
THESE STATES ALLOW DEDUCTIONS second. That is because retirement as- plans.
OR CREDITS FOR 529 CONTRIBUTIONS sets are for the most part ignored on The map on page 50 highlights the
USED IMMEDIATELY. nancial aid forms, while college assets best and the worst states. Here, we
are fair game. A core principle of aid assume youre a high-bracket, joint-
administrators is that people who have return ler putting aside $10,000 for
saved for college are undeserving. a newborn. The net cost shown is the
Heres how that principle is put into cumulative fee outlay (over 18 years) on
action. A 529 account whose owner the home-state plan, minus the value of
(thats the person who controls dis- any tax benet for tossing the money in.
bursements) is the students parent Green: Invest locally. Red: Send your
4. BYPASS will get nicked 5% to 6% a year in the money to one of the two states with the
YOU CAN GET DEDUCTIONS HERE EVEN aid formula. In other words, $100,000 best plans. California has the cheap-
WHEN SENDING MONEY OVER THE contained in a 529 will, over four years, est stock index fund in the business, at
STATE BORDER.
reduce aid by a cumulative $20,000 or 10 basis points ($10 a year per $10,000
so. The same wealth stashed in a 401(k) invested). New York has the cheapest
wont do that. bond index fund, at 16 basis points.
The next rule is one that applies If you live in a yellow state you might
to all tax-sheltered investing: Get the be able to come out ahead by opting for
cheapest investment option on the the home plan. To know for sure, you
menu. That will probably be a stock or could calculate the net cost by guring
bond index fund. your tax savings of your tax return and
5. HAZARD WARNING Resist the lure of actively managed your investment cost of the plan docu-
THESE STATES LIMIT OWNERSHIP funds with seemingly terric records ments. If thats too much of a headache,
TRANSFERS. records, in case you didnt know, being just send your money to California or
close to useless in predicting future re- New York.
sults. If you want to chase performance, What if you are investing a lot more
do it in a taxable account, where at than $10,000? Or investing for a shorter
least you can take a capital loss for your period? Or you are the grandparent of
mistakes. the future student? Then the optimiza-
The last general rule is to pace your tion game gets more nuanced. We have
withdrawals. If you or the student seven 529 strategies to help you.
SPLIT DOLLAR. Joseph Hurley, a New The other way is for one of the grandpar- SOUND
York C.P.A. who founded Savingforcollege ents to own the account and name the future STRATEGIES
.com and ran it for 17 years, suggests that student as beneciary. They can prestuf it
savers consider splitting their accounts. Put with ve years of gift-tax exclusions ($14,000 BEATING BREXIT
just enough into the local plan to get the per grandparent, per beneciary, times ve). When the U.K. voted
maximum tax deduction, then put the rest That gets the money out of their estate if they on June 23 to leave the
in a better-run plan elsewhere. An Arizona survive for ve years but leaves them with European Union, many
investors and traders
parent saving $10,000 a year would invest the exibility to take it back if they get into a
were caught wrong-
$4,000 at home and $6,000 next door in nancial bind. footed. Not Michael
California. Grandparent-owned 529s get tricky on a Cuggino. His $3 billion
nancial aid application. They can escape the Permanent Portfolio Fund
ROLL-OUT. You put your money into the 5% asset assessment, but distributions are shone in June, gaining
3.9%, compared with 1%
local plan for the deduction, then roll it into considered income and are whacked with a
for the average fund in its
a good plan. Fifteen states plus D.C. permit 50% hit. Lets dodge this tax. balanced category and
this escape (see map 1, p. 51); theres a waiting Method I: Grandparent transfers owner- 0.1% for the S&P 500.
period in only four of these places. ship to the parent before money is taken out. Year-to-date Cuggino is
Beware of the six states (map 5, p. 51) that up 14.2%, better than 99%
of his peers.
ROLL-IN. Lets say you have a lot of money make ownership transfers diicult; in some of
you want to invest early on and you live in Al- these you can get around the transfer block- His trick wasnt big
bets on Brexit but
abama. Put $100,000 into the California plan, ade by rst rolling assets into a friendlier rather already owning
then feed it back into Alabamas plan at the state. While youre at it, see if you can com- assets that hold
rate of $10,000 a year, claiming the maximum bine Method I with the roll-in gimmick cited value during market
Alabama deduction each time. Eight states above. upheaval: physical
(map 2, p. 51) give deductions for amounts Joe Hurley recommends Method II: Use gold, Swiss francs and
franc-denominated
rolled in from other states. grandparent money beginning with the bonds, alongside
spring semester of sophomore year. Because growth holdings such as
HOT MONEY. You were about to pay the of the time lag in aid formulas, none of the Facebook. Such positions
next college bill out of pocket. Instead, send distributions will damage your aid. Clever can be a lead weight
it to your states plan for the deduction, wait a families can also keep the money out of the during go-go rallies, but
they work wonders in
month for the check to clear, then use the ac- reach of asset-based aid formulas for the troubled times. We may
count to pay the college. Twenty-seven states rst two years of school by naming a dummy not hit the home run,
(map 3, p. 51) allow a deduction or credit beneciary (any descendant who isnt getting Cuggino acknowledges,
for contributions and dont penalize a rapid nancial aid) until its time to disburse the but were not gonna
departure. money. strike out much.
Steve Schaefer
BYPASS. Five states (a) have overpriced 529 PRENATAL PLAN. You could set up a 529
plans, (b) ofer a tax deduction for contribu- when youre 25, naming yourself as bene-
tions and (c) do not limit the deduction to ciary. You could use it for grad school. And
customers of the home-state plan. If you live if you dont? Ten years later, when your rst
in one of these places (map 4, p. 51), send your child is born, you start making your kids the
CHRIS J RATCLIFFE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
money to New York or California. beneciaries.
And what if you never have a family?
GRANDMA HANDOFF. There are two ways Somedaytheres no deadlineyou collapse
for grandparents to chip in to 529s. One is the account. At that point you owe regular tax
to give money to the parents and have the plus a 10% penalty on the earnings, and you
parents open a 529 with it. That makes sense probably have to give back any state subsidy
if the parents are in a higher state tax bracket for the contribution. This is not a terrible
than the grandparentsfor example, they live outcome, given that a 529 allows you to defer
in New York and the grandparents live in 0% tax on investment earnings for as long as you
Florida. want.
FINAL THOUGHT
I
f the markets Brexit tantrum has re- 11.7% a year from a stock index fund.
minded you of the pain of volatility, you Hedge-fund-like? Sure, if thats any consola-
may be hunting for something magical tion. An index of equity hedge funds tracked by
on Wall Street: an investment that deliv- Hedge Fund Research shows a 3.1% annual re-
ers most of the return from stocks but turn over three years, almost as bad as the return
much less of the risk. from the public long-short funds.
Hedge funds, those private partnerships of- The question is why an ordinary saver would
fered to a select crowd, try to accomplish this really need this stuf. For an answer we turned
by mixing stock purchases with short sales. The to Goldman Sachs, which oversees $112 billion
theory is that in a rising market the carefully se- of alternative assets (those being almost any-
lected long positions race ahead; in a correction, thing other than plain old stocks
prots on the short sales insulate the portfolio and bonds) and has 40 years of FUND GROWTH
from the worst of the decline. experience in the eld. THE POPULATION RISES,
Now ordinary folk can get in on the action. Lawrence Restieri Jr., who NOTWITHSTANDING THE QUIET
DEMISE OF 60 OVER THE DECADE.
An expanding collection of publicly traded mu- helps market alternative invest- 140
tual funds combine long and short positions in ments at Goldman, says the idea LONG-SHORT MUTUAL FUNDS
stocks. With these, you can get hedge-fund-like is to get exposure to asset classes 120
Morningstar counts 133 publicly ofered You dont want the client, after 40
funds in its long-short equity category, holding an equity market crash, to sell all
20
a combined $34 billion. Results: awful. The aver- their equities and not get back in SOURCE: MORNINGSTAR.
age return for the bunch has been 2% a year over [before] the market recovers. 0
the 36 months to June 30. You could have had Protecting investors from self- 2006 2011 2016
unfortunate
inicted wounds is a worthy goal. But are long- habit of getting in at the top and bailing out
short mutual funds a good way to achieve it? at the bottom, says John Bogle, who founded
RICHARD DREW/AP
Consider what the funds do to reduce risk. Vanguard Group 41 years ago on the theory that
They have, on average, a sensitivity to stock mar- investors should seek economy and simplicity
ket uctuations that is equivalent to a 50% long in their portfolios. As a result, he says, the return
exposure. (That could come, for example, from on an average investors dollar is often less than PERSON
investing the whole wad in long positions, then the return you see in a performance chart. JAMIE DIMON
taking on short sales equal to half that amount.) A case in point is the Gotham Absolute Re- JPMorgan chief boasts
But there are easier ways to go 50% long. You turn Fund, opened to much enthusiasm in 2012. of raises for 18,000 bank
employees but leaves out
could just put half your money in cash. Gotham founder Joel Greenblatt made a name
that theyre coming after
Someone who spent the last three years half for himself with his The Little Book That Beats thousands of layofs.
