EVC Lines Up Dan Snyder as Luncheon Keynote for November 12 Conference
Dan Snyder - From a College Dropout to Billionaire Owner of Washington Redskins
Mehul Nariyawala
Issue date: 10/28/04 Section: GSB News
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"I amgoing to be great businessman, one of the great entrepreneurs," said Dan Snyder to his best friend, Tony Roberts, during their high school years.
Money mesmerized Dan Snyder and school was "unimpressive!" So, at 14, Dan Snyder took his first job at B. Dalton bookstore. By age 17 he was reading the Wall Street Journal, and by age 20 he was running his own business, leasing jets to fly college students to spring break in Fort Lauderdale and Caribbean. Dan Snyder says he cleared $1 million running business out of his parents' bedroom with one friend and couple of phone lines.
Of course, somewhere in there, he got really bored with school and quit. "He never dropped in enough to be a dropout," his father recalls, and Dan Snyder says, "Some people who are no longer my friends tried to give me bad advice to be a normal person, a normal student. I ventured out to be different."
And different he was! "A natural businessman," according to his father. At the age of 23, Snyder laid-out plan for a new campus magazine all over his floor. Even more surprising to his father was young "Danny" getting an office and publishing first issues. In 1986, Snyder learned about Mortimer B. Zuckerman whose US News & World Report was also interested in college market.
Snyder began calling, calling, and calling. Eventually, Snyder's persistence paid off, and he got into Zuckerman's office. Zuckerman remembers that Snyder lied and said that he was 25, as if 25 was that much older.
Zuckerman and Fred Drasner, co-publisher of Zuckerman's New York Daily News, put nearly $3 million behind Campus USA. But it wasn't enough to float a loser.
Soon, Snyder's magazine reached more than 500 campuses. Circulation kept growing, but advertising revenue kept declining. Snyder lost all $3 million and even had his sports car seized by D.C. Bank.
Unfazed by failure, Snyder formed his next venture, Snyder Communications, to climb out of the hole. He started this marketing company because advertising executives at companies such as Procter & Gamble and Kellogg wanted to know if Snyder could distribute product samples. Could he do market testing? Snyder said, "Sure. Absolutely. Not a problem!" even though he'd never done it before.
Snyder even got Zuckerman and Drasner, whose $3 million he had just lost, to invest in him again. "What made me decide I wanted to invest in him and be a partner when he was just 22 or so was that he was a `PSD' -- Poor, Smart and Desperate to be rich" recalls Redskins minority owner Fred Drasner, a publishing magnate who helped arrange financing for Snyder's first huge business success. "He was the ultimate PSD who wanted nothing more in life than to succeed. That kept you with him even in the tough times. He would go 24 hours a day, fly to three cities a day. He could not allow himself to lose. He wanted OUT."