Stanford GSB: Stanford Business June 1997

Spreadsheet One SRO Down Under First Entrepreneur Conference at GSB The Forgiven Here We Grow Again! Intellectual Game of Investment Boeing Chief wins Arbuckle Award	Spreadsheet Two Great Leap Forward Student Job Hunting Goes Global *Calculating the Eco-cost	Spreadsheet Three The GSB Goes to War PhDs Fare Well in Job Market "Sorry, Mr. Rainwater is in a Meeting." New Porras Award
A Closer Look: Bernard Beal	A Closer Look: Mike Golub	A Closer Look: Reid Dennis
For The Record: Who We Are

A Closer Look: Reid Dennis, MBA 1952

Meet an angel with real wings. As a founder and partner of Institutional Venture Partners, Reid Dennis has backed some high-flying startups, including Ampex, Collagen, Excite, and Wellfleet. But now he's bankrolling a documentary film of the reenactment of Amelia Earhart's final and most famous flight to the South Pacific, and he's flying the backup plane himself.

Dennis, his copilot, and his mechanic set out on their 10-week trip in Dennis's rebuilt Grumman Albatross on March 17, the 60th anniversary of Earhart's departure. Also carrying the film crew and a newspaper reporter covering the event, the twin-engine seaplane was set to track the restored Lockheed Electra of aviation historian and pilot Linda Finch from Oakland, Calif., to Howland Island, near where Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan are believed to have run out of gas and ditched their plane at sea. The two planes were scheduled to visit 30 cities in 20 countries on 6 continents, tracing Earhart's route exactly except for a politically prudent detour around north Africa. The flight is tied to educational efforts at the Smithsonian Institution, in schools, and through the film that Dennis is funding.

For Dennis, the flight isn't quite a schoolboy's dream come true, but it's close enough. Growing up in San Francisco during the thirties, he was not as interested in reading about Earhart's travels as he was in watching the Pan American Clipper fly in daily over the Golden Gate. The Grumman Albatross was the nearest he could come to buying one of the extinct amphibian Clippers. Nor was the trip to Howland Island precisely what Dennis had in mind when he bought the Albatross. Meeting FAA requirements for rebuilding the plane not only doubled its cost, but also kept him grounded during the 50th anniversary of the battles for the Solomon Islands two years ago, when he had planned to fly the old ship across the Pacific.

Dennis exercised due diligence before taking on this once-in-a-lifetime adventure. He's logged more than 7,000 hours in the air since he began flying in the early sixties, and he outfitted the Albatross with equipment that can pinpoint his location within 100 yards and enables him to communicate in ways that were impossible in Earhart's day. Given the record of the VC pioneer, Dennis's latest (ad)venture seemed certain to fly.

Flying his vintage seaplane, Reid Dennis followed the last flight plan of Amelia Earhart, reaching Howland Island on May 19.