Sabbaticalist: Tom Freston
How’s this for a final (yet not final) corporate act: September 5, 2006, 1,500+ Viacom employees crowded the corporate plaza to wish Tom Freston a goodbye when he was released from his contract by Sumner Redstone. Since that fateful send off, Freston has visited over 30 countries on what some would call a “$60M Sabbatical,” i.e., the amount of severance he received after serving 19 years at Viacom. Add to that, Freston became “non-committal” – not in the typical sense (he still helped causes and companies he admired), but more in the sense that he didn’t need a job as many came calling. He became “The Sabbaticalist.” Read more >>
Has MySpace become “MySpaced”?
On reading Techcrunch’s advance review of a WSJ reporter’s new tell-all book on MySpace, I updated my Facebook status with bewilderment that MySpace passed on buying Facebook for $75M in 2004. And I made a Freudian typo… Read more >>
Billionaire Benefactors Give More Than You Think…
In 2008, many of our national billionaires gave much of their fortunes away, involuntarily. From Sheldon Adelson, the Vegas and Macau casino billionaire who lost $24 billion ($24B) to Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and the Google guys, last year was a very difficult year to amass. Now who’s to say that losing “a few personal billion” when you still have “a few” is an innovation problem – it matters when these entrepreneurs pull back on progress and humanitarian giving to stem private losses.
Per Forbes, Warren Buffet lost $16.5B, Gates was down $12.3B and Google’s Larry Page lost more than half of his g-trove: $11.9B. Read more >>