Scott A. Jones: A Serial Entrepreneur

It is not often that you get to encounter a man to be branded as a serial entrepreneur. Scott A. Jones is one of those men who were able to put up a lot of companies in a short time. His brilliance yielded a lot of technological advancements through partnership with like-minded individuals. Born in 1960, Jones has an estimated net worth of $20 million.

This American fellow earned his Bachelor of Science degree in computer science at the Indiana University in 1984. He finished his studies with honors and is generating his revenue from all the technological investments and inventions he has created. He was considered as one of the brilliant names in the 1980s and is best known for his works on voicemail. He is one of those who helped shape the voicemail that we know today. Together with his early works on this technological breakthrough is the founding of the Boston Technology. Along with his friend Greg Carr, they created this voicemail technology business. After a few years, his company was then merged with Comverse Technology after it was acquired for $843 million.

Right after his first venture was bought off; he created the Escient, LLC in 1996. Together with three other like-minded visionaries, they established the business that will soon be popularized as the “science between entertainment and technology.” Another noteworthy venture of Jones is Gracenote, an internet-based music service company that has been later on sold to Sony for $260 million. The services provided by this company are utilized by big names like Yahoo, Sony and Apple. Annually, their servers are accessed more than 24 billion times a year.

Today, he is best known for founding ChaCha, a free, real-time answers service. He also serves as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the business.

Ty Warner: The Man Behind the Beanie Baby Craze

Ty Warner is an American businessman, former actor, and toy manufacturer. Founder, sole owner, and CEO of Ty, Inc., Warner is best known for manufacturing and distributing Beanie Babies and other plush items. He started his acting career in Los Angeles but went back to Chicago when this dream didn't pan out. It was in Chicago where he got his start working for a plush toy maker, staying with Dakin for 20 long years. He took a sabbatical in Italy afterwards and when he returned to Chicago founded Ty, Inc. with his life savings and home mortgage.

Warner and Ty, Inc. launched Beanie Babies in 1993. It was believed that at the height of the Beanie Baby craze that the toy company had earned well over $700 million in yearly profits. Aside from Ty, Inc. Warner also has several other investments, like the Four Seasons Hotel in New York City and the San Ysidro Ranch in Montecito, California.

Theodore Waitt: Finding Purpose in All Things Electric

Theodore "Ted" Waitt is the co-founder and former CEO and chairman of Gateway, Inc., helping revolutionize how people used technology by pioneering the use of direct marketing in selling personal computers. Dubbed a maverick by various business publications, Waitt has moved on to start different enterprises after Gateway, Inc., including the Waitt Foundation, Waitt Institute for Violence Prevention, the Waitt Institute, and the wholly-owned private investment company with wide-ranging interests, Avalon Capital Group, Inc.

Through the foundation, Waitt was able to become one of the 50 most generous philanthropists in America, a distinction credited from a list released by Business Week. He was also the chairman for the Family Violence Prevention Fund's Founding Fathers campaign and currently serves as a member of the Council of Advisors and the Board of Trustees of the National Geographic Society while also the vice-chairman for the Salk Institute for Biological Studies Board of Trustees.

Ted Waitt was born in Sioux City in Iowa in 1963, the son of a fourth-generation cattleman. He went to the Universities of Iowa and Colorado and worked for nine months in the PC industry back in Des Moines, Iowa. In 1985, Waitt and Mike Hammond co-founded Gateway while on the Waitt family farm. With $10,000 from a loan Waitt's grandfather secured, the two grew Gateway from the ground up, turning an idea born in a barn into a Fortune 500 company.

As the years passed, Waitt collected a number of accolades, including: the Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award given by the US Small Business Association; two Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards; a Ten Outstanding Young Americans award from the US Junior Chamber of Commerce, and a Marketing Computers Marketer of the Year. He also as an Honorary Doctorate in Science from the University of South Dakota and was appointed by Congress to participate in the Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce.

Beth Comstock: The Face of Innovation for GE

Beth Comstock is the Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of General Electric, hopping on board in 2003 to become the first CMO for GE in over 20 years. Before she became a leading figure in the company, she's also climbed the ranks in GE as well as other roles of leadership, like being President of Integrated Media in NBC where she was responsible for overseeing marketing and research and ad sales and leading NBC's digital media efforts including the establishment of Hulu and the acquisition of ivillage.com. She also spent some time with Turner Broadcasting and CBS.

When she's not with GE, Comstock serves as the Trustee president for the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and as a member of the Board of Directors of Nike. She's also a member of the board over at Quirky, an online hub for easier access to inventions. Quirky is a smart consumer products start-up partner for GE. 

