PrintThis fall, high-profile technology tycoon Dan Rosensweig was appointed as Columbia Business School’s newest executive in residence, a position that entails giving guest lectures, working with campus clubs, and advising students with similar interests on career planning, strategy, and professional development. After an impressive career in the business world, Rosensweig is currently the CEO of Chegg.com, a new online textbook-rental company for college students that has reached over $160 million in venture capital over the past few years. Rosensweig sat down with The Eye to discuss the advancement of technology, and how products like the iPad are changing the world.
How and why did you get involved in the technology industry?
Well, by accident, truthfully. When I graduated college I needed to get a job and I wanted to earn as much money as I could because we didn’t have any money. So I interviewed at a bunch of places and one of them was a place called Ziff Davis, which published a whole bunch of great magazines back in the day: Car and Driver, Road & Track, Stereo Review, all those sorts of hot, special-interest magazines. … By the time I started two weeks later everyone who had interviewed me had moved to a different division called the computer magazine division. So, completely by luck, I ended up getting into the computer industry through computer magazines because all the people who interviewed me switched jobs. So that’s how I started in the tech industry.
How do you think technological gadgets like the iPad will change the way we live?
Technology that democratizes the access to information and makes it easier for people to get what they need in order to be successful, to follow their own passions, to create more of a meritocracy rather than a bureaucracy—which lets people do the things that they know how to do and get rewarded for it—is very exciting for me. There are probably close to a million developers that develop for Facebook right now, and hundreds of thousands who do it for the iPod and will do it for the iPad. So I don’t know if the iPad will end up being the winner or if something else will end up being the winner, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is the ability to get access to information and let everybody learn, participate, contribute, and create.
Which do you think has been the most influential technological advancement you’ve seen?
Well, I think they’ve all connected to each other. What was fascinating was a time somewhere around 1995 when people sort of thought the technology industry had come to an end. Microsoft started to dominate the software category, Apple had sort of fallen away—they had 3 percent market share—and there really wasn’t a lot of software being developed anymore. Then along come companies like Netscape, Yahoo!, Amazon, and all of a sudden it switched from software to this thing called the Internet. That, and the shift to mobile phones, is probably the biggest technological boom that I’ve seen in my lifetime because basically it democratized the access to information. Everybody could suddenly get it, and everybody had access to the same thing. For example, Yahoo! Finance sort of blew everybody away; back in the day, if you wanted to get a stock quote in the afternoon and you didn’t have a stockbroker, you had to wait until the next morning to buy the Wall Street Journal and read the stock quotes. But suddenly with Yahoo! Finance, you could get the stock quotes, you could get news about the company, you could understand who was buying and selling the stocks, and whom they competed with. So I think the Internet is really the underpinning of everything that has changed the way we live, and it’s the way your generation has grown up.
Do you ever see any downsides to the prevalence of highly technological gadgets in our lives?
Whoever created the statement “everything in moderation” was right. There are downsides to everything that you do. However, there are many more upsides to giving people access to information, access to tools that they need to do the things they want to do, access to study, access to learn, access to communicate, and share. Every iteration of technology has its flaws, problems, and people who abuse it, but it has truly advanced everything we do in terms of globalization, communication, and the ability to learn about things. The advantages significantly outweigh any of the consequences, so far.
How can you attribute any of your beliefs or successes to your time at Columbia Business School?
The reason I do this, the Executive in Residence Program, is, one, I love New York, and two, I love young people who are striving to be the best. People who have come to Columbia really have worked hard to get here and are working hard while they’re here. They have big dreams and aspirations, and just need a little bit of help getting started on the next phase of their life. I’ve had a chance to meet with about 25 students since I’ve been doing this, and it’s always students that want to come and meet with me once a month. I really get excited about their energy and creativity, and it allows me to stay in touch with what’s going on with technology.
Do you have any advice for someone who might be pursuing a career path like the one you’ve taken?
I went to a liberal arts college and the reason I did it is because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I just wanted to learn how to think things through and understand; if there’s a problem, how to figure out how to fix the problem without having a specific discipline in any one problem… because, frankly, people succeed doing what they’re passionate about, and never succeed doing what they’re not passionate about. Also, it’s better to look forward. … Looking at the younger generation that has shown the ability to step up—the kinds of guys who developed Foursquare or Twitter—I love the fact that these guys have very little respect for the past. They are trying to build the future, and doing it the best way they know how while utilizing what’s available. This is looking forward. The only thing that’s better in the past than the future right now, in my opinion, is music. We hold the only sustainable bands—Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin.