Dan Snyder Talks Business at the GSB
Redskins owner gives keynote speech for the Entrepreneurial Edge Conference
Jason Rosenthal, photo by Dan Dry
Issue date: 12/2/04 Section: GSB News
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Don't pursue entrepreneurship just for the money. Focus on revenues before costs. You can't go wrong building a team around Clinton Portis. These were just a few of the messages Dan Snyder delivered to a packed room of GSB students, alumni, and faculty this month at Navy Pier. Mr. Snyder served as the keynote speaker at this year's William Stein Entrepreneurial Edge Conference (EEC), sharing his thoughts on entrepreneurship, the media, investment bankers, and of course - football.
Why is the owner of a billion dollar sports franchise speaking at a conference focused on entrepreneurship? It turns out that his story reads like that of a classic entrepreneur. Early on, Mr. Snyder dropped out of college to start his own publishing company, even sleeping on the couch because he ran the business from his bedroom in his parents' house. The company, originally a college magazine, failed. But his penetration into the college markets allowed him to have success after changing the focus of the company to marketing. The company grew rapidly until the mid-90's, when he went public.
When working on the IPO, Mr. Snyder became familiar with a group of professionals for whom he developed a distaste - investment bankers. In fact, he jokingly asked members of the audience "If there are any in the room, or any interested in becoming one, can you please leave?"
After selling his business for $2.3 billion, Mr. Snyder pursued his boyhood dream of owning the Washington Redskins. He bought the franchises for a cool $800 million in 1999, a move that prompted the media to criticize him for paying too much. This did not bother him due to his confidence that he could apply his marketing expertise to make the Redskins more profitable. Today, the team's current annual revenue of 300 million is tops in the league, thanks to his marketing efforts which included establishing partnerships with major brands such as Coca-Cola.
Throughout his speech Mr. Snyder stressed a theme common to speakers in the conference: the often overlooked importance of sales. He said that, throughout his career, anyone who worked for him who created infrastructure before worrying about sales was a candidate for being fired.
Mr. Snyder also brought up another EEC theme that would make Evelyn Williams smile: the importance of communication in business. He often found that when hiring MBA students from top schools, they often do not perform as well as others because of a lack in communication skills.
Mr. Snyder's early experience in publishing caused him to advise the GSB students against getting into the publishing industry, saying "publishing is a terrible business, stay away." In fact, he jokingly argued that it wasn't even a business, analogous to the movie business, quoting his friend who said they should drop the "business" and just call it "movie".