Tom Pritzker - founder of private equity
The Pritzker family has been in and out of the news for several years now regarding their family feuds. I had the chance to hear Mr. Pritzker speak this morning at the Met Club in the Sears Tower about his upbringing, life as a businessman and his passion as a philanthropist.
It was very refreshing to hear him speak, as his words came out with sincerity. He started out his speech by addressing his advantageous upbringing so as not to give the false impression that he built the Hyatt (and other major corporations) empire himself.
He mostly told anecdotal stories about businesses he bought, a speech he gave with Mike Milliken and Same Zell (who didn’t show), and his whole family’s business history as really the first players in private equity. Banks would lend to his family after WWII because of a deed his grandfather did; and this afforded them the opportunity to buy businesses and build them. From the 50’s through the 80’s, they opportunistically bought businesses and helped them flourish. by the late 80’s, Milliken had changed the game and capital markets were available to everyone. Pritzker’s philosophy was never to buy, build, and dump; replacing a management team and having an exit strategy. It was always to build solid companies and expand net worth.
Tom also talked at length about the important and obligation of giving back to your community. He is a scholar in an extremely narrow field of 11th century Himalayan art, on the board of trustees at U of Chicago and at the Art Institute. He really tried to inspire people to get more involved with causes that they enjoy, whether it be with money or time and energy.
While I thought his speech and Q&A were great and I took away many important lessons and thoughts to dwell on, perhaps the most applicable to my life came from his 13 year old son years ago. This came up during Q&A when someone asked “what one thing do you know now that you wish you knew before everything started?” The answer surprisingly was that you need to be an interesting person. Interesting people know other interesting people and have interesting things to talk about. As a result, interesting people meet other interesting people. So do what you can to be interesting and find other interesting people. So this is the quote of the week!
