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TEACHING
Feature: From All Corners of Campus

OUTREACH
Feature: Entrepreneurial Training Camp

Which Fast-Growing Private Company Is #1?

Faces of Wharton Entrepreneurship

RESEARCH
Feature: Visiting Scholar to Business Leaders: Consider "Learning from Near Misses"

Verbatim: Our Directors, in Quotes

Farhad Mohit
Co-founder, Chairman and Chief Marketing Officer

Personal Information
Company name /type: BizRate.com / Internet

Education: BS Mathematics / Computer Science and BA Economics, UCLA 1991; MBA Entrepreneurial Management, WG 1996.

Primary place of residence: Los Angeles, CA

It would surprise people that I....: Care much more about the arts and humanities (specifically poetry / literature) than I do about business.

P.O.V. (Point of View)
I became an entrepreneur because...: I couldn't imagine returning to the corporate rat-race I'd run away from to be at Wharton.

Best way to respond to criticism and doubters: Check for validity in their claims. If none, proceed to prove them wrong. However, don't ever brag about having done it... That only brings about resentment. Believe me, everyone fully understands what has transpired without you having to say a word.

Best definition of a successful entrepreneur: A person who has set his own course, is enjoying what he has to do to make a living and likes the people who he has to do it with.

Most challenging part of your job: Laying people off (downsizing) UGGH!

Biggest impact of the Wharton School: Connections, credibility, courage. Connections: I started BizRate.com with a fellow MBA and Dr. David Reibstein of the Marketing Department. Countless other alums have lent their support along the way. Credibility: I didn't have a storied past (actually a laughably ordinary one really). The WG MBA stamp, gave my resume credibility and allowed me to get that critical first meeting with people. Courage: I was in heavy debt from b-school, but knew that in the worst case of utter failure, I'd have to settle for a $100K+ job at some top-notch consultancy or I-Bank... not too frightening a proposition.

Best memory of your Wharton days: Two years of 3 day weekends in a row! How can you beat that?!

Close calls
How you started your business: Venture Initiation 811 course at Wharton; I proposed BizRate as an idea for a class project. Henri Asseily (my cofounder) and Dave Schaller another classmate decided to join me for the summer (forgoing safari's to Africa) to give BizRate a go. Dave dropped out near the end of Summer, but Henri stayed on and the rest is history...

Pivotal moment in growing your business: We started the business in June 1996, we got funded in July 1998. Those were two lean years where we bootstrapped and lived very very modestly. However, by around June of 1998, things looked bleak and we were ready to call it quits. We literally had one month of "fumes" left for funding and we weren't going to be able to do another "friends and family" round. If our funding had fallen through, we'd have been done... luckily, we closed our first round and were able to continue.

Most interesting non-entrepreneurial job offer you've declined: My friend was considering abandoning civilized life to become a waiter in the Mediterranean resort cities (Nice, Cannes, Ibiza, Mykonos, etc..). I considered joining him, but decided that it would be more fun to retire there than it would be to wait on tables... (but it was a close call).

Biggest surprise you encountered growing your business: Stock market collapse in spring of 2000 was totally uncalled for and a huge surprise. This led to our biggest surprise growing a business and that was having to shrink it... We went up from about 100 people in Jan 2000 to about 230 by Oct 2000 and back to about 100 people by Oct 2001.

Most difficult decision you're glad you made: To downsize aggressively and focus. I love many of the people we had to let go, but it had to be done. We had grown in an undisciplined manner under different market conditions. In these trying times, fiscal discipline is paramount. Had we kept our size we'd have all be out of a job by now.

Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur
Favorite Web site: My Yahoo homepage. It has everything.

Book that most influenced your thinking: Compexity by M. Mitchell Waldrop.

Favorite activity outside of business: "Now appreciation" with friends.

Goal still pursuing: Starting a family and being a good husband / father.

Person most influential to your success: Three-way Tie: Mom for my principles / her unconditional love. Dad for my confidence / logic.

Person you most admire: My uncle for his harmless rebelliousness and uniqueness of spirit.

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