Peter Guber: The Man Behind It All

Peter Guber is the Chairman and CEO of the Mandalay Entertainment Group. He became the head honcho of this multimedia giant because he's got incredible credentials, including being the Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, the Co-founder of Casablanca Record & Filmworks, Chairman and CEO of Polygram Entertainment, and President of Columbia Pictures. And throughout his colorful career, Guber has executive produced or produced films that have received Academy Award nominations for Best Picture (Rain Man won) and/or went on to become box office hits like Batman, The Color Purple, Flashdance, The Kids Are All Right, and Midnight Express.

As if that's that not impressive enough, Guber is also the owner and Co-executive Chairman of the Golden State Warriors, an NBA franchise. He also co-owns the Los Angeles Dodgers, a Major League Baseball franchise, while serving as Chairman of the Board of Directors for a subsidiary of Mandalay Sports Entertainment, Mandalay Baseball Properties. Some of the other sports franchises owned and/or operated by Mandalay Baseball Properties include the Oklahoma City RedHawks, the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, the Frisco RoughRiders, and the Dayton Dragons.

Mr. Guber also keeps his days busy as a full professor at the UCLA and a weekly entertainment and media analyst for Fox Business News. He's also part of the Demand Media Board of Directors and co-founder of Geek Chic Daily. Surprisingly, he's also found time to write books and articles, including Inside The Dee, Shootout: Surviving Fame and (Mis)Fortune in Hollywood, Tell To Win – Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story, as well as the Harvard Business Review cover article The Four Truths of the Story Teller.

Born in 1942, Guber has spent more than 30 years in entertainment and sports. He went to the Syracuse University and the New York University, married Tara Lynda Guber, and has four children.

Henry Morganthau: American Icon to the Ottoman Empire

Henry Morganthau was an American businessman, lawyer and diplomat. He served the US government during the World War I as Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. He became a prominent figure during the War because of his candid opposition against the Armenian Genocide.

The American Civil War brought a huge financial setback to the Morganthau family because Germany stopped exporting tobacco to the US. The Morganthau’s were forced to migrate to the US in 1866. His father earned a living by raising funds for the Jewish houses of worship in New York.

Morganthau earned his BA at the City College of New York while he finished his Bachelor of Laws at the Columbia Law School. While practicing his law profession, Morganthau also earned a huge fortune by investing in real estate.

As an avid supporter of the Democrats, Morganthau’s political career was ushered in by his handsome contribution to the presidential campaign of Woodrow Wilson. When Wilson became the US President, Morganthau was appointed as US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1913, although Morganthau would have wished a cabinet position. Morganthau’s tenure ended in 1916.

The Center for Counseling and Health Resources: A Whole Person Focus

The Seattle-based Center for Counseling and Health Resources, Inc., founded by Dr. Gregory Jantz, concentrates its efforts on treating clients coping with addictions, dysfunctional relationships, and the effects of trauma and abuse. In all its work, the Center keeps its focus on working with the whole person, seeing each client as an individual with a unique history and a distinct combination of physical, medical, and emotional needs. Through its comprehensive diagnostic assessments, The Center for Counseling and Health Resources aims to provide its clients with information that will serve as a starting point for making positive changes in their lives.

Following recent wider trends toward patient-centered care in its holistic approach, The Center for Counseling and Health Resources devotes the time necessary to creating a treatment program tailored to each individual. Whole-person care follows the best practice of looking at every aspect of a client’s environment, including often-neglected social, nutritional, and spiritual factors.

Whole-person medicine, often known as integrative care, supports simultaneous and mutually enhancing approaches and treatment modalities that most effectively assist each patient. In addition, whole-person care attempts to identify underlying causes and stresses that lead to unhealthy situations and behaviors, and then to encourage each individual’s capacity to heal him or herself. Because no two people are alike, the causes of similar health situations can be very different, and no two treatment paths will be the same.

The type of respectful, integrative care provided at The Center for Counseling and Health Resources recognizes the uniqueness of each patient. The organization aims not simply to manage the presenting condition, but to create healthy new underlying patterns that will enable every client to break free of past traumas and addictions to become the person he or she was meant to be. With a focus on building trust in a warm and accepting atmosphere, the organization promotes its core value: Recognizing the worth of every person, regardless of the issues he or she has faced in the past, and with an emphasis on finding the way to a secure and confident future.

Andrew Mellon: The US Treasury’s Think Tank

Andrew Mellon was an American businessman, industrialist, banker, art collector and philanthropist. He also served in the US government as Ambassador to the UK and Secretary of the Treasury.