in cash and half in a stock index fund would the Market (John Wiley & Sons, 2010). The fund
have landed an annual return just shy of 6%. drew in billions of dollars to follow Greenblatts COMPANY
NETFLIX
Thats four points better than what the long- magic formula investing, which has the fund
Subscriber growth fails to
short mutual funds delivered. In short, the long- buying 530 scientically selected stocks and
impress, but the company
short customers have allowed a lot of money to shorting smaller doses of 448 others. has no shortage of
slip between their ngers. If you had bought this fund three years ago excusesbad press and
Josh Charlson, who analyzes alternative and stayed put, you would have gained 4.6% the upcoming Olympics
investments for Morningstar, has some theo- a year. Thats not great for a fund with a 60% among them.
ries about what went wrong. The long-short market exposure, although it does leave Gotham IDEA
crowd may have made too many short-sale ahead of its dismal peer group. BANKING ON BONDS
bets against highiers like Netix and Amazon. Gothams restless customers, alas, did not stay Banks clear low earnings
Then there are frictional costs to their trading. put. They had more money on the table during hurdle, thanks to cost cuts
Turnover in the category averages an eferves- the bad months than during the good ones. Their and Brexit-driven bond-
trading boost.
cent 260% a year. average result, Morningstar reports under its in-
The biggest single drag on the results is the vestor return tab, has been 2.8% a year.
fees. Those 133 strivers have taken on a very You could try to make your move into hedge-
challenging assignmentanswered with pro- fund-like investing at just the right time, just
prietary models, high conviction investments before the magic formulas start working. But the
and patent pending strategiesand charge odds are against you.
accordingly. The average expense ratio runs to You pay a terrible price for thinking youre
1.9% a year. Thats 38 times as high as for a stock smarter than the market, Bogle says. If youre
index fund. worried about volatility, see if you can come up
The Goldman Sachs Long Short Fund has with a reduced-risk portfolio that has low turn-
2.4% in annual expenses and a 468% turnover. over and low expenses. He recommends a 50-50
Not quite two years old, it has delivered an aver- blend of an S&P 500 index fund and a short-
age annual return of 9%. term bond fund.
FINAL THOUGHT
In a hedge fund, you get paid on your batting average. So you go to the worst
league you can find, where theres the least competition. JULIAN ROBERTSON
EARNINGS GROWTH
YOU CAN DEPEND ON
WHEN SO MUCH SEEMS so wrong long and should respond to Chinese accel-
to so many, why would any right- eration. Its a great growth rm valued like a
thinking soul own stocks? Everyone slow-growth one.
knows theyre too pricey. What In the same suit globally is ALPHABET (GOOG,
would pull them up? A tractor! 739), a.k.a. Google, which has done poorly of
Out back on my rms Washington late with disappointing ad volume growth.
State campus they were weed-whack- That should be more than ofset ahead by ris-
ing and uncovered a 1926 Farmall, an ing mobile pricing tied to value added from
International Harvester model that rev- location targeting. Be careful: Big brother
olutionized row-crop farming. Thanks is watching. Big Brother sells at 18 times my
to tiny, sharp-turning front wheels that 2017 earnings estimate.
meandered through rows nimbly, the Long-term readers know I urge being
Farmall turned a simple idea into big productivity gains, one of many overweight big drug stocks through this bull
that funneled us from half our labor in agriculture when my grandpa markets life. MERCK (MRK, 59) should be ripe for
was young to under 1.5% nowwhile output grew vastly. While 1926 another run. Consensus earnings estimates
feels primitive, its just 24 years pre-my-time. Pretty new! for 2017 of $3.70 are at and too low. Expect
Technology deployers keep boosting productivity via clever ideas. positive surprise early on tied to its seven
Moores Law, Kryders Law, the Shannon-Hartley Theorem, Koo- under review pipeline drugs, particularly
meys Law and DNA technology all whiz along. Dreamers will fash- in cancer and hepatitis. I think it should sell
ion Farmall-like twists to spur upward-driving earnings growth. Ive at a P/E of 20 by early 2017.
no clue who develops what or when long term. But it will happen. There are so many reasons to dislike Ore-
Bank on it. gon-based sports and footwear giant NIKE (NKE,
If we buy out a good rm at 14 times stable earnings we get 7.1% 57)I love it. Overexposure to China! Easy-
forever (1/14)reinvestable into growth at deferrable cap gains rates. entry industry! The emotion of Phil Knights
Or we can lend lousy rms long-term cash at 5.9% pre-income-tax. departure! High saturation of developed
Whats better? The buyout, of course. Compounding that spread be- markets! It goes on endlessly. But overseas
Nike should surprise on the upside, earnings,
IN BULL MARKETS, BIG TECH STOCKS too, even in China and emerging markets.
RUN IN SPURTS. SEVERAL GIANTS And hence 22 times consensus earnings ex-
ARE NOW ON THE WAY UP pectations for the May 2017 scal year should
be blown awayblowing the stock upin a
comes immense. Buying the global market captures that spread plus good way.
all future growth that Farmall-like gains assure. If conservative, you will like Fox News.
This is the basic, valid logic for owning stocks long term. Noth- If liberal, the bulk of Foxs other TV pro-
ing liquid beats it. Better stocks are better still. And youre obviously graming, like cable channel Nat Geo Wild. If
better of short-to-intermediate term in an ongoing bull market. Here nonideological, its moviesclassic old hits or
are ve growing stocks I like now for this bull. new oneslike X-Men: Apocalypse. But as an
Recall Januarys fears of China breaking. Yet the country grows, investor youll like owning it all and more via
albeit at steadily slower rates, and its enormous size means GDP TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY FOX (FOX, 28) at 13 times my
5% real growth is about $1 trillionhuge. And that means more June 2017 scal year earnings estimate.
THOMAS KUHLENBECK FOR FORBES
BAIDU (BIDU, 161), Chinas Google equivalent. Its stock has stunk for 18 Roger Ailes departure notwithstanding,
months. It stinks about every two yearsthen shines and should now. expect growth to resume, succession man-
I keep saying big tech runs in spurts late in long bull markets. Why agement to get a honeymoon and the stock to
now? At 12 times my 2017 earnings estimate its been underloved too be a blockbuster. F
MONEY MANAGER KEN FISHERS LATEST BOOK IS BEAT THE CROWD (WILEY, 2015). VISIT HIS HOME PAGE AT WWW.FORBES.COM/FISHER.
years but will be further depressed by Brexit-inspired protectionism and as hell voters will push lawmakers into imple-
uncertainty over the U.K.s disengagement from the EU. A recession in menting major scal stimuli, decits be damned.
Britain and the EU is almost inevitable. Will massive stimuli save the day and restore
Brexit also marks the end of the post-World War II attempt to unite economic growth? I certainly hope so. F
A. GARY SHILLING IS PRESIDENT OF A. GARY SHILLING & CO. AND AUTHOR OF THE AGE OF DELEVERAGING: INVESTMENT STRATEGIES FOR A DECADE OF SLOW GROWTH AND DEFLATION
(JOHN WILEY & SONS, 2011). WWW.FORBES.COM/SHILLING.
Mad Men, but theyre still quite hip overseas. Also, Tupperware adapts. merchandise is more fashionable than is typi-
In China, demos are held in rented studios in lieu of too-small apart- cally found at discounters but is priced below
ments. Dividends consume 60% of cash ow; add in capital spending and department-store levels. Cato has walked this
the total is 84%. The yield is high enough that investors need not demand tightrope for a long time, and even now the
debt-free retailer uses only 33% of its cash
MARC GERSTEIN IS RESEARCH DIRECTOR AT PORTFOLIO123 AND AUTHOR OF SCREENING THE MARKET
(WILEY, 2002). FOR MORE FROM GERSTEIN GO TO WWW.FORBES.COM/GERSTEIN. ow to cover the dividend. F
Hong Kong
MARCH 7-20, 2017 Crystal Symphony
WITH KPMG
THE GREAT REWRITE:
REVERSING CLIMATE CHANGE 70
TURNAROUND U. 86
CREDIT PINES
ETHAN TK FOR FORBES
W
forting the sick, walking alongside African refugees
and even smiling for seles with worshippers. In
just four months hes amassed 2.8 million followers,
or nearly a third of his Twitter audience, which hes
been cultivating for about four years.
Almost as telling is how many Facebook followers
the pope has: zero. He still hasnt debuted there, con-
tent to message his ock via Twitter and to share his
lifeand reach Millennialsvia Instagram.
