John Freund (business executive)

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John Freund
John Freund.jpg
Alma mater Harvard University
Occupation(s)Founder and CEO of Skyline Ventures
Website www.skylineventures.com/team/john_freund.asp

John Freund is an American satirist and business executive. [1] [2] Freund and collaborator David Porter created the 1981 satirical poster Bedtime for Brezhnev [3] [4] [5] and co-authored the 1982 satirical book The Official MBA Handbook or How to Succeed in Business Without a Harvard MBA, [1] which spent 16 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. [6] [7] Freund is the co-founder of Intuitive Surgical, [8] and the co-founder and former CEO of Arixa Pharmaceuticals. [9] He founded Skyline Ventures in 1997. [2]

Contents

Early life and education

Freund grew up in New York City. He graduated in 1975 with a B.A. from Harvard [1] where he was an editor of the Harvard Crimson . [10] [11] [12] After completing his B.A., Freund received an M.D. from Harvard Medical School. [13] He received an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1982. [1]

Career

Early career

In April 1981, while enrolled in Harvard Business School, Freund collaborated with classmate David Porter on a satirical poster for an imaginary movie called Bedtime for Brezhnev, featuring then-president Ronald Reagan. [3] [11] [5] The poster sold 275,000 copies, [14] and sales of Bedtime for Brezhnev earned them enough money to pay their second year tuition. [1] [5] In the 2021 book Cowboy Presidents, it was reported that Reagan was rumored to have loved the poster. [14] In 1982, Freund and David Porter co-authored the book The Official MBA Handbook or How to Succeed in Business Without a Harvard MBA, which they published under the pen names Jim Fisk and Robert Barron, respectively. [1] [15] The idea for the book first emerged when Freund and Porter approached the publisher Simon & Schuster to distribute Bedtime for Brezhnev, but the head of trade paperbacks instead suggested the pair write a satirical book about MBA's. [13] [16] At the time of the book's release, both men were preparing to start jobs with investment banks. [1] [11] The Official MBA Handbook or How to Succeed in Business Without a Harvard MBA spent 16 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. [6] [7]

Medical startups

Freund began his business career as an investment banker in 1982 with Morgan Stanley. [6] In 1995, he co-founded the robotics startup Intuitive Surgical. [8] [17] Freund negotiated a licensing agreement with SRI for surgical technology that formed the nucleus of Intuitive Surgical's line of products. [2] Freund founded the venture capital firm Skyline Ventures in 1997 [2] [6] to invest in early-stage biotech. [18] Skyline was the lead investor in SI-Bone, a manufacturer of sacroiliac fusion implants that became commercially available in 2009. Following the investment, Freund joined the board of directors. [19] In 2016, [20] Freund co-founded the antibiotics manufacturer Arixa Pharmaceuticals and served as the company's CEO. [9] During Freund's tenure, the company developed ARX-1796, [21] an oral version of a β-lactamase inhibitor called avibactam that was previously only able to be administered intravenously. [22] Freund ran Arixa Pharmaceuticals as a virtual company, crediting low-overhead costs in the development of ARX-1796. [21] Arixa Pharmaceuticals was acquired by Pfizer in 2020. [9]

Personal life

In 1979, Freund married Linda Gray Sexton, a writer and the daughter of the Pulitzer prize winning poet Anne Sexton. [6] They divorced in 1998. [6] Freund is married to Linda S. Grais. [23]

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Ross, Nancy L. (12 September 1982). "Harvard Spoof Brings Degree of Success". Washington Post. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Carlsen, Clifford (28 December 1997). "JMedical financier ready to operate after raising $23M". San Francisco Business Journal. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  3. 1 2 "Poster Pranksters". Washington Post. No. 27 August 1981. Retrieved 30 May 2023.
  4. ↑ "TWO CAPITALIST TOOLS TELL US HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING TO GET AN MBA". People. No. 20 December 1982.
  5. 1 2 3 Heinzel, Ron S. (27 June 1982). "$5 Education May Supplant Harvard MBA". LA Times.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Berman, Jeffrey (3 September 2019). Mad Muse: The Mental Illness Memoir in a Writer's Life and Work. Emerald Publishing. pp. 190–198. ISBN   978-1-78973-807-0.
  7. 1 2 Tumulty, Karen (6 December 1982). "MBA Spoof Nothing to Laugh At". LA Times.
  8. 1 2 Tindera, Michela (14 February 2019). "BILLIONAIRES DAILY COVER Robot Wars: $60B Intuitive Surgical Dominated Its Market For 20 Years. Now Rivals Like Alphabet Are Moving In". Forbes. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  9. 1 2 3 Vermes, Krystle (23 October 2020). "Could Arixa Pharmaceuticals' Lead Product Pave the Way for More Efficient Antibiotics?". BioSpace. Retrieved 26 May 2023.
  10. ↑ "J.G. Freund Weds Linda Sexton". New York Times. 20 August 1979. Retrieved 29 May 2023.
  11. 1 2 3 Gertson, Jill (11 July 1982). "Spoofing M.B.A. for big bucks". Providence Sunday Journal.
  12. ↑ "Linda Sexton, John Freund Set Wedding". New York Times. 15 July 1979. Retrieved 8 June 2023.
  13. 1 2 Walters, Ray (20 June 1982). "PAPERBACK TALK; Wits of the 80's". New York Times. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  14. 1 2 Smith, David A. (2021). Cowboy Presidents: The Frontier Myth and U.S. Politics since 1900. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN   978-0-8061-6848-7.
  15. ↑ Herman, Tom (14 April 2013). "It's Easy to File for an Extension". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 30 May 2023.
  16. ↑ Kelly, John F. (12 September 1982). "Spoofing M.B.A for big bucks". The Baltimore Sun.
  17. ↑ Hockstein, N.G.; Gourin, C.G.; Faust, R.A.; Terris, D.J. (27 March 2017). "A history of robots: from science fiction to surgical robotics". Journal of Robotic Surgery. 1 (2): 113–118. doi:10.1007/s11701-007-0021-2. PMC   4247417 . PMID   25484946.
  18. ↑ Carroll, John (10 August 2011). "Skyline's Freund slams FDA's tougher stance on drug programs". Fierce Biotech. Retrieved 30 May 2023.
  19. ↑ Young, Robin (11 February 2022). "HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO GET EXCLUSIVE REIMBURSEMENT STATUS?". Orthopedics This Week. Retrieved 4 July 2023.
  20. ↑ "SEC Schedule 14a" . Retrieved 7 June 2023.
  21. 1 2 Al Idrus, Amirah (22 October 2020). "Pfizer snaps up antibiotics maker Arixa and its oral Avycaz follow-up". Fierce Biotech. Retrieved 30 May 2023.
  22. ↑ Satyanarayana, Megha (16 December 2018). "The hunt for new antibiotics grows harder as resistance builds". Chemical and Engineering News. Retrieved 13 June 2023.
  23. ↑ "SEC Schedule 14a". sec.gov. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
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