The Owner's Box @WashU Olin

For the final episode of this season's Owners Box, we talk to Chip Wade about how the unique approach to ownership of Union Square Hospitality Group, from its founding to its current capital stack, shapes how they go to market. Special Guest: Chip Wade.

Today on The Owner’s Box, we are joined by Jim McKelvey. Jim is probably best known as the co-founder of Square, the payment technology company he built alongside Jack Dorsey that went on to reshape how small businesses accept payments. You may not know that Square is in a very small cadre of companies that Amazon tried to copy and couldn't, which Jim illuminates in his recent book, The Innovation...

The Washington Post just announced it was laying off 30% of its workforce. 300 newsroom journalists told to put down their pens, entire sections gutted. How did we get here? What does it take to sustain a mission-driven media company? At the Owner's Box, we are interested in how ownership shapes a company's behavior and nowhere is that more interesting than in an industry with a mission to provide...

Today we have an opportunity to chat with my friend, Chef Nina Compton, the owner of the acclaimed Compère Lapin in New Orleans. Nina's journey from cooking Christmas dinner for her family in St. Lucia to competing on Top Chef and winning the James Beard Award for Best Chef: South is remarkable. But what makes her story particularly interesting from an ownership lens is that she and her husband, L...

Today’s guests are a father-son duo who have been on a fascinating journey of growing up with the family business, exiting that chapter, and deciding to start a new one. Tad Edwards was part of a multi-generational family business in the financial services industry, A.G. Edwards, that was ultimately acquired by Wachovia and then Wells Fargo. Tad took the pen on the next chapter of the family legac...

In October, Juliet Chung of the Wall Street Journal wrote a piece titled "Wealthy Families Are Writing Mission Statements to Avoid Fights, Lost Fortunes." If no family – happy or unhappy– is simple, what does it mean for a family to be intentional? Today on the Owner's Box, the power and limitations of a family mission statement, and what lessons are worth mining from multi-generational family bus...

On today’s episode, we hear from the two St. Louis entrepreneurs who made this collaboration happen: Kevin Lemp, owner of 4 Hands Brewing Co., and Bob Koplar, who manages the Voltron franchise that his father created. In developing a special Voltron beer, they’ve launched a creative partnership that is both commercially successful and a whole lot of fun. In today’s episode, Voltron Beer and balanc...

OpenAI's ownership redesign has the potential to shape how the technology on our screens and in our pockets affects our economy and our society. Can they deliver benefit to the public and profit to the few at the same time?

Straight out of college, today's guest wanted to make an impact on the African continent. For him, the best way to do this was through policy or the work of a nonprofit. But early into that work, it was the pull of business and its potential to drive social value that pulled him in. Today's guest, David Ellis, is the founder and CEO of Hatch Africa, a company seeking to bring a new business model...

One week before his passing, Giorgio Armani sat down with the Financial Times to talk about control, something he knew a thing or two about. In this episode, I unpack how Armani designed one of the most fascinating succession plans I’ve ever seen. Balancing legacy, leadership, and the hard question of when control becomes… too much control. Special Guest: Stuart Weitzman.

Today's guest, Dilawar Syed, is a perfect person to kick off this season. I met Dilawar last year while working with the Brookings Institution, focusing on the issue of aging business owners. At the time, Dilawar was Deputy Administrator of the Small Business Administration. His background is extensive, including his role as President of Freshworks, a company that serves small businesses. This spr...

In today’s episode, I talk to a craftsman who has explored the tradeoffs inherent in an over attentiveness to scale when developing a business – David Stine of David Stine Furniture. At the core, David is a craftsman, and this attention to the craft shapes everything from his approach to debt and growth, how he thinks about creativity, and even the rich life, broadly defined. Whether you run a sma...

What does it take to be an entrepreneur? What is the skill set that separates the entrepreneur from the rest of us? Might there even be a personality or gene that helps people be especially gifted here? In today’s episode we get to listen in to a short snippet of a recent conversation I had with John McDonnell, the leader and owner behind McDonnell Douglas which eventually sold to Boeing about wha...

In today’s episode, Peter Boumgarden sits down with Anna-Lisa Miller, Executive Director of Ownership Works. Her organization is built on a bold premise: that employee ownership—typically seen as separate from private equity—might actually enhance the impact of a private equity deal. It’s a rare intersection of two ownership models, and Anna-Lisa provides a peak beneath the hood of this design. Li...

For some people, a gig is a short-term step to something different, something bigger, an unspoken plan still not yet disclosed in the space unknowing between the front and back seat. To gain some insight into this space, I want to introduce you to Margarita Tsoutsoura, my colleague in the finance department of Olin Business School. Margarita’s research reminds us that the path toward starting some...

To be a healthy leader means to step back... and let other voices or instruments rise to the top. Today's short “Tactics from the Owner’s Box” takes us back to another clip from a recent episode—this one with the founder of KIND Bar, Daniel Lubetzky as he discusses the entrepreneur as orchestra director. Special Guest: Daniel Lubetzky.

In today’s episode, we learn from Katie Ford all about how one company shaped the modeling business, and what that means for the person holding the reins. Special Guest: Katie Ford.

If you have a company that strives to be, in their own words, “Kind to one’s tastebuds, body, and the world” -- can you tease out when it pays to be kind, and what you do when you have to assess that mission pragmatically? What about when you bring that novel supply chain to market. What works in the market, and how does it shape your path to getting there? In today’s episode, we look at the balan...

Over the past few years, I've had the privilege of listening to, learning from, and working alongside an extraordinary group of private business owners. These are the kind of people who, in their own quiet way, steer the course of the American economy all the while wrestling with the big, messy questions that come with running a business. Today, on "Tactics from the Owner's Box," I want to tackle...

Today’s episode, gets inside the mind of an inventor, and seeing how that work applies to community development in a small town in rural Missouri.

In today's tactics from "The Owner's Box" -- we are going to revisit a few voices from Season 1 to learn how they approached partnership, and what it might mean for your own venture. Special Guest: Jeremy King.

In 2021, the National Frozen & Refrigerated Foods Association and the American Frozen Food Institute inducted Richard Graeter into the 2021 Frozen Food Hall of Fame. His company is beloved by ice cream aficionados all around the country. So, what is it that makes Graeters Graeters, and how is this linked to the way this 4th generation family business operates? Special Guest: Richard Graeter.

A few weeks back, Peter Grant from the Wall Street Journal reached out with a question. How do families with real estate approach this investment differently than a fund? For Grant, the Wall Street Journal commercial real estate writer, his focus was on commercial real estate in New York. He had started to note something unusual in this space -- those families who had long committed to never sell...

In 2024, Peter Boumgarden had the opportunity to lead a group of researchers and commissioners in a shared venture between Washington University in St. Louis and the Brookings Institution looking at the shifts of ownership for privately held firms. Because of the amount of these that are owned by baby boomers, it is often called a kind of silver tsunami. Today, you are going to hear pieces of that...

For those of you playing along at home.... while this season has highlighted a number of different voices, there is at least one that is characteristically missing -- that of a female owner taking over leadership of their family business. Our discussion with Carolyn Kindle at St. Louis CITY SC hit on pieces of this work, but this was in the context of starting something new -- a soccer club in the...