A business school student has used his personal network to build a $100 million dollar startup. 28-year old Brian Pallas could easily have joined his family’s business in Italy, organizing events in the corporate and entertainment world. Instead, he went to Columbia for his MBA, where he tapped into the ecosystem, and started a business based on the power of family connections.
“When I went to Columbia I joined the Family Business Club. I created an internal email system where people could share business opportunities. It wasn’t very sophisticated. People would send me a three-line email about an interesting business proposition. I circulated it in a monthly email to the people in the club who knew and trusted each other.”
The family business club was restricted to students at Columbia who came from a family with a substantial minimum net worth and their own business. The club only had 70 members, which Pallas realized was limiting to its members.
“With just 70 people, there’s not much you can do on a long term, sustainable basis. I wanted to make it bigger, but you can’t just increase the numbers, because you would just dilute the members.”
Brian Pallas, Founder, Opportunity Network
So Pallas approached family business clubs at international schools like Harvard, LSE and INSEAD, who all used similar criteria for entry. He turned the club into a global one, providing members with trusted contacts all over the world. But, Pallas was onto something bigger than a growing database. He had a business model with a value equivalent to the total worth of the deals initiated between members.
Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/amyguttman/2015/10/29/how-a-business-school-student-used-his-personal-network-to-build-a-100-million-dollar-business/