And that suits Mark Zuckerberg just ne. When
Zuckerberg decided to shell out nearly $1 billion in
2012 to buy the photo-sharing app, which had just 30
ith 9.6 million million users, it was widely seen as a sign of a new Sil-
Twitter followers, 79-year-old Pope Francis might be icon Valley bubble. But he appears to have outsmarted
the most surprising breakout star of the social media everyone once again. In the four years since the pur-
age. Keen to reach a younger generation, the pon- chase, Instagram has become one of the fastest-grow-
tif summoned a person with a platform that rivals ing platforms of all time, with about as many users
even the Catholic Church when it comes to Millenni- as Twitter (310 million), Snapchat (100-million-plus)
al members: Kevin Systrom, CEO of the photo-shar- and Pinterest (100 million) combined.
ing app Instagram, which has more than 500 million And while Facebooks other big (and more expen-
users, including 63% of U.S. Millennials. sive) acquisitionsmessage service WhatsApp and
Ever the shrewd pitchman, Systrom, 32,
brought a gift to their February meeting
at the Vaticans Apostolic Palace, some-
thing that was both thoughtful and pro-
motional: a booklet of ten Instagram
imagesa peaceful protest, refugees, a
lunar eclipsetouching on themes close
to the popes heart. He mentioned how
when he talks to children they dont
necessarily speak his language, but they
will show him pictures on their phones,
and how thats the most powerful way
of communicating, says Systrom, who
readily admits he isnt as religious as a
lot of people in the world.
But the two found themselves sing-
ing from the same visual hymnbook.
Three weeks later Systrom was again
on a ight to Rome. When I saw the
pope the second time, he was like, Kev-
iiinnn!, as if we had gone to college to-
gether, like we played at the same golf
club or something, he says. As the
6-foot-5 Systrom, clad in an Italian Holy alliance: Kevin Systrom personally got Pope Francis onto Instagram.
suit, stood over him, the pope oicial-
CHANGE
The Under 30 Summit, the worlds greatest gathering of young entrepre-
neurs and game-changers from October 16-19, 2016, is more than tripling
its size from October 16-19th, over 5,000 of the planets current and future
leaders in every field will converge on Boston for 5 interconnected stages:
CAPITAL CREATE IMPACT TECH VIP .
THE The Under 30 Village will bring together participants from all 5
tracks for demonstrations, networking, performances and food
and drink. At night, the Under 30 Summit shines, with our signature
WORLD
evening activities, including the Under 30 Music Festival (past acts
have included Afrojack, Wiz Khalifa and A$AP Rocky), our famous
citywide Bar Crawls, and the Under 30 Food Festival. And the final
day is devoted to service, with optional opportunities to speak at
local schools and mentor Bostons next generation of entrepreneurs.
PLATINUM SPONSOR GOLD SPONSOR SILVER SPONSORS MEDIA PARTNERS ACADEMIC PARTNERS
Berklee
Boston College
Emerson
Harvard
Northeastern
Official Wellness Partner MIT
Reversing
Climate
Change
A Proit Motive For
Saving The World
BY LEONARD BRODY
W
Global Thermostats test
hat if you could you place more than a residual heat. And the carbon captured is in a pure unit at SRI Internationals
Menlo Park campus
century of climate change into reverse? enough form that it may be sold at a proit, for extracts carbon dioxide
from the fumes of
Global Thermostat has grand ambitions industrial uses including plastics manufacturing, SRIs natural-gas-driven
power plant.
for rewriting the future of energy. The companys biofertilizers, biofuels, greenhouses, desalina-
technology, being tested at a commercial-scale tion of water and making soda pop izzy. Global
demonstration site in Silicon Valley, can remove Thermostat has been setting up deals to provide
carbon dioxide from the air, potentially undoing CO2 capture systems for many of these applications
decades of damage to the planets climate. already, she said. Most of these uses (not the
Its not going to mitigate climate change; its fuels) would keep the carbon sequestered and out
going to resolve it, boasted CEO and cofounder of the atmosphere.
Graciela Chichilnisky, imagining a day when tens Its such a huge change to say you can produce
of thousands of these CO2 vacuum cleaners are at money while cleaning the atmosphere, that you
work around the world. can produce electricity while cleaning the atmo-
When attached to carbon-emitting electric power sphere, that it looks too good to be true, she said.
plants, the companys technology could turn those If something looks too good to be true, people say
plants into carbon negative factories that remove they want to look somewhere else. I dont blame
more carbon from the air than they emit, she them. But at this point we have to look at solutions
said. The process is powered by the power plants very seriously.
Step 3
CO2 Air
Through a
steaming
process, the
collected CO2
Step 1 Step 2 is removed
Air passes Once full,
from the air
through a
large ilter
where CO2
the ilter
is then
lowered
ilter and
reused for CO2
industrial
is collected
purposes
CO2
Park, California, is 12 by 15 feet on the The technology and its economics have come together on energy projects, in
ground and 40 feet high. Like a big skeptics. Many scientists do agree that the common interest of reducing global
dehumidiier, Chichilnisky said. A shiny reducing carbon emissions alone is just carbon emissions.
carburetor on one side mixes fresh air one piece of the worlds energy future. Like a lot of individuals who are work-
with fumes from SRIs natural-gas-driven Subtracting carbon is needed too. ing to rewrite the rules, Chichilnisky has
power plant. Inside, water vapor and Global Thermostats strategy is to tie received both criticism and awards. Its
sorbents extract CO2 from the air. carbon extraction to its proit potential par for the course, she said. When I re-
A unit like the one at SRI could rather than save-the-world altruism. ceive these awards, Im suspicious, she
extract up to 10,000 tons of carbon per You need to make it proitable, joked. I always say that if you really are
year, she said. Bigger versions could Chichilnisky said. As it turns out, CO2 very creative, you dont get an award.
capture up to 100,000 tons. Those is a molecule thats valuable for so You get punished. If she is success-
numbers are an insigniicant dent in many things. ful, the company will embark on a path
the amount estimated to be in the Creating inancial incentives is a strat- of rewriting the entire dialogue around
atmosphere and what energy generation egy Chichilnisky put to work when she global reaction to climate change.
emits every year. The answer, on a glob- designed the carbon market mechanism
al scale, would be farms of these units. incorporated into the Kyoto Protocol in KPMGVoice: Read more of The Great Rewrite series
Thirty thousand clusters around the 1997. The goal of that multinational at forbes.com/TheGreatRewrite
PLEASE NOTE THAT KPMG LLPS SPONSORSHIP OF THIS SERIES IS NOT INTENDED TO ADDRESS THE SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCES OF ANY PARTICULAR INDIVIDUAL OR ENTITY AND DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN ENDORSE-
MENT OF ANY ENTITY OR ITS PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. THIS CONTENT REPRESENTS THE VIEWS OF THE AUTHOR, AND DOES NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT THE VIEWS OR PROFESSIONAL ADVICE OF KPMG LLP.
Americas
Wealth Advisorsare driving protability at
a time when many Wall Street initiatives are
hampered by strict regulations.
Wealth
traditional wealth-management tasksinvest-
ment selection, asset allocation, estate plan-
ning, trusts and taxesare viewed as commod-
BIOMARIN
B
an IV to get BioMarins rst drug, Aldurazyme. Now 28,
Ryan stands 5 foot 6, attends the University of Louisville,
has a girlfriend and, in a childhood dream come true,
drives a Mustang he bought using money he earned as a
student equipment manager for the Southern Methodist
University football team, among other jobs.
But the line connecting Aldurazymes approval to
efore he started preschool, lit- BioMarins success is anything but straight. When Bien-
tle Ryan Dant could hit a baseball aim arrived at the company in 2005, Aldurazyme had
with the skill of a much older child. been on the market for two years. Yet BioMarin looked
His father, a Dallas-area police lieutenant, clung to that as if it were about to go out of business.
fact when the doctors told him something was wrong. I
could throw a baseball overhand to a 3 -year-old, and A BIG PART OF THE problem was that in 2004 previous
he could hit it, Dant says. He was ne. management, doubting the potential for prots from
But Ryan wasnt ne. He had a rare disease called treating rare diseases, had spent $175 million to buy a
mucopolysaccharidosis I (MPS I), in which toxic, jelly- version of the steroid prednisone that was supposed to
like starches built up in his body. They would severely taste better so kids would take it. A generic-drug com-
stunt his growth, cause his organs to swell and kill him pany quickly found a way around the patent, and sales
by his tenth birthday, the doctors said. Worse, the doc- of the drug amounted to just $19 million a year. Inves-
tors told Dant, no drug company would take on the dis- tors, enraged, started a proxy ght.
ease. Where was the prot when only a dozen American The company responded by booting the CEO and
kids were born with the disorder each year? bringing in J.J. Bienaim, a Frenchman who had cut his
Mark Dant refused to give up. He found a doctor teeth marketing the clot-buster Activase at Genentech in
who was working on an MPS I treatment, and used the late 1980s and then went on to serve as CEO of two
bake sales and golf tournaments to try to get clinical tri- biotechs (SangStat and Genencor) that were each sold
als started. It wasnt enough. But then a biotech startup, for hundreds of millions of dollars. The idea was that he
BioMarin, licensed the product, and the studies start- was going to dress the listing BioMarin up for sale.
