Despite being the first person in his family to go to college, Marc Lore became a co-owner of the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves and a billionaire entrepreneur.   

From his apartment in New York City to an audience of about 25 EIU students and faculty in the Doudna Fine Arts Center’s Theatre, Lore talked over Zoom about this and his other startup businesses Thursday.  

Lore was a college student at Bucknell University when he started his first hedge fund, he said.   

He would graduate in 1993, and three years later he would start the Global Association of Risk Professionals while working for Credit Suisse First Boston. He said this was the first business he started, and it’s because he wanted to get certified as a financial risk manager.  

“I turned to my colleague, and I said, ‘Hey, what do you think if I created an exam to certify financial business managers?”’ Lore said. “People were like, ‘Who’s going to take your exam? You’re a kid.’”   

Lore created the exam anyway, and he started receiving checks from people to take it.  

“I did that just in a weekend, put the card in front of the horse,” Lore said. “I didn’t know how I was going to write the exam. I didn’t know anything about anything.”  

The Global Association of Risk Professionals’ financial risk managers certification now has certified 90,000 professionals and has been given in over 190 countries and regions, according to the site.  

Lore’s first million-dollar start-up was The Pit, Inc., an online sports card trading company that he started in 1999. According to Crunchbase.com, Lore and Bharara funded $4 million for The Pit, Inc.   

He and the other founder Vinit Bharara would go on to sell it to The Topps Company, Inc. for $5.7 million two years later.  

He said to the EIU audience that the way he has found success is by not being afraid of hearing no and not giving up, especially when trying to get funding from potential investors. 

“You can find that one person to believe in your idea and give you that first $25,000,” Lore said. “If you put your head down and just keep pitching and tweaking the pitch and don’t give up, then you can come together the million bucks. I think anybody can.” 

Kubicek organized the talk with Lore after he got an email last year from one of Lore’s team members about Lore speaking. 

During the Zoom call to Lore, professor in the Lumpkin college of business Evan Kubicek said it was great to have someone else tell his students they must persevere in the face of being told no.  

Lore said that he still hears a majority of no’s now.  

“I say it’s like eating glass. That’s what you do every day,” Lore said. “I’m eating glass and hoping I don’t get cut on the way down.”  

However, even when Lore is turned down, he said he makes sure to try and get recommendations from other people to ask from the person who told him no.  

“I almost never let them go when they say no. they feel guilty, so they are more likely to give you than even when they say yes,” he said.  

Graduate student Sai Karthik Alla who is getting his master’s in technology said this talk gave him the needed push to pursue some of the business ideas he has.  

“I think today I got some knowledge regarding how we need to start, how we need to think. Like we don’t need to wait for something to start,” he said. 

This idea of getting out of the comfort zone and hearing no many times are things that Kubicek said rural Midwest communities like Charleston struggle with.  

“I think we’re very risk-averse,” Kubicek said. “We like things to be safe and consistent in the Midwest, and that’s counterintuitive when it comes down to entrepreneurship.” 

Lore gave advice on how to launch a startup in a rural area like Charleston.  

“I would look for inefficiencies, look for opportunities for whatever primary industry is in that area and look for ways to disrupt it,” Lore said.  

He said to use AI and technologies to see what can be disrupted.  

“AI is the great equalizer,” he said.  

Lore said after creating an idea of how to disrupt an industry in the area, raise capital from people who back the idea.  

“I think the challenge that we face in a rural area is that we just have less people,” Kubicek said. “Like if you’re in New York and you’ve got millions of people around you, you’re going to find ten billionaires. There’s not a lot of them around here, but you don’t need a billionaire on your side. You can find a collection of people that are willing to believe in what you’re doing.”  

Kubicek emphasized that the community of Charleston and surrounding areas, as well as other rural Midwest areas, struggle with change and taking risks. Although, he said that to get improvement some type of risk needs to be taken.  

“We’re so used to things slowly getting less and less and less over time that’s our normal. And I think that’s that idea that it doesn’t have to be our normal,” he said. 

Kubicek said he doesn’t think anyone at the level of Lore has spoken to students at Eastern before, especially while they are still at the peak of what they’re doing.  

However, he mentioned that there are things always happening around campus, but students just need to go to them.  

“If we want to have exciting things, we got to support what we’ve got,” he said. “Show up to events that we have, be present, put energy into it. And as we do that, we’ll see more things come as well.” 

Bryce Parker can be reached at 581-2812 or at baparker2@eiu.edu.