During a roundtable discussion with Kenneth W. Freeman Professor & Dean of the College of Management, Michelle Roehm, Rodriguez, Lore and Leiser shared their perspectives on how entrepreneurs can succeed, offering advice to the students assembled for their sold-out session. Rodriguez, whom most people recognize for his baseball career, is also the chairman and CEO of A-Rod Corp, an investment firm which funds startups and partners with leading global companies across the real estate, sports and entertainment sectors. He, Lore and Leiser joined forces in 2021 to launch Jump Platforms, the first end-to-end fan experience and ticketing platform for live sports and entertainment; Bucknell’s basketball program is an early adopter of the platform.
“Alex knows [the sports] world really well, and Marc is a consumer scale entrepreneur who has done it all, and I come from the enterprise side,” said Leiser, Jump Platforms CEO. His relationship with Lore extends back to when he was just a 25-year-old working for Lore’s e-commerce website, Diapers.com. Lore’s resume includes serving as former president and CEO of Walmart U.S. e-commerce; he is currently the CEO of Wonder Group, which he founded. Alongside Rodriguez, Lore also co-owns the Minnesota Timberwolves and Minnesota Lynx. The trio’s collaboration moving into Jump Platforms “was a really nice marriage of those three different things: enterprise technology, consumer technology and sports and entertainment.”
Lore cited that his success across industries, from sports entertainment to Wonder Group’s focus of “Fast Fine Dining,” comes in part from a framework he has dubbed VCP: vision, capital, people. “It’s only when the entire leadership team understands the nuances of the vision and strategy as well as the founder or the CEO does that the magic really starts to happen,” he said. He clarified what capital encompasses, as a common misconception relegates it solely to first-round seed funding even though it can and does also contribute to a multiyear financing plan.
The people aspect of any venture, he said, is probably the most important. “How do you build a culture that attracts, retains and gets the best out of the very best people in the world,” he asked. “Once you get that in place and you have the right people, the right organizational structure and they understand strategy and vision and you have a clear path to raising capital, then you can kind of just sit back and let the team execute.”
Though the success that these entrepreneurs have seen can be attributed to their individual strengths, both Rodriguez and Lore emphasized that success is a team effort. “You can’t do great things without the best people in the world,” said Rodriguez, pointing to his time as a Yankees world champion. “Always surround yourself with people that are smarter.”
However, more than following a particular formula, Lore reiterated that being an entrepreneur hinges on how a person approaches and embraces risk. “Entrepreneurs […] have the ability to view risk differently,” he said, adding that risk is an unavoidable component of any startup venture. In fact, one of the hallmarks of being an entrepreneur is the willingness to take on low-probability, high-reward risks. “Can you work 100 hours a week on something that has a 10% probability of working?” he asked. “That’s what entrepreneurs do. You kill yourself [working], and the high likelihood is that it will fail.”
After the conclusion of the roundtable, the trio attended the Bucknell-Army basketball game where Rodriguez had the chance to put the low-probability, high-reward approach to the test. The three-time American League MVP took a halftime, half-court shot that, if made, would earn one lucky Bucknell student selected at random—Owen Garwood ’27, a lifelong Phillies fan—$10,000. The chances of making such a shot are roughly one in 100. Rodriguez tossed the ball several times into the air, set his sights on his target and banked it right into the hoop.
“I am in shock. It still does not feel real,” said Garwood, an economics major and football player from Montgomery County, Pa., who decided to attend the game when he heard A-Rod would be there. He never expected to win $10,000. “I’ve already decided to take out some of the money for charity, and the rest will be going to help pay for tuition.”
After Rodriguez made the shot, Garwood celebrated with the MLB All-Star and members of the Bison football team. “When I called my dad about five minutes later he was in the middle of a golf round and had the most shocked face I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Garwood. “This will be one of the most memorable moments of my life, hands down.”