ed. Ryan, just shy of his ninth birthday, was But instead Bienaim began working on
patient number three. a turnaround. He laid of 100 of the com-
Today BioMarin, the company that panys 300 employeesbasically, everyone
funded the testing of that drug for Ryan who was supposed to be selling the tasty
Dant, has annual sales of $890 million steroidthen handed his remaining execu-
based on four approved drugs that treat WHERE tive team copies of Jim Collins book Good
just 8,000 patients worldwide. For some
patients the cost of a BioMarin drug could WAS THE to Great, which posits that leaders should
be humble but focused and that confront-
reach $1 million a year, paid for by govern-
ments (outside the U.S.) or insurance (in-
PROFIT ing bad news directly is key to building a
strong company.
side of it). BioMarin, based in San Rafa- WHEN Under the previous leadership, Emil
el, Calif., is expected to turn its rst prot
from continuing operations next year and ONLY A Kakkis, the brilliant UCLA doc who had de-
veloped Aldurazyme, had been in charge
has a market capitalization of almost $15
billion, based on the medicines it sells and
DOZEN not only of drug development, which he was
good at, but also of sales, which he was not.
on hopes for more, including a gene thera- AMERICAN Bienaim told him to focus on the science.
py that might cure hemophilia. Shares are
up 460% over the past ten years. KIDS WERE What J.J. brought was a much more
sensible and steady hand, says Kakkis,
What we have is know-how, in terms
of understanding the development and the
BORN now CEO of UltraGenyx, another rare-dis-
ease-focused biotech. He was more ratio-
commercialization of drugs for ultrarare WITH THE nal and reasonable, and not bombastic and
disorders, says Jean-Jacques J.J. Bien-
aim, 63, BioMarins chairman and chief DISORDER demanding.
At the time, BioMarin was marketing
executive.
Ryan Dant is a testament to that. Every
EACH Aldurazyme in a partnership with Gen-
zyme, now part of Sano, in a deal that gave
week for 18 years he has been hooked up to YEAR? Genzyme half the prots (and costs) for
BIOMARIN
the drug. Meanwhile, executives were negotiating an- Why are they willing to pay so much? Partly be-
other deal with Genzyme for a drug to treat a diferent cause these drugs do change lives, even though they are
form of MPS, called MPS VI. That deal was even worse: not cures. Mark Dant says Aldurazyme is not a cure for
It would give Genzyme the international rights to the Ryan, but it is keeping him going until the science ad-
drug, Naglazymeand most patients with MPS VI lived vances. Heres the gift of BioMarin: Ryan will be here,
outside the U.S. Bienaims decision was simple and waiting, he says. Dant just retired as a police oicer and
swift: Forget it. is now the executive director of the National MPS Soci-
It probably saved the company, Bienaim says. If ety, an advocacy group.
we had sold the rights to Genzyme, we would not be an On my 22nd birthday, for the rst time in my life, I
independent company. had meat, says Bailey Fleming, a 24-year-old Kuvan pa-
It was a crazy gamble. It meant having to build an tient. Sheri Wise, 36, grew up riding horses on her par-
international sales force from scratch. BioMarins rst ents Oklahoma farm even though shes only 3 foot 4.
sales reps in Europe operated out of Internet cafes. But Vimizim made her unending skeletal pain fade. When
it worked. Approved in 2005, Naglazyme now gener- you grow up with pain, it just becomes a constant, she
ates annual sales of $303 million. It costs $340,000 a says. Ive noticed that now there are a lot of times I
year for a typical patient, but since dosages are based dont hurt at all.
on weight, it can be more expensive. In 2012 analysts at Kendra Gottsleben, 31, a Naglazyme patient in South
Bernstein Research estimated that for adult patients the Dakota, stands 39 inches tall and uses a wheelchair. But
cost could be more than $1 million annually. BioMarin she says she knows it is because of BioMarin that she
says that number is high. Now almost all of the 1,100 pa- doesnt need it in the house. To make a medicine for us,
tients outside India and China with MPS VI take it, and I feel like its a miracle. Because we are so rare, she says.
85% of patients live outside the U.S. A miracle, maybe, but one driven by commerce. With
That was the start of a run of expensive and life- so few patients BioMarin can give personal attention to
changing medicines. BioMarins rare-disease machine each one and make sure treatments get paid for. What
had another hit in 2007: Kuvan was approved to treat my insurance doesnt pick up, BioMarin will get taken
phenylketonuria (PKU), known to most people as the care of, so I dont have any out-of-pockets, says Wise,
disease warned about on cans of Diet Coke. Patients the Vimizim patient.
cant process an amino acid, phenylalanine (found in Gottsleben says that when she had insurance prob-
meat and Nutrasweet), and it destroys their brains. lems with a non-drug-related issuea cornea trans-
About 7,500 patients are being actively treated for PKU plantshe called her BioMarin customer care represen-
in clinics; treating a typical patient costs $100,000 a tative, who helped sort things out. Like most rare-disease
year. Sales in 2015: $240 million. companies, BioMarin gives money to charities that help
But BioMarin was so cash-strapped at the patients when a drug is not fully covered.
time Kuvan was approved that its experi- Because the money isnt earmarked to pay
mental drug pipeline was dry. Kakkis, whod for a particular drug, this does not run
shepherded its three drugs through the Food afoul of federal antikickback regulations.
& Drug Administration, left to found a pa- Are insurers okay with this system?
tient advocacy group (he later started anoth- TO Changing it is certainly not a top priori-
er company). Bienaim hired an old Genen-
tech colleague, Henry Fuchs, to replace him. MAKE A ty. Patients with these diseases are so un-
common, drug companies argue, that they
Fuchs rst drug pick was another MPS
treatment, this one for MPS IVA. Called
MEDICINE dont add up to a big line item and ac-
count for, BioMarin says, only 1% of drug
Vimizim, it is BioMarins biggest winner yet. FOR US, spending in the U.S. And unlike makers
Launched in 2014, the drug has already gen-
erated sales of $228 million. It costs $380,000 I FEEL of drugs for cancer, BioMarin has no in-
tention of making double-digit price in-
for a typical patient, and BioMarin thinks
there are 3,000 MPS IV patients around the
LIKE ITS A creases, Bienaim says.
But when it comes to actually trying to
world; its identied 60% of them. MIRACLE. restrict the prices of drugs like those Bio-
WHO PAYS FOR THESE expensive drugs? In BECAUSE Marin sells, Steven Miller, the chief medi-
cal oicer of U.S. pharmacy benets man-
the U.S., mostly insurance companies or, if the
patient is poor, Medicaid. In most other coun-
WE ARE SO ager Express Scripts and a critic of high
drug prices, doesnt think insurers have
tries governments pay for the medicines. RARE. much leverage.
To be very frank, we are a price acceptor when it trial but failed in a larger one. Bienaim was preternat-
comes to ultra-orphans, says Miller. Theres no com- urally condent, telling investors he knew what he was
petition. Its pharma thats putting these prices out doing and attacking a rival medicine from Sarepta, an-
there. Theres nothing we can do. other small biotech. But both the FDA and European
Russell Teagarden, a former senior vice president of regulators rejected the drug, despite impassioned pleas
the National Organization for Rare Disorders and now a from patient advocates.
consultant to drug companies, thinks some pricing pres- Its true that I was very positive on Kyndrisa, Bien-
sure may be imminent as rare-disease drugs get lumped aim says. The FDA asked us to le. We had priority
in with other high-priced medicines. There probably review, breakthrough designation. We had everything.
is a growing comfort with payers starting to [try to con- The signals were very positive. So they do all that, and
trol] costs for rare diseases, Teagarden says. then they tell you your data were garbage. He laughs.
Call it a mistakene.
