ideas

  • 27 Sep 2010 at 9:55 AM

David Tepper Narrows Down His Ideas About What To Do With Billions Of Dollars

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It might seem all fun and games but there is a downside to being a billionaire. Namely, the task of coming up with what to do with your shit-tons of money. It’s not that, at 53 years old, David Tepper hasn’t had plenty of time to think about how he might put his stacks of coin to use. In fact, according to his sister, as a little boy he predicted he’d be a millionaire “before turning 30.” So, we’re talking decades here. But back in a suburb of Pittsburgh, when the Appaloosa founder was looking at a railing on the front porch and asking his brother, “If I put my head in there, would it get suck,” hadn’t dreamed he’d have the amount of money he does today. And those extra zeros really kind of expand your options to be limitless, making the task all the more difficult. Along the way, ideas, of course, have presented themselves. He could, for instance:

* Pay for a whole bunch of kids to go to college. But Tepps isn’t too keen on that one. “I’m gonna have somebody put together a form letter for that,” he says. “It’ll say something like, I’m going to give you a great gift. What I got: Nothing.”

* Have a mold of his balls made (but a former employee already gave him just those, in all their “cartoonishly huge and grotesquely veiny” glory) or a pair of tits for everyone in the office (ditto on that base already being covered: “We had this client, they make breast implants,” says a former employee. “He loved to keep them on the desk, he’d love to throw them around.”)

* Get back at the girlfriend of five years, Cindy Perl, who dumped him, citing a question in her mind as to whether or not he’d be able to “support the lifestyle” she was hoping for, by, I don’t know, hiring one of those skywriting planes to leave the message “How do you like me now, bitch?” every morning over her house? But the poor girl has probably suffered enough, having married a dentist.

* Buy a private jet? No: “I have NetJets.”

* A piece of the Steelers? Already owns a minority stake.

* A hot piece of just barely legal ass? “I could get myself a 22-year-old!” he says, but then there is the matter of the wife of thirty years, Marlene.

Okay, well WHAT THEN? Think, god damn it, THINK. Continue reading »

  • 16 Sep 2010 at 1:26 PM

Confidential To Any Hedge Fund Managers Looking To Distract Clients From Dismals Returns At Next Investor Dinner

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And/or just get people to say “this fund goes the extra mile.” Get in touch with this guy. Continue reading »

  • 09 Sep 2010 at 5:15 PM

Layoffs Watch ’10-’11: Capitalize On The Millions Of People Who’ve Always Wanted To See A Wall Streeter Scrub A Toilet

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Earlier this week, Meredith Whitney forecast that Wall Street firms will cut 80,000 jobs in the next 18 months. Naturally we hope the Dollar Dominatrix is off in her prognostication but in the event she’s seeing the ball on this one, it’s important to think about what you might do in the event you are unfortunately axed. An equally desirable gig in the financial services industry might not immediately present itself. In the interim, you may need to do something to tide yourself over. Perhaps involving rubber gloves and that French maid outfit you’ve been dying to put to use. Take a page from this enterprising lady’s playabook. Continue reading »

  • 23 Jun 2010 at 10:30 AM

Charlie Gasparino Inspires Entreprenuer

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Joseph Collins had a novel reaction to “Blood on the Street: The Sensational Inside Story of How Wall Street Analysts Duped a Generation of Investors.” The 2005 book by Charles Gasparino, now of Fox Business News, inspired Collins to create a potentially revolutionary Internet communications tool. “I was reading Charlie’s book and I thought it was very unfair that Eliot Spitzer could just walk into companies and demand their email,” Collins recalled. Spitzer was New York’s Attorney General when the Internet busted, and he exposed a steady stream of embarrassing emails from Wall Street cheats. Some of the most memorable were from Merrill Lynch’s former star Internet analyst Henry Blodget calling a company he was publicly hyping “a pos.” That stood for “piece of” something I can’t even spell in this column. What the world really needed, Collins decided after reading Gasparino’s book, were emails that couldn’t be copied, forwarded or saved. That way, people could speak candidly without worrying about overreaching snoops like Spitzer.Collins, 32, a Northwestern University graduate, was struggling to build a chain of gas stations amid rising real estate and gasoline prices. He saw a brighter future in designing disappearing emails. The result is VaporStream electronic conversation software, which is available on a free-trial basis at www.vaporstream.com. “It’s just a new form of instant messaging or email,” Collins said. “We like to think of it as the natural evolution of online communications.”

  • 22 Jun 2010 at 4:16 PM

Jeff Macke Has Incredible Business Idea For Comcast

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Two words: “More Macke.” Continue reading »

  • 25 May 2010 at 5:41 PM

Three Words: Eliot Spitzer TV

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Just putting it out there. A little taste. You want it? This guy thinks we can make it happen, if we appeal to Spitzer’s need to be heard. Continue reading »

  • 21 May 2010 at 2:11 PM

Will Having One Designated Naked Day At The Office Help Productivity?

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One expert who’s consulted for HSBC and IBM feels day sans clothes is the way to go, noting that “if you get such a huge fear/inhibition out of the way, it will make your team stronger. More open. More honest.” And when one firm in London actually gave it a test drive last year, the reviews were pretty solid.

“It was brilliant. Now that we’ve seen each other naked, there are no barriers,” said the one female employee who went Full Monty told CNBC. “It was emotional but we found we were much more able to talk to each other honestly — and have been since. The company has improved massively.”

Continue reading »