Read Gary's Member Platform on "The Future of Mexico."

Who is Gary Hoover?                                        

Gary Hoover began his entrepreneurial journey at an early age.  He grew up in Anderson, Indiana, a General Motors factory town, and began asking questions about business at an early age.  Convinced that the best way to change the world (for the better) was to lead or create enterprises, he started subscribing to Fortune Magazine when he was 12.  While other kids were playing baseball, he was memorizing the Fortune 500.  He visited hundreds of corporate headquarters and offices before he was 18, and studied the stock market in depth.  His question was the same, “What separates the losers from the winners?” 

In this quest, Gary’s research was not limited to for-profit enterprises, but included the study of all types of enterprise from empires to unions, from General Motors to the United States of America.  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 giant May Department Stores Company. 

At the age of 30, he finally took the plunge and created pioneering book superstore BOOKSTOP, which helped change the nature of book shopping in America.  BOOKSTOP also won kudos for its preservation and restoration of historic buildings such as old movie theatres.  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, which today does over $4 Billion in annual sales out of 600-plus stores.

After he and his partners sold BOOKSTOP, Gary returned to his first love of understanding businesses, and (in 1990) began a small business information publisher, the Reference Press.  This company, initially under the leadership of Gary’s college friend Patrick J. Spain, evolved into Hoover’s, Inc., the world’s largest Internet-based provider of information about enterprises.  Hoover’s Online, at www.hoovers.com, covers over 40,000 companies around the world, and includes private, public, and non-profit enterprises.  Millions of users from all countries access Hoover’s every day for the site’s easy-to-use and easy-to-read information on enterprises, generating hundreds of millions of page views a year.  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.  This is what Gary Hoover started out to do as a teenager.

Hoover also knows failure, having started travel superstore TravelFest in 1993 – and closing it down in 1998-99 as airlines slashed commissions to travel agents.

Today, Gary Hoover travels the world speaking to Fortune 500 executives, trade associations, entrepreneurs, and college and high school students about how enterprises are built and how they stand the test of time.  His speeches and workshops have ranged from the Hong Kong and Jakarta chapters of YEO (Young Entrepreneurs Organization) to keynote at the National Association of Convenience Stores Convention and the Mid-Atlantic Venture Capital Conference, from Oracle client conferences to strategic planning meetings of major law firms. 

From his own successes and failures, and from the lessons of the thousands of companies studied by Hoover’s, he draws real-life examples of the things that really matter.  He talks about the role of history, of geography, of demography, of curiosity, and the other key things that aren’t discussed every day in the newspaper – or the classroom.  Gary speaks from long experience and long study about the big picture, about the critical components of the successful business mission. 

Gary lives in Austin, Texas, with his 40,000-book personal research library.  In Austin, he has worked to develop entrepreneurial thinking among local young people, helping to create a group of students who meet monthly to learn the keys to entrepreneurial success.

His ideas are revealed in depth in his book, Hoover’s Vision: Original Thinking for Business Success, available from your online bookseller.  Visit www.hooversvision.com to learn more about the book and read essays by Gary Hoover on the future of retailing, media, financial services, non-profits, and other enterprises.

Gary Hoover also maintains a list of new business ideas, now over 100 concepts, as reported in Fortune Small Business Magazine in the spring of 2002.  He is presently focused on ways to serve the aging baby boom market, including such realms as the nostalgia and history industries, the adult education and museum industries, and leading edge tourism concepts.  He is working on a project to help convert his home region in Indiana from a 20th century industrial zone to a 21st century service economy center.

In the spring of 2002, Gary’s alma mater the University of Chicago opened Hoover House dormitory, named in honor of Hoover for the gifts of stock in his companies made to the University over the last 20 years.  He continues to be an active supporter of nonprofit entrepreneurship, particularly in education.

Read Gary's Member Platform on "The Future of Mexico."