GIVEN THE POSSIBILITY of price pressure, some of Investors, meanwhile, were getting sick of the com-
BioMarins next bets look risky. It is, for instance, devel- pany raking in revenue but showing no prot. Bienaim
oping a drug for children with achondroplasia, a lead- listened and took cost-cutting measures, including stop-
ing cause of dwarsm. People with achondroplasia are ping the cancer efort and a second rare-disease pro-
smaller and have some skeletal problems, but unlike gram. BioMarin has previously recorded a prot as a re-
those with MPS, they have life expectancies that are al- sult of asset sales but predicts its continuing operations
most normal. Bienaim acknowledges that the drug will will turn cash-ow-positive next year.
command a comparatively lower price. The most tantalizing prospect is something BioMarin
Recent years have brought distractions. In Febru- licensed from University College London and St. Jude
ary 2010 BioMarin spent $20 million on an experimen- Childrens Research Hospital: a treatment for hemophil-
tal cancer medicinea stretch for a rare-disease compa- ia. It is a gene therapy in which a virus deposits a gene
ny. It invested $100 million in the drug before changing in patients liver cells that produces a protein missing in
focus and selling the drug to Medivation for $410 mil- the most common type of hemophilia. In a small clini-
lion and a royalty. Along the way the company got into a cal trial only a few months long, the treatment seems to
p.r. ap when a woman dying of ovarian cancer ran a so- return patients protein levels to almost normal. It re-
cial media campaign to get access to the drug. BioMa- ally is amazing. Its just a wonderful time, says Timo-
rin, like most drug companies, does not give drugs to thy Nichols, a hemophilia expert at the UNC School of
any patient who asks, both because of the cost of manu- Medicine who is not paid by BioMarin.
facturing the drug and the risk that bad results will hurt But Bienaim is also facing a challenge that often
the drugs chances of approval. causes biotech innovation to stall: success and the size
There was also an outright mistake: spending $600 that comes with it. His 200-person startup has turned
million to buy Kyndrisa, a treatment for muscular dys- into a 2,300-person pharmaceutical company. He says it
trophy, developed by a tiny biotech in Leiden, Nether- wont happen to his company.
lands called Prosensa. The drug seemed to help chil- I said I wanted to manage a big company, he
dren with the terrible degenerative disease in an early shrugs. So now it is a big company. F
TURNAROUND
U AS HUNDREDS OF VENERABLE
INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER
EDUCATION LIMP ALONG,
STRUGGLING TO PAY THEIR
BILLS, A NEW BREED OF
INNOVATIVE, ACTIVIST COLLEGE
PRESIDENTS ARE RETHINKING
THE BUSINESS OF EDUCATION.
BY MATT SCHIFRIN
D
rew University always had an Ivy League look. Drive
through the gated entrance of the leafy, 186-acre Mad-
ison, N.J. campus and youre soon confronted by Mead
Hall, a massive Greek-revival mansion built in 1836, with
its brick faade, white portico columns and green colo-
BLACK TIE; HAIR : SUZANA HALLILI FOR ORIBE
MAKEUP BY: SUZANA HALLILI FOR MINERALS
nial window shutters. The rooms inside are just as stately, with 20-foot-
high ceilings and large oil paintings of the founders and past presidents
MATHEW FURMAN FOR FORBES
staring down at you. But the mood starts to change as you walk across
the grand foyer and up a long staircase to the presidents oice suite.
Once there, you will meet MaryAnn Baenninger, the 13th presi-
dent of Drew, and her cabinet of executive oicers. Dressed in a taste-
ful pantsuit and silk scarf, Dr. Baenninger may look like and less is going into the investment in faculty and the di-
she belongs in an ivory tower, but hers is no stufy academ- rect delivery of education. She adds, A school of 1,000
ic administration. She and her team are change agents who students often has the same administrative structure as a
have recently been recruited to turn around Drew, which school of 5,000. Indeed, if ever there was an industry in
had been hemorrhaging students and revenues. dire need of bold entrepreneurial leadership, it is higher
It is one of hundreds of middling colleges around the education, and Baenninger is the rare product of academia
nation that struggle each year to bring in enough students who actually gets it.
and tuition revenue to pay their bills. In 2015 the universi- During the 1990s she was a psychology professor at
ty, which has 2,151 students, accepted about 70% of appli- The College of New Jersey. Back then it was called Tren-
cants for its Class of 2019. (By comparison, schools such as ton State College and was undergoing transformation from
Harvard and Stanford accept less than 5%.) But even with teachers college to full-blown liberal arts institution, now
its generous acceptance policy Drew is a perennial mem- referred to as TCNJ. The College of New Jersey is now
ber of the space available list of colleges in need of fresh- ranked number one in the Northeast among public colleges.
men well past the traditional May 1 deadline, because most From TCNJ, Baenninger became a director at the Middle
of its accepted students prefer other schools. States Commission on Higher Education, the accrediting
And Drews discount ratethe percentage of tuition it organization for some 526 colleges, where she got to exam-
ine the books and interview the administrations,
faculty and students of about 100 schools, rang-
ing from Princeton to Sarah Lawrence to Finger
Lakes Community College. It is a very rigorous
process, covering nances, academics, facilities,
student afairs and everything in between, says
the 60-year-old Baenninger. It was an appren-
ticeship to be a college president.
When she arrived at Drew, student reten-
tion, or the number of freshmen who contin-
ue on to sophomore year, had been bouncing be-
Drexels
dealmaker
tween 75% and 85%, compared with about 98%
president, John for top liberal arts colleges like Amherst and
Fry, is a real estate Dartmouth. The all-important six-year gradua-
mogul dressed in
academic regalia.
tion rate was a pitiful 62%, compared with about
95% at top schools.
The reason we werent retaining kids didnt
have to do with the academics, Baenninger ex-
plains. It had to do with everything else. Just
navigating the environment here was dispropor-
tionately complicated, and there was an annoy-
ing bureaucracy that didnt t with a caring liber-
rebates in the form of aid to attract studentsrecently hit al arts institution.
an alarmingly high 69%. Despite that, freshman enrollment Baenninger is referring to what undergraduates call the
has fallen from a peak of 506 in 2009 to 302 in 2014, the Drew screw. Simple tasks like switching a class or han-
year Baenninger arrived after righting the nances of the dling a nancial aid problem or xing a dorm room issue
College of Saint Benedict in St. Joseph, Minn. became bogged down in red tape. Part of the problem is en-
Drew is in good company. According to the National As- demic to higher education, which is notoriously ineicient.
sociation of College Business Oicers, the average institu- However, some of Drews problems were the legacy of pre-
tional discount rate has been climbing for decades, to 49% vious administrations, including the 15-year presidency,
for incoming freshmen, up from 39% in 2006. The epi- until 2005, of former New Jersey governor Thomas Kean,
demic of deep tuition discounting is a symptom of inei- who concurrently served as chairman of the 9/11 Commis-
cient pricing policies, which disguise the poor scal health sion and added on layers of bureaucracy betting his status.
DAVID YELLEN FOR FORBES
of most institutions. There are more than 3,500 non- Baenninger moved quickly to streamline and overhaul
prot colleges, and most are struggling to get students, management. The number of new employees here is stag-
says economist Lucie Lapovsky, a former college presi- gering, she says of the new Drew. The only way you can
dent who is now a consultant. We have too many schools. change the culture is to change key people.
They spend more and more on marketing and nancial aid, Among her rst hires was Robert Massa as vice presi-
ed or constructed in
the past few decades.
Theres the Inn at Penn
WARREN BUFFETT, RUTH
and the Penn Alexan- BADER GINSBURG
Early-decision enrollment doubled, and trans- in 1995, after a strategic plan he developed con-
fer students increased 28%. Drews average SAT vinced her that he should be her new executive
scores went up by 30 points, and its admission vice president, efectively putting him charge of
KENNETH CHENAULT,
rate fell from 70% to 58%. Retention to sopho- all of Penns nonacademic afairs. I had to go REED HASTINGS
more year has climbed to 88%, Drews discount from a 25-person boutique consulting practice
rate fell by eight percentage points, and net reve- to administrative COO of this organization with 20 University of
Chicago
nue per student increased by about $5,000. a $3 billion budget and 27,000 employees, says Chicago, IL
FRANCO VOGT FOR FORBES
BARRIERS meet
bye bye
Fewer restrictions lead to better business in
Michigan. Even on its best day, business can be a
challenge. Thats why its important to ind an environment thats
1.888.565.0052
michiganbusiness.org/FOR
T H E F U T U R E O F E D U C AT I O N
space, a $58 million hotel called The Study at University City, a child-care center, THE 48 Kenyon
a public high school and some $340 million to be spent on three high-rise stu- College
BEST Gambier, OH
dent apartment complexes and a dining center. 100 Undergrad pop. 1,662
Total cost $64,360
In another opportunistic move, dealmaker Fry recently acquired Philadel- Grateful Grad Rank 34
Financial Health A
phias struggling 204-year-old Academy of Natural Sciences. It was totally as-
42 Colgate
set-rich: a $50 million endowment, 18 million objects, a coveted piece of real es- University 49 Bucknell
tate, but no liquidity, says Fry, who used a $1 million grant from the Pew Chari- Hamilton, NY University
Undergrad pop. 2,875 Lewisburg, PA
table Trust to nance it. Now Drexel ofers majors in a new Department of Bio- Total cost $64,800 Undergrad pop. 3,565
Grateful Grad Rank 32 Total cost $65,268
diversity, Earth and Environmental Science, and the academys acclaimed re- Financial Health A+ Grateful Grad Rank 76
Colgates lucky number: 13. Financial Health A+
search scientists have improved Drexels student-to-faculty ratio. 13 men founded the univer-
We wont outspend anyone to victory, says Fry, noting that Drexel will own sity with $13 and 13 prayers.
