Newsmakers

Online Matchmaking for Start-Up Firms

The internet is a great way to find a lost friend, a future love interest, or a job. It also is a good place to look for investors for your business idea or somebody willing to give you a loan.

Through YouNoodle, an online bulletin board for potential startups, Manoj Duggirala, a Stanford engineering master’s student who graduated in 2008, met up with Jan Leeman, MBA ’95. After corresponding for several months, Leeman invested $70,000 in Duggirala’s GiveandTake, a yet to be opened online shopping firm. Although Leeman doesn’t live too far from the campus, “it’s difficult to get access to what the Stanford students are doing,” he told the New York Times. YouNoodle provided a forum for him to vet Duggirala and his ideas and eventually to invest.

New China Hand

U.S. business opportunities for bridging inventors and investors were tapped out, thought Barrett Comiskey, MBA ’04, so he booked passage to Shanghai. It wasn’t like his efforts had failed in the states. In his pre-Stanford days he cofounded E Ink, which produced displays later used in ultra-thin book readers like Amazon’s Kindle. He told Esquire he’s now managing partner of Nicobar Group there, which joins U.S. companies with Asian manufacturers.

Cooking with Joe

How can you quickly make mole chicken enchiladas with pecans? By buying Cooking with All Things Trader Joe’s. Two fans of specialty retail grocer Trader Joe’s, (founded by Joe Coulombe, MBA ’54) published a cookbook with menus consisting of only the store’s products.

“I used to cook from scratch but as my career took off and I had kids, cooking time was squeezed out,” coauthor Wona Miniati, MBA ’98, told the Wall Street Journal. She and Deana Gunn self-published the book and sold out of the initial press run of 20,000. With large orders from Borders book stores, the two printed another 50,000.

Trader Joe’s doesn’t carry the title, but it also hasn’t asked the authors to rename the book.

Brander of Beer Legends

The battle of the beers took a new twist when Coors and Miller merged last year. On the frontlines for the new MillerCoors is chief marketing officer Andy England, MBA ’94, who held that post for Coors before the two popular brands joined forces. His past wins with Coors, according to Brandweek, include “cold-activated bottles” and the “vented wide-mouth can.”

Now he’s dusted off the old “great taste; less filling” campaign to bolster Miller Lite’s market presence and has had to ax Coors’ “malternative” Zima malt beverage.

Steyer, Taylor Fund Energy Research

Steyer A GSB alumni husband-and-wife team has given Stanford $40 million to create the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy. It is part of a new Precourt Institute for Energy that expands faculty and graduate student support for energy research. The gift is from Stanford trustee Thomas Steyer (at left), MBA ’83, founder of Farallon Capital Management, and Kat Taylor, JD/MBA ’85, who heads the couple’s TomKat Foundation, which also funds One California Bank, an Oakland, Calif. bank serving a neighborhood other banks avoid, according to a recent Fortune profile of Steyer.

The global financial meltdown profoundly shaped Steyer’s views on the need for sustainable energy, Taylor said. “He does not believe we will transform our economy and also address serious foreign policy and national security issues, as well as obvious environmental concerns, unless we address energy.” Finding a new paradigm involves changing energy policy while avoiding the political distortion created by campaign contributions, she said.

Steyer added: “We believe that Stanford is uniquely positioned to change our nation’s attitudes and capability as it concerns energy. What our university did for the information revolution, it must now do for the energy revolution.”

Merger Maven

Helen Weir, MBA ’90, has a lot on her plate. The head of retail banking at Lloyds TSB is grappling with her employer’s acquisition of the Halifax Bank of Scotland.

The obvious strategy is not to bury the two banks under one name but to allow possibilities for more than one brand, she said in the London Times. “Sometimes, with closing branches, the savings you make are outweighed by customer attrition.”

Mergers are nothing new for Weir, who while finance director for the U.K. hardware store chain Kingfisher oversaw the takeover of the French Castorama chain.

Bay Area Embraces Double Bottom Line

The San Francisco Bay Area is the closest thing the United States has to a hub for double-bottom-line investment funds, which are backers of companies looking to make a socially conscious product and a profit at the same time.

Josh Becker, JD/MBA ’98, co-founder of New Cycle Capital in Menlo Park, told Venture Capital Journal, “We can see how the social aspects of these companies are becoming a core competitive advantage.” He referenced businesses providing health care, financial services, and other essentials to underserved populations as particularly attractive.

In the past investors have been scared away because they think of philanthropy when they hear social investment. But the mentality is changing as the social venture models mature.

Tax Debate Never Ends

Taxes on the wealthy will need to be raised in order to shore up the system, Mark Wolfson, a Business School consulting professor of accounting and finance, told attendees of an October reunion panel on the economic crisis. “I have no doubt that will occur no matter who is the next president,” he said.

The Palo Alto Daily reported that John Taylor, Stanford economics professor and member of John McCain’s economic policy team, replied, “That’s backward. Who would increase taxes at a time like this?”

Need Help Lifting That Derrick?

Oil rig workers seem like tough-skinned employees who are filled with bravado and would never ask for help. That exact behavior can get them into unproductive, and unsafe, situations, according to research by Stanford education Associate Professor Debra Meyerson, PhD ’89, and Robin Ely. When workers were asked to focus on company goals like safety and admission of errors, rather than an individual’s strength and prowess, productivity increased substantially and accident rates decreased 84 percent, reports Canadian Business.

Hit the Road, Bill

The idea for his book started with a 1933 road trip Bill Carson, MBA ’56, and his parents took from Missouri to New Mexico. They stuck as close as possible to the Santa Fe Trail, a route his great-great-grandfather, who went on to become the New Mexico territory’s second governor, followed 81 years earlier.

The 1933 trip, as well as attending summer camp at the prestigious Los Alamos Ranch School from 1939 to 1942, gave Carson the details he needed to write Peter Becomes a Trail Man, a book for young adult readers.

But his commitment to today’s youth doesn’t end at his book. In 1997, he and his wife, Georgia, founded a nonprofit that introduces local children to literature. He’s also chairman of the Santa Fe Children and Youth Commission, he told the New Mexican.

Stanford Business magazine