Gary Hoover began his entrepreneurial journey at an early age. His question about enterprises
was, “What separates the losers from the winners?” He began subscribing to Fortune Magazine
at the age of 12, and has acquired most of the issues back to 1930.
As part of his education, he studied economics at the University of Chicago under Milton
Friedman and two other Nobel Prize winners, 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 May Department Stores Company.
At the age of 30, after he finally took the plunge and created pioneering book superstore
BOOKSTOP, which helped change the nature of book shopping in America. This company was
sold to Barnes & Noble for $41.5 million cash when it was 7 years old, and became a cornerstone
for their industry-dominating superstore chain.
After he and his partners sold BOOKSTOP, Gary returned to his first love of understanding
businesses, and began the company that became Hoover’s, the world’s largest Internet-based
provider of information about enterprises. Hoovers.com covers over 40,000 companies around
the world. In July of 1999, Hoover’s went public and in March of 2003, the company was
purchased by Dun & Bradstreet for $117 million. Like BOOKSTOP, Hoover’s has changed the
way we do things and today employs over 300 people.
Gary also ventured into the travel business with TravelFest Superstores, which failed when
airlines stopped paying commission to travel agencies, and the museum industry, a work in
progress. He continues to keep over 100 ideas for new businesses on his list.
In the 2009-10 academic year, Gary served as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Herb Kelleher
Center for Entrepreneurship at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas in
Austin. There he focused on inciting and inspiring entrepreneurial thinking among students of
all types, graduates and undergraduates, inside and outside of the business school. He reviewed
approximately 400 business plans and ideas in this role, as well as teaching a Foundations of
Entrepreneurship course.
He also gave five lectures on the history of various industries (movies, airlines, autos, retailing,
and computers) which can be viewed at
http://blogs.mccombs.utexas.edu/mccombs-today/gary-hoover-video-library/.
In the fall of 2010, Gary began exploring innovative ways to teach entrepreneurship, how to learn
and research various subjects, retailing, and other topics close to his heart, beginning with an all
day seminar on retailing in Austin.
Gary lives in Austin, Texas, with his 50,000-book library. He has consulted, spoken to
conferences, and worked to encourage entrepreneurial thinking on every continent and in every
industry, for profit and not for profit. He has also supported the University of Chicago. In 2009
he launched www.hooversworld.com, a blog which includes reviews of books, ideas, and places
from Gary’s iconoclastic angle. His book is available at http://www.scribd.com/doc/25085990/
The-Art-of-Enterprise-by-Gary-Hoover-January-2010.