Abiding by the 13 articles
50 Hamilton
all the land under the buildings, but we can out-hustle and out-partner any of the schools original College
constitution, students stroll Clinton, NY
other institution. to class on 13 Oak Drive. Undergrad pop. 1,904
Total cost $63,870
43 Oberlin Grateful Grad Rank 30
Financial Health A+
WITH A FEW NOTABLE EXCEPTIONS like Bowdoin and Middlebury, small rural cam- College
Oberlin, OH
puses in frigid northern locations are generally a tougher sell to prospective Undergrad pop. 2,961 51 College of the
freshmen. So when the board of trustees of Bennington College in Vermont were Total cost $66,870 Holy Cross
Grateful Grad Rank 43 Worcester, MA
looking for a president with fresh ideas, they chose 35-year-old Mariko Silver, Financial Health A+ Undergrad pop. 2,787
The Allen Memorial Art Total cost $61,524
whose nonlinear path to the top of academia epitomizes the type of unconven- Museum rents paintings, Grateful Grad Rank 52
including works by Picasso,
tional education Bennington has long ofered. Dali and Lichtenstein, to
Financial Health A+
students for $5 a semester.
When she got the call from the headhunter charged with Benningtons Its athletics programs
truly live up to the phrase
search in early 2013, Silver was three months pregnant and planning a move student athletes: Holy
Cross has the third-highest
to Hanoi, working on a project for Arizona State University, USAID, the World graduation rate for NCAA
D-I athletes.
Bank, the Asian Development Bank and Intel to rethink engineering education LENA DUNHAM, ED HELMS
THE 63 Carnegie 70 Bryn who recruited her to be his tech policy specialist, essential-
Mellon Mawr College ly bringing together academic research and industry to get
BEST University Bryn Mawr, PA
100 Pittsburgh, PA Undergrad pop. 1,308 products to market. The endeavor had already produced
Undergrad pop. 5,888 Total cost $63,990
Total cost $65,895 Grateful Grad Rank 21 more than $1 billion in royalties for Columbia. Follow-
Financial Health A+
Grateful Grad Rank 57
Financial Health A+
ing 9/11, Columbia was chosen to lead a multi-institution-
57 Colorado 100% of Carnegie Mellons 71 Union College al research response to terrorism. Silver, already becoming
electricity comes from wind
College and solar power sources; it
Schenectady, NY
known as a gifted, get-the-job-done project manager, orga-
Colorado Springs, CO is in the top ten for green Undergrad pop. 2,242
Undergrad pop. 2,050 power among higher-ed Total cost $64,245 nized the program.
Total cost $63,600 institutions in the U.S. Grateful Grad Rank N/A
Grateful Grad Rank 108 Financial Health A Then in 2002, when Crow became president of Arizona
Financial Health A
The campus lies just hours 72 University of
State University, Silver went with him as director of strate-
away from ten ski resorts
and seven national parks. Illinois, Urbana- gic projects and played a key role in ASUs transformation,
ANDY WARHOL, Champaign from a sports-crazy party school with bloated academic
JOHN NASH Champaign, IL
58 University Undergrad pop. 32,959 departments to a more eicient, leading research univer-
of Rochester Total cost $29,764 /
Rochester, NY 64 Reed College $44,924 sity with new public-private partnerships in elds like ge-
Undergrad pop. 6,266
Total cost $65,264
Portland, OR Its Research Park opened nomics research. During her initial six years at ASU, Sil-
Undergrad pop. 1,374 in 2001 and now houses
Grateful Grad Rank 47
Financial Health A
Total cost $64,480 more than 100 high tech ver earned a doctorate in economic geography from UCLA,
Grateful Grad Rank 36 companies. The on-campus
Financial Health A+ facility annually ofers over but then in 2008 Arizona governor Janet Napolitano asked
600 students opportunities
59 Harvey for R&D and product devel- Silver to be her policy advisor on economic development,
Mudd College 65 University opment experience.
Claremont, CA of Southern innovation and higher education. Six months into that job
Undergrad pop. 804 California
Total cost $69,355
President Obama picked Napolitano to be Secretary of
Los Angeles, CA
Grateful Grad Rank N/A
Financial Health A+ Undergrad pop. 18,739 Homeland Security, and Silver went along as an undersec-
Total cost $67,212
For the rst time in spring
Grateful Grad Rank 31
STEVE CHEN, JAWED KARIM retary and international strategist. After nearly three years
2016, its science, technol-
ogy, engineering and math Financial Health A+ Silver returned to ASU as special counsel to Crow and a
college had more women 73 Grinnell
(54%) graduating with a
66 Johns College professor in the department of politics and global studies.
computer science major
than men. And it had Hopkins Grinnell, IA Silvers new challenge is to revive Benningtons tired
double the national aver- University Undergrad pop. 1,734
age of female engineering
Baltimore, MD
Total cost $61,498 brand among artsy small colleges. When she arrived
grads: 42% versus 19%. Grateful Grad Rank 86
Undergrad pop. 6,357 Financial Health A+ in 2013, applications were falling and enrollment had
Total cost $65,496
60 Washington Grateful Grad Rank 67 dropped to just 159 freshmen, despite an acceptance rate of
University Financial Health A+ 74 Brandeis
in St. Louis Leader in higher-ed R&D, University 65%. Retention was only 83%. Benningtons puny $17 mil-
Johns Hopkins spent a
St. Louis, MO record $2.2 billion on Waltham, MA lion endowment didnt ofer Silver much of a cushion, con-
Undergrad pop. 7,401 science and tech in 2014. Undergrad pop. 3,729
Total cost $67,751 It ranks number one for Total cost $65,954 sidering the tiny Vermont school competes for students
federal projects, spending a Grateful Grad Rank 66
Grateful Grad Rank 29
Financial Health A+ record $1.9 billion. Financial Health A with better-endowed colleges like Bard, Sarah Lawrence
and Skidmore.
61 Wake Forest 67 Emory 75 University
University of Washington Bennington is an undervalued asset, insists Silver,
University
Winston-Salem, NC Atlanta, GA Seattle, WA now 38, from her oice in the The Barn, a red H-shaped
Undergrad pop. 4,867 Undergrad pop. 7,829 Undergrad pop. 30,672
Total cost $64,478 Total cost $63,058 Total cost $27,034 / building in the middle of a meadow, which has avant-garde
Grateful Grad Rank 79 $49,338
Grateful Grad Rank 41
Financial Health A
Financial Health A+ works of modern art hanging on its walls. That means it
76 Lehigh has something major to contribute to society. Silver points
62 Villanova 68 Macalester University
College out that each of its 675 or so undergrads is tasked with cre-
University Bethlehem, PA
Villanova, PA St. Paul, MN
Undergrad pop. 5,062 ating his or her own learning plan and must arrange for a
Undergrad pop. 2,073 Total cost $60,575
Undergrad pop. 7,118
Total cost $62,773 Total cost $61,853
Grateful Grad Rank 92
seven-week of-campus eld study each January and Feb-
Grateful Grad Rank 72
Grateful Grad Rank 185
Financial Health A-
Financial Health A+
Financial Health A+ ruary. Unlike other schools, Bennington forces students
Known simply as The
Holy work experience! At Rivalry, the matchup to learn how to be strategic. You have to build your strategy
Villanovas Vatican Internship, between Lehigh and nearby
students contribute to the Lafayette College ranks as brain to move through a Bennington education, she says,
Popes Twitter account. college footballs longest-
running contest. mentioning that one of the Class of 2016 graduated with a
concentration in space architecture.
KOFI ANNAN, 77 New York
ARI EMANUEL University One key hire for Silver has been CFO Brian Murphy,
New York, NY an accountant and one of the architects of the Savannah
KYLE LOWRY 69 University Undergrad pop. 24,985
of Wisconsin, Total cost $68,400 College of Art & Designs rise to prominence among art
Grateful Grad Rank 120
Madison Financial Health A- schools, with its 12,000 students and its campuses in At-
Madison, WI
Undergrad pop. 30,694 lanta, China and France. Another is the vice president and
Total cost $24,673 /
$43,923
dean of admissions and nancial aid, Hung Bui, a former
admissions oicer at Colby College who earned an M.B.A.
MARTIN SCORSESE,
ALAN GREENSPAN from Carnegie Mellon and spent nine years as an analyst
ASTRAZENECA, CANADIAN BREAST CANCER FOUNDATION, CANADIAN IMPERIAL BANK OF COMMERCE, CANADIAN INSTITUTES OF HEALTH RESEARCH,
CANCER STEM CELL CONSORTIUM, LILLY ONCOLOGY, FARRAH FAWCETT FOUNDATION, GENOME CANADA, LAURA ZISKIN FAMILY TRUST,
NATIONAL OVARIAN CANCER COALITION, ONTARIO INSTITUTE FOR CANCER RESEARCH, OVARIAN CANCER RESEARCH FUND ALLIANCE,
THE PARKER FOUNDATION, ST. BALDRICKS FOUNDATION, VAN ANDEL RESEARCH INSTITUTE
STAND UP TO CANCER IS A PROGRAM OF THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY FOUNDATION (EIF), A 501(C)(3) CHARITABLE ORGANIZATION. IMAGES FROM THE STAND UP TO CANCER 2012 AND 2014 SHOWS.
THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR CANCER RESEARCH (AACR) IS STAND UP TO CANCERS SCIENTIFIC PARTNER.