Mellon was born on March 24, 1855 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was an alumnus of Western University of Pennsylvania where he graduated in 1873. Early on, Mellon demonstrated his financial abilities. Before his graduation in 1872, Mellon was placed by his father in a lumber and coal business which he managed to become a profitable enterprise. He worked with his father’s bank, the T. Mellon & Sons in 1880 which he eventually owned in 1882. Mellon was instrumental in organizing the Union Trust Company and the Union Savings Bank of Pittsburgh in 1889.

Aside from banking, Mellon also ventured into construction, shipbuilding, steel and oil businesses. However, Mellon was said to have built huge enterprises in his coke, carborundum, and aluminum businesses. He financed the ventures of Charles M. Hall which helped him grow his refinery into what was later known as Aluminum Company of America. He also partnered with Edward G. Acheson in founding the Carborundum Company. Mellon was also one of the first who invested in the New York Shipbuilding Corporation.

In 1921, Mellon was appointed by President Warren G. Harding as Secretary of the Treasury. For his service in the US Treasury of ten years and eleven months, Mellon has the third longest tenure in the Treasury. He also served in the same office through the presidencies of Calvin Coolidge and Herbert C. Hoover.

However, in 1932, a petition was filed by some jobless men from Pennsylvania to force President Hoover and the Congress to create jobs. When investigated, President Hoover found out that it was Mellon who financed the march, undermining the president’s faith in his Secretary of the Treasury. An impeachment complaint was filed which led to Mellon’s resignation.

Useful Entrepreneurial Lessons from the Life of Halsey Minor

Halsey Minor is a tech entrepreneur known to be the founder of CNET. He studied in the University of Virginia where he earned his degree in anthropology. His first job was with Merrill Lynch until he began conceptualizing CNET in 1992.

CNET became one of the first internet-based companies that became profitable. CBS purchased CNET in 2008 for $1.7 billion and is now known as CBS Interactive. While with CNET, Minor established two spin-offs: the Snap/NBCi and Vignette Software. Both are public companies.

Minor was a co-founder and was one of the largest investors in salesforce.com, the pioneer in cloud computing and one of the most successful tech companies today.

Minor has been involved in a number of legal battles involving Chrsitie’s and Sotherby’s. The lawsuits arose from a painting which Minor bought in an auction. The outcome of the cases was both favorable and unfavorable to Minor. Minor is also involved in another lawsuit with Merrill. It was reported that Minor owed the state California taxes amounting to $10.4 million. In May 2013, Minot applied for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in Los Angeles.

Robert McNamara: Longest Serving US Defense Secretary

Robert S. McNamara was an American executive. Aside from being associated with Ford Motor Company and the World Bank, McNamara was the US Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968, serving under the presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson and the longest serving Secretary of Defense. He played a major role for the US during the Vietnam War, after which he served as World Bank president from 1968 until 1981.

McNamara was born on June 9, 1916 in San Francisco, California. His father was an Irishman who migrated to the US 1850 after the Great Irish Famine. McNamara earned his Bachelor of Arts major in Economics at the University of California Berkeley. His MBA was from Harvard Business School.

Briefly, McNamara worked with Price Waterhouse but returned to Harvard after one year to teach accounting. At Harvard, McNamara became involved in teaching some officers of the US Army Air Forces in a program involving analytical approach in business. In 1943, McNamara joined the USAAF and was given the rank of captain. After being involved for the most part in World War II, McNamara left the military service with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

After the War, McNamara became involved in a group of 10 war veterans headed by Charles Thornton. They went to business together and insinuated that Henry Ford was in need of reform. Ford hired the group which was later known was the “Whiz Kids.”

The “Whiz Kids” lived up to their name and turned the tables at Ford Motor Company. McNamara served as planning and financial analysis manager. The “Whiz Kids’” performance was backed by excellent results. McNamara became the first non-Ford president of Ford Motor Company.

Five weeks into his assumption of the top position at Ford, President Kennedy offered McNamara a post at either the Treasury or the Defense. McNamara preferred the position of Secretary of Defense. President Kennedy had high regard for McNamara, asking him for advice not only on matters concerning security but also business and economics. One of his major roles was providing an intelligent statistical analysis of the efficiency of involving in the protracted Vietnam War.

McNamara implemented many reforms in the Defense Department during his entire service. Being an expert in statistical analysis, McNamara streamlined the department and implemented a number of cost-reduction measure to increase the US defense efficiency.