Skydeck

Ed Hajim has had a legendary career in finance, including high-profile stints at E.F. Hutton and Lehman Brothers and 14 years leading Furman Selz.  But his success came against very high odds, which Ed chronicles in his recent book, On the Road Less Traveled: An Unlikely Journey from the Orphanage to the Boardroom.

While Ken Friedman (MBA 1983) was at HBS, he and a group of about a dozen friends would get together regularly to play cards. The group vowed to continue to do so after graduation, and would hold annual weekend get-togethers to catch up. It became a brotherhood, Friedman says. But almost fifteen years ago, one of the members of that group was diagnosed with cancer, ultimately passing away after a 15-month battle. It was a wakeup call for Friedman. He’d had a successful career in investment banking and venture capital, which included being the founder and former president of the investment banking operation of Houlihan Lokey at the age of 28. Houlihan Lokey would go on to become a New York Stock Exchange public company.   But his friend’s death made the next big VC deal or M&A transaction seem much less important. Instead, Friedman reoriented his  life, focusing more on philanthropy—and also getting back into one of his favorite childhood pursuits: motorcycle riding. Ultimately, this renewed passion for riding would become an historic mission to ride a motorcycle on all seven continents.  Friedman completed his mission in December of 2019, and in this episode of Skydeck, he and I talk about the challenges he faced during his epic journey—and why he believes that getting out of one’s comfort zone and tenacity are the keys to personal growth.

Niren Chaudhary (AMP 191) has spent most of his career in restaurants, working in leadership positions at Yum Brands and Krispy Kreme donuts before becoming the CEO of Panera Bread in May 2019.  In this episode of Skydeck, he speaks to Ranjay Gulati—his former college classmate and his eventual HBS executive education professor—about how Panera has faced the myriad challenges of the pandemic, the leadership values that guide him, and how a deep, personal loss became a pivotal part of his life and career.

Jacqui Adams is CEO of a communication strategy firm that she launched after more than two decades as an Emmy award–winning CBS news correspondent. Bonita Stewart is a VP at Google, overseeing the company's global partnerships with US publishers. Together, they're co-authors of A Blessing: Women of Color Teaming Up to Lead, Empower and Thrive. The book uses existing data, as well as the authors' own original research to offer what they call an optimistic playbook for progress. And in this episode of Skydeck, Adams and Stewart speak with contributing host and fellow alum Chitra Nawbatt about the transformational opportunity that business has to engage women of color.

In 1963, Bob Rosenberg’s (MBA 1963) father asked him to become CEO of Universal Food Systems—which included a regional brand known as Dunkin’ Donuts. He was just 25 at the time. He recalls this moment in his new book, Around the Corner to Around the World: A Dozen Lessons I Learned Running Dunkin Donuts.“ Up until that point,” he writes, “the only thing I had managed were a couple of donut shops—replacing managers for their summer vacations—and a short stint supervising a cafeteria. My father’s request was breathtaking and anxiety-producing.”  Over the next 35 years, Rosenberg would turn Dunkin' Donuts into a global icon—which last year sold to Inspire Brands for a stunning $11.3 billion. And in this episode of Skydeck, Rosenberg offers a frank assessment of family donut chain wars, details near-death takeover moments, and expounds on why a donut and a cup of coffee represent much more than a simple morning pick-me-up.

This is the third and final episode of “Out of the Valley,” a Skydeck mini-series that explores the past, present, and future of entrepreneurship. We started in the whaling capital of the world: New Bedford, Massachusetts in the 1800s, where we saw the roots of the venture capital industry. Then, of course, we found ourselves in Silicon Valley, where so many of the brands that shape our daily life got their start in humble garages.  Silicon Valley has been the global hub of tech innovation since the 1960s—but its most influential product might just be its model of entrepreneurship: disruptive, asset-light and capital-intensive businesses with a scale-at-all-cost mentality and no fear of failure. But now something is threatening to disrupt the disruptors. Alex Lazarow (MBA 2010), author of Out-Innovate, calls it the “frontier market model.” Founded in places with limited resources and nascent entrepreneurial ecosystems, these startups have to be scrappier and leaner. And these limitations, Alex says, make businesses more sustainable. In this episode, we ask entrepreneurs from frontier markets around the globe: What can Silicon Valley learn from your experiences? And what happens if the startup capital of the world ignores these lessons?

Welcome to the second episode of our Skydeck mini-series “Out of the Valley.” Today’s episode starts in Jakarta, Indonesia, in the late 2000s. The city looked nothing like Silicon Valley in those days. There were very few VC-backed startups and not much of an entrepreneurial ecosystem. It was what author and venture capitalist Alex Lazarow would define as a “frontier market”—a place where entrepreneurs face significant constraints on funding, infrastructure, and talent. A place where the Silicon Valley model of moving fast and breaking things—an early Mark Zuckerberg mantra—just doesn’t work. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

It’s trendy to say that Silicon Valley is over—that this place and the philosophy that it became is past its apex, and all signs point to its impending collapse. That prophecy has become even more popular as the COVID-19 pandemic has made both the Valley’s products and its real estate prices seem ever more impractical. But if those dire predictions come true, it might not be because of inflated valuations. It could be because Silicon Valley has lost its monopoly on its superpower: Innovation.  In this episode of Skydeck, we’re kicking off a three-part series called “Out of the Valley.” It will focus on the work of Alex Lazarow (MBA 2010), a venture capitalist and author of the book, Out-Innovate: How Global Entrepreneurs from Delhi to Detroit Are Rewriting the Rules of Silicon Valley. Over these next few episodes, we’ll explore the ideas at the heart of Alex’s book, detailing how entrepreneurs and ecosystems across the globe are challenging the Silicon Valley model—and explaining what these global startups can teach their peers in the Valley. In this first episode, we’re going to examine why Silicon Valley is at risk of losing its startup crown and what that could mean for the future of innovation.

Earlier this year, as the coronavirus pandemic swept across the globe, the MBA Class of 2020 faced the daunting prospect of graduating into an economy battered by widespread shutdowns and hiring freezes. To offer some perspective, we reached out  to alumni who had confronted similar challenges—including the OPEC crisis, the Vietnam War, the Financial Crisis of 2008—and we asked them how they made it through those difficult times. And in this special edition of Skydeck Voices, they share their stories and their advice.

In the wake of the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles in 1992, Willie Woods (MBA 1993) was part of a group of HBS students who traveled to the city with their Competition and Strategy professor Michael Porter. The group thought it would be a good opportunity to take some of Porter’s ideas about what makes a nation competitive and apply those on a city level. Two organizations spun out of that experience: The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, a nonprofit focused on improving urban economies, and ICV Partners, a Black-owned private equity firm focused on companies in the lower middle market. Willie Woods is cofounder, president, and managing director of ICV Partners, and in this episode of Skydeck, he talks to contributing host Chitra Nawbatt (GMP 6, 2009) about what it takes to make real change to the diversity of your organization.