MICHAEL LIBERTY
Mozido founder JULIAN ROBERTSON
Legendary hedge fund
billionaire, Mozido
investor
ALICE WALTON SHAUKAT AZIZ
Billionaire Wal-Mart
Mozido announced the
heiress, worked with
former Pakistani prime
Liberty on a business
minister had joined its
venture
IN LIBERTY THEY TRUST board. He never did.
Michael Libertys world is a surreal one. His
friends come from the most rarefied circles,
and his mobile payments unicorn, Mozido, has
raised $300 million and attracted an all-star
cast of investors and directors.
The Financial
Theranos?
BY NATHAN VARDI
Industrys A
s party tricks go, its
tough to top what
went down at Mi-
chael Libertys 2014
charity bash, which
he sponsored together with his fi-
nancial technology startup, Mozido.
A charismatic founder, a star-studded board and investor As the sun set over the Pacific, a
plane soared above the 1,000 guests
list, a $5.6 billion valuationMozido had everything at an elegant Santa Monica beach
a unicorn could want except a cohesive product. club and disgorged 13 former Navy
SEALs and 2 of Libertys executives.
Now with a cash low crisis, federal subpoenas and The former group was accompa-
employee layoffs, its hard to see how this ends well. nied by a giant American flag; the
JANUARY
AUGUST 23,
18, 2016 FORBES | 101
MOZIDO
latter two held a giant check, signed by er than ofer a branded product, Mozi- and Mozido was subsequently valued at
Liberty, for $1 million, designated to do would focus on so-called white-label $5.6 billion. Within months Robertson,
support military families. services to other companies. Schmidt, et al., had seen their bet on
The USC marching band serenad- How he would actually do that Liberty, in theory, double. And FORBES
ed guests with a medley of patriotic wasnt exactly clear. Mozido has had estimates that Libertys personal stake
songs. Speeches came from the likes of all sorts of fancy people on its board at in Mozido made him, in theory, a bil-
retired general James Mattis, former various times, including Mark Zuck- lionaire. Mozido purchased or invested
head of U.S. Central Command, and erbergs sister, Randi, and the former in eight other companies, mostly tiny
the former Mexican president Vicente CEOs of Priceline, First Data, Interpub- startups operating around the world
Fox. As donations piled in, the aptly lic and MasterCard. (Mozido issued a in areas ranging from loyalty market-
named Liberty took his place at the press release touting the addition of for- ing and mobile operator services to risk
podium in a crisp blue suit, white shirt mer Pakistani prime minister Shaukat management.
and red tie. We as Americans have a Aziz; it now says he never joined.) But it But a funny thing has happened on
moral obligation to step up and do our initially didnt have much to talk about the way to the exit. Mozido nds itself
part, he said in his Kennedy-like New in terms of technology. under siege from angry employees and
England accent. Instead, Liberty would take his new- disgruntled partners, while a former di-
For Liberty, his part could easily found cash hoardand the ability to rector has received subpoenas from the
handle $1 million. That year Mozido, issue shares at a now-lofty valuation Department of Justice and the Securi-
his little-known Austin-based company, and buy his vision. Not unlike the blank- ties & Exchange Commission seeking
entered unicorn status, having nished check companies (sell shares to the nancial records related to Liberty and
raising $300 million, much of it at a public, gure out what to do with the Mozido.
valuation of $2.4 billion, from a diverse money later!) that were in vogue ahead For all his charm and decades of
roster of glittery investors, including of the global nancial crisis, Mozido dealmaking, the 56-year-old Liberty
hedge fund legend Julian Robertson, was essentially a blind bet on Liberty is an unknown character. When he
Google billionaire Eric Schmidts ven- one made even odder by the fact that he recently met with FORBES, it was a
ture fund, MasterCard, an Abu Dhabi holds no executive title or even a board rare interview with a national news or-
sheikh and well-regarded Wellington seat, even though hes the companys ganization. The circumstances provide
Management, which oversees billions largest individual shareholder and put a window into his situation. Liberty
for Vanguard and led the fundraising. the enterprise in motion. chose to appear in the conference room
What were they buying into? On For a while it worked. In Febru- of a New York City law rm, anked
paper, the silver-tongued Liberty sold a ary 2015 Mozido paid $750 million for by three lawyers, two crisis public
vision of using mobile payments to un- Chinas PayEase, a fast-growing Inter- relations specialists and Mozidos
lock nancial freedom for the roughly net and mobile payments company. CEO, Todd Bradley, who ran Hewlett-
2 billion people around the world with The preferred shares Mozido issued to Packards biggest unit. Liberty was, of
a cellphone but no bank account. Rath- nance the merger were priced highly, course, still pitching: We are the only
he owned or had invested in. the Biltzes for breach of contract. The many of those 1.5 billion people actually
The SEC led a complaint in 2006, Biltzes countersued Liberty. In Febru- use a Mozido-enabled mobile wallet.
accusing Liberty of working with one ary a jury found in favor of the Biltzes One of the few clients Mozido publi-
of the men who had set up the fund and awarded them $3.38 million. Lib- cizes, Deutsche Telekom, told FORBES
to improperly divert $9 million, with erty has since settled the case. its mobile wallet has been used by be-
$4.5 million going to benet Liberty Liberty says that, given his 37-year tween 10,000 and 99,999 of its 40 mil-
directly. The remaining $18 million of career, hes been involved in relatively lion mobile customers in Germany.
the $27 million total investment was few lawsuits and that litigation is part While Mozido says it cant name its
lost when the underlying companies of doing business. Given the current retail clients, it has publicized its work
failed, the SEC claimed. Liberty denied swirl around Mozido, which goes past on the mobile payments apps of Dairy
the charges but settled with the SEC lawsuits to cozy fees and a trajectory Queen, Dunkin Donuts and a platform
in 2008, agreeing to pay $6 million. more notable for nancial engineering for a bottler of Coca-Cola in southeast
The SEC waived payment of $5.4 mil- than computer engineering, one could Mexico. Dairy Queens website shows
lion based on the nancial declaration agree that for Liberty this is just busi- that only 200 of its 4,400 stores in the
of Liberty, who ended up paying only ness as usual. U.S. participate in the MyDQ mobile
$600,000 over three years. If a nan- payments program that Mozido started
cial declaration was led, inevitably AS WITH THERANOS, which has working on in 2013. A Dairy Queen
this was a waiver for inability to pay, claimed to have a silver bullet in the spokesperson says it is primarily a loy-
says Seth Taube, the head of securities area of blood testing but has never alty app, payments are optional. Mean-
while, the Dunkin Donuts payments
app that Mozido acquired in the CorFire
Mozido has the potential to reach 1.5 billion people, deal has 20 million downloadsbut
Liberty says. But the startup wont say how many of those last year Dunkin Donuts jumped to a
1.5 billion actually use a Mozido-enabled mobile wallet. competitor for its newest U.S. mobile-
payments project. In the months I was
there, never having a product launch
litigation at law rm Baker Botts and a proved it, Liberty talks up Mozidos for a company that was an eight-year-
former SEC enforcement lawyer. ability to provide payments services old startup was surprising, says an
The SEC was not Libertys only and products using its cloud-based employee who quit Mozido this year.
legal opponent in recent years. Liberty technology with any mobile phone ever Mozidos other big acquisition,
has battled James Stanley Jr., who made to three kinds of clients: mobile PayEase, connects Chinese banks and
worked for Liberty for 20 years and network operators, retailers and banks. card networks, processing billions of
eventually served as CEO of Liberty Those clients, Mozido argues, will dollars in transactions, mostly in China.
Group. Liberty and Stanley ultimately benet from providing their customers It has long been a payment processor
had disputes over loans and benets. with mobile payments services, includ- for Apple and represented more than
Around 2013 an arbitrator found in ing loyalty and engagement eforts. Mo- two-thirds of Mozidos revenue over
favor of some of Stanleys claims and zido says it has already made more than the past year, says CEO Bradley.
ordered Liberty to pay $1.8 million. 20 sales deals in July and has brought The deal came with a questionable
Court records show the arbitrator also in $100 million in revenue in the past provenance. Liberty says Mozido was
found that Stanley occasionally as- 12 months, a double-digit increase. But introduced to PayEase by Jack Grub-
sisted [Liberty and his corporate enti- it declines to publicly name clients or man and that Grubman was paid a
ties] in certain activities or was aware point to specic accomplishments. fee by PayEase in connection for his
of actions . . . [that] could be said to Liberty likes to tout Mozidos poten- services. Yes, that Jack Grubman, the
mislead creditors, limited partners, tial to reach 1.5 billion people because 1990s telecom analyst barred for life
other investors and regulators. theyre customers of phone carriers from the brokerage business after the
In another legal skirmish, Liberty with which Mozido has partnered. SEC charged him with issuing mislead-
sued Crystal and Jesse Biltz, Lib- That talking point comes largely from ing research. Didnt this violate the
ertys former partners in a preschool Mozidos acquisition of CorFire, which ban? Grubman says that he provided
in Santa Monica, Calif. Cassidy Pre- uses technology that allows a phone PayEase with management consult-
school opened its doors in 2009, with to conduct a transaction while close to ing services but that PayEase needed a
a Liberty entity as the majority owner. a point-of-sale terminal. We already liquidity event to pay him and that his
But by 2013 Crystal Biltz claimed the have massive scale, Liberty says. No- two introductions between Mozido and
partnership no longer worked and then body has the scale that we have. PayEase were focused on a business
opened another preschool. Liberty sued Tellingly, Mozido wont say how relationship rather than the merger.
