Lessons to Learn from Successful Companies
Special Guest: Gary Hoover

The market downturn in April of this year has sent ripples not just through Wall Street and the distant gilded halls of Silicon Valley but also through our very own streets and suites. Money is now harder to raise and young companies are being scrutinized at the most minute levels in years. Entrepreneurs are facing a tough environment - in a growing number of cases, they are expected to both  aggressively expand their business to the point of profitability within a very short timeframe AND shepherd their resources to accommodate delayed or even postponed liquidity events. 

Is it still possible for the archetypical entrepreneurs - two people in a garage - to be successful? What are some key considerations for those thinking of starting a business? What are some stumbling blocks that plague both emerging and established businesses? Or perhaps more fundamentally, what is the definition of a successful company?

Survival of the Fittest
Why Small Businesses Fail
A Return to Demand-Driven Capitalism
5 Steps to Your Own Startup

Logistics:

Technology Entrepreneurs' eXchange cordially invites you to its:

Houston Technology Entrepreneurial Dinner and Round-Table Discussion

Thursday, August 3, 2000 - The Aspen Room at The Houstonian
(111 North Post Oak Ln, Houston, TX 77024; 713-680-2626)  

Discussion Topic Remarks by Gary Hoover, Founder and Director of Hoover's Online and former Founder & CEO of BOOKSTOP, Inc.

6:30 p.m. Cocktails (cash bar)

7:15 p.m. Dinner and Round-Table Discussion

8:30 p.m. Wrap up, Networking, Open Discussion

Dinner is $65.00 per person—fixed price buffet. Advance reservations only.

First come-First served. Space is limited.

Please reserve no later than July 27th by responding via e-mail with a major credit card to [email protected].

Or by voice to: Melissa Ibanez or Crystal Jackson at Plunkett Research, 713.932.0000 (fax: 713.932.7080)

Reservations are non-cancelable, non-refundable.  

Information Contacts:
Mike Goodwin (Continental Airlines) 713.324.3997 [email protected]
Bill Keough (IBM) 713.940.1486 [email protected] 
Jack W. Plunkett (Plunkett Research, Ltd.) 713.932.0000 [email protected]
Marco Rimassa (Starlight Capital) 713.225.0298 [email protected]
 

About Gary Hoover

Gary Hoover is the founder of Hoover's Online and BOOKSTOP Superstores. In many respects, this gifted visionary and entrepreneur has done it all. Hoover started subscribing to Fortune Magazine at the age of 12. He visited hundreds of corporate headquarters, and studied the stock market in depth, before he was 18. His question was the same, "What separates the losers from the winners?" He studied economics at the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman and two other Nobel Prize winners. Hoover later served as a Securities Analyst for CitiBank on Wall Street, worked as a buyer for Federated Department Stores, and headed up acquisitions and strategic planning for the giant May Department Stores.

At the age of 30, Gary took the entrepreneurial plunge in Austin, Texas and created the first book superstore, BOOKSTOP, which changed the nature of book shopping in America. This company was sold to Barnes & Noble for $41.5 million when it was 7 years old, and became the cornerstone for their industry-dominating superstore chain, which does over $3 billion a year in sales.

Gary then returned to his first love of understanding businesses and began the small business information publisher, the Reference Press. The company, now called Hoover's, Inc. is currently the world's largest on-line provider of information about businesses. Hoover's Online covers over 14,000 companies around the world. More than 1.5 million times a day, users worldwide access hoovers.com for useful easy-to-read information about the world of enterprise. Like BOOKSTOP, Hoover's has changed the way we do business.

Today, Gary Hoover travels the world speaking to Fortune 500 executives, trade associations, entrepreneurs, and college students about how enterprises are built and how they survive. From his own successes and failures, and from the lessons of the thousands of companies studied by Hoover's, he draws real-life examples that help audiences navigate into the 21st Century.