info4pi.org
MOZIDO
According to the SEC, an indi- A FEW DAYS AFTER Mozido delayed and Gary Court Coursey, who have
vidual seeking buyers for a company payroll for the rst time in April, its worked together at TomorrowVentures,
is soliciting buyers for a security, but senior executives organized a meet- Eric Schmidts venture fund that in-
Columbia University law professor ing to calm employees, some of whom vested in Mozido. Coursey and Rundell
John Cofee says that if the individual were heading for the exits. Bradley, the entered into a deal on behalf of them-
does it only once, that person would CEO, said there was an efort to raise selves to put together the Mara joint
likely not be seen as being in the bro- new equity and debt nancing. Before venture with Mozido for a $2.5 million
kerage business. I am not stupid, payroll was delayed again in the middle fee that would be nanced by Welling-
Grubman says. I am more careful of May, employees were notied that a ton. Liberty, who claims to have worked
than you would believe. term sheet had been signed and a debt hundreds, if not thousands, of hours
Regardless, the $750 million renancing would close in three weeks. on the efort, struck a separate deal to
deal$135 million in cash, the rest in To the victor goes the spoils, Bradley get half of the fee, which Mozido claims
preferred shares at a hefty valuation would later tell employees. That nanc- was paid by Mara Group.
sapped Mozidos reserves, especially ing has not yet happened, but Liberty Liberty had another agreement
since some of its other deals have not says the recapitalization is in process with Coursey and Rundell that con-
worked at all. The company says it literally as we speak. templated sharing other $2.5 million
loaned $6.5 million to Appconomy, a Libertys role in the company con- fees for additional Mozido joint ven-
mobile software company in Austin, tinues to be enigmaticand self-serv- tures in India and the Middle East, but
Tex., but Mozido sued Appconomy in ing. The largest shareholder putatively those deals never happened. I dont
draw any salary from the company,
but if I bring an opportunity to the
Even though Libertys stake is putatively worth over company and the company deems it
$1 billion, his role in the company he founded remains appropriate, they can pay a compensa-
enigmatic, though its clear he pulls a lot of strings. tion, Liberty says.
In November Liberty led a defa-
mation lawsuit that claimed Coursey,
June, claiming the loan was in default has no oicial rolenot even a board Rundell and former Mozido director
and Appconomy had swindled Mozido seatyet those familiar with Mozido Phil Geier were extorting Liberty and
to get it. In a statement, Appconomy say he clearly pulls a lot of strings, es- Mozido. All three deny wrongdoing.
denied the charges and said Mozido pecially when it comes to nancing and Coursey, Rundell and Geier claim that
appears to be a failing, would-be deals, and sometimes he reaps money Mozido and Liberty cheated them out
unicorn, in which huge amounts of for himself when he does. of equity stakes in the company, which
investor capital have been consumed It was Liberty who got Nicho- Mozido denies. Geier and his family
with little to nothing substantively to las Adams, a partner at Wellington had earlier sued Mozido and Liberty in
show for it. Management, to make its big anchor Delaware and Florida.
Mozido executives say they are ex- investment in Mozido, a person fa- To some it might be unclear what all
cited about turning banks on to mobile miliar with the matter told FORBES. these guys are ghting over. The com-
payments, citing JPMorgan Chases Wellington also made the biggest pany, which loses money, still hasnt
Chase Pay. Liberty says Mozido just investment in Powa, a U.K. mobile- stemmed its cash-ow concerns. All
won a deal to provide services to a 27- payments unicorn that collapsed those blue-chip directors are no longer
bank consortium in Taiwan. in February, as well as investing in on the board. Between those SEC and
But Mozido will have to continue another company Liberty founded, Justice Department subpoenas, the
competing for business with big digital DaVincian Healthcare, which is based feds are clearly shing for something,
security companies that have long rela- in the same Austin oice building as though its unclear what or whether
tionships in the banking sector, like Ge- Mozido. (Interestingly, Wellington theyll nd anything. And its still not
malto and Oberthur Technologies. At does not have a Mozido board seat, apparent how Mozido can justify its
Mozido there were a lot of starts along despite its large investment.) unicorn status. In order to opine on
the way and nothing ever completed, Liberty was paid a $1.25 million fee the technology, one has to know what
says Ted Fifelski, president of Simply- for his services in putting together a is behind the curtain, says a Mozido
Tapp, a mobile payments software com- now-defunct joint venture with Mara spokesman. Those who know the de-
pany that Mozido invested in last year. Group, Ashish Thakkars high-prole tails and the specics are condent that
Can you point to anything they have African conglomerate. The details of the technology is next-generation state
completed beside using their investors the arrangement were led in New of the art.
money to buy other stuf? York State court by Derek Rundell In other words, trust us. F
Big House
On the Prairie
After a multimillion-dollar renovation, Ted Turners
New Mexico estate, Casa Grande, is now a luxury
vacation rentalbison included.
BY ANN ABEL
W
hen Ted Turner was a boy
in Savannah, Ga., he loved to
hunt and fish. After he was
turned in to the local police
for shooting a squirrel on a neighbors proper-
ty with a BB gun and fined by a judge, he had
an epiphany. I decided I was going to make
a lot of money so I could buy my own damn
land, the 77-year-old billionaire said in June
at his Vermejo Park Ranch in northern New
Mexico, one of 17 ranch properties he now
owns. And so I did.
Today Turner owns about 2 million acres
across the United States, making him the sec-
ond-largest private landowner in the country.
(Billionaire John Malone has about 200,000
TED TURNER: MARTIN SCHOELLER FOR FORBES; INTERIOR: JEN JUDGE
refuge. And after deciding to open it to paying going to see it in my lifetime. This is all weve
guestsI have too many properties to enjoy got. We might as well enjoy it.
FINAL THOUGHT
Life is a great adventure accept it in such a spirit. TEDDY ROOSEVELT
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What you should tell your adult children Why retirement can be a
about your inances. (Tip #23) strain for marriages. (Tip #87)
On Education
The truth of
The reason it is, learning Bryn Mawr had done what
makes a silly a four-year dose of liberal
universities man 10,000
are so times more education was designed to
full of insuferable. do: unfit her for 80% of useful
JOSEPH ADDISON
knowledge work of the world.
TONI MORRISON
is that the A professor
is one who
students talks in
come in someone
elses sleep.
with so W.H. AUDEN
much and
leave with
so little.
MARSHALL MCLUHAN
NORMAN JAMES/TORONTO STAR/GETTY IMAGES; MARY DELANEY COOKE/CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES; DEBORAH FEINGOLD/CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES;
HECTOR BERLIOZ UTILITARIAN CRITERIA.
of a society as it passes from DAVID LODGE
PICTORIAL PRESS/ALAMY; GRAPHICAARTIS/GETTY IMAGES; JUDD MEHLMAN/NY DAILY NEWS/GETTY IMAGES; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
one generation to another. We teachers can only
G.K. CHESTERTON
help the work going
on, as servants wait
TOO MANY COLLEGE upon a master.
RADICALS ARE TWO-TIMING MARIA MONTESSORI
PUNKS. THE ONLY REASON
Learning: The kind of ignorance
YOU SHOULD BE IN COLLEGE distinguishing the studious.
IS TO DESTROY IT. AMBROSE BIERCE
ABBIE HOFFMAN
In the schoolroom more FINAL
than any other place THOUGHT
does the diference of
sex, if there is any, need
An observation
to be forgotten. that in Boston is an
SUSAN B. ANTHONY accepted truth: If
youre from Harvard,
FOR IN MUCH WISDOM IS MUCH you cant count;
GRIEF, AND HE THAT INCREASETH if from MIT, you
KNOWLEDGE INCREASETH SORROW. cant read.
ECCLESIASTES 1:18 MALCOLM FORBES
SOURCES: SONG OF SOLOMON, BY TONI MORRISON; THE MAN OF THE TOWN, BY JOSEPH ADDISON; THE TIMES
BOOK OF QUOTATIONS; THE DEVILS DICTIONARY, BY AMBROSE BIERCE; ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, EDITED BY
THEODORE STANTON AND HARRIET STANTON BLATCH; NICE WORK, BY DAVID LODGE; THE ABSORBENT MIND,
BY MARIA MONTESSORI; FABLES, BY JEAN DE LA FONTAINE; STEAL THIS BOOK, BY ABBIE HOFFMAN.
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