Chief Inspector

CAMBRIDGE -- Robert Stephens is a self-described geek who never had a date in high school so he went to art college to meet girls.

"I loved video games and computers and took every course in high school I could. But then I ran out of courses and noticed that the art classes had way more girls so I signed up for art," he said.

He was good enough to get a scholarship into Chicago's prestigious Art Institute but after a year transferred to the University of Minnesota to study computer science.

"I didn't want to be a starving artist," he said in a recent interview at a conference held at Harvard University. "I got a job at the research lab, saw the Internet, the first browser, email. I loved it. I worked on the side making house calls. I had one foot in academia and one in the real world."

He dropped out of school in 1994 and formed the Geek Squad, which is now an army of 15,000 "geeks" who make an average of three house calls daily around North America and rake in hundreds of millions in fees.

In 2002, Mr. Stephens sold his Geek Squad to retail giant Best Buy as an add-on service to its 700 box stores selling electronics and computer equipment. He is now "Founder and Chief Inspector" of the Squad and works out of Best Buy's Minneapolis headquarters.

Ironically, his Squad is growing faster than Best Buy. It sells its services through the stores but also has an 800 number that anyone can use. The combination, and its brand name recognition, has made it the go-to home repair or installation service.

"More than half our business is now the 800 number," he said. "The Geek Squad will be bigger than Best Buy in 10 years. 70% of its revenue now [US$1 Billion] is the Geek Squad."

Only 36 years old, he made millions in stock and cash from the sale but obviously enjoys being "Chief Inspector". He audits Squad performances and protects its unique culture.

Its members dress in black and white, drive black and white branded vehicles, value punctuality, carry badges and earn ranks such as "special agent" or "double agent". It is a culture that attracts and retains people and has garnered enormous publicity. He thought of the name while riding his bike between classes to register the company in Minnesota for $15.

"I named it the Geek Squad so that people thought we were friendly but an army of people dedicated 24-7 to service. It was psychological," he said. "I'm not a CEO but the Chief Inspector. It's like a pseudo government organization. You have the police, firemen and the geek squad. That's why we have black and white cars."

The company took off immediately.

"In a year I knew this was a terrific business. We spent no money for marketing or public relations. We realized that showing up on time was the best advertising," he said. "And our motto is: we don't sleep, we don't date, we've never seen a grown person naked and we spend all our time reading those manuals. We're the Geek Squad."

Besides being a natural marketer, he recognized the niche immediately.

"I realized there was a consumer collision," he said. "Everybody wanted to sell the equipment to consumers but nobody wanted to do the service."

He hired his first employee after six months in operation and eventually expanded to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. Along the way, his Squad became computer repair to the stars and counted the Rolling Stones, Dr. Phil and Oprah as clients, not to mention many wealthy business people who hired them for training, installation and repairs.

"The advice I got from multimillionaires whose computers I fixed was take your time and grow the business," he said. "I was doubling every year but knew the business was not robust enough to scale. So I concentrated on growing the business model with attention to the culture, the name, web dispatch systems and so on, then looked for a strategic partner."

Since his alliance with Best Buy in a handful of years, the Squad has mushroomed from 65 employees to its current army of 15,000.

"I took the company as far as I could. Franchising wasn't an option because there would be too many independent owners. I looked at going public but as a standalone it would not have worked for years and I didn't want private investors. I needed synergies and Best Buy needed the competency," he said.

"We dated for two years before we married which is the best way to develop a good relationship," he said.

The Geek Squad is a lot like Mr. Stephens. He's a plainspoken Chicago native, the youngest of seven children, who doesn't take himself seriously but certainly takes business seriously.

"Advertising is a tax you pay on having an unremarkable brand," he said. "And I've learned that the only competition we have is ourselves."

Robert Shiller's Brilliant Idea

NEW YORK CITY -- Runaway bestseller “Irrational Exuberance” documented how technology breakthroughs inevitably result in stock market bubbles and catastrophe.

Its author, Yale Professor Robert Shiller has written another, “The New Financial Order”, which discusses how globalization and sweeping change threatens the “real assets” of people such as their incomes and value of their homes.

His prescription is to create imaginative financial hedging products, or insurances. And this April, his consulting firm, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and investment banking partners plan to launch their first unorthodox “product” which will be designed to protect homeowners from losing any value on their homes.

"We want to launch the first real estate risk instrument. Real estate is bigger than the stock market, where hedging takes place, but single family homeowners have no way to hedge," he said in a recent interview. "A number of attempts have been made to provide this and they haven't worked, but it's going to come."

Essentially, homeowners will be able to eliminate any downside in value. This will be done through the use of futures: Homeowners or others will bet price drops will occur on average in 10 U.S. cities, thus allowing them to profit from losses which would, in turn, fully or partially offset their own drop in value.

"Imagine a broker being able to offer a homeowner a product which meant his house would never go down in value?" he said. “It will be very popular if the price is right.”

His book also explored other financial products that don’t exist yet, but should, such as insurance which would allow a worker to insure his or her future income stream against layoffs, downsizings, rationalizations or competition.

Professor Shiller’s work combines behavioural economics and risk management.
In this case, he has come up with profound ways to help mankind.
Income insurance and property protection insurance would give people enormous peace of mind, stabilize economies and shore up consumer confidence. It would create an economic boon.

He believes that financial markets will find ways to price these products and offer them to the public in a “win-win” fashion.

“We should be able to find a market for everything and we are only at the beginning of risk management in the world," he said. "What's changed is information technology which has allowed these products to be created. For instance, on-line auctioning is providing a market for people to take millions of risks each day. We want to provide a hedge that will change the world."

The home value protection product will fluctuate based on a Home Price Index that Shiller’s company, Macro Securities Research, devised 15 years ago.

He and the Exchange anticipate a huge market, but there are a number of obstacles to be overcome before the product can be offered to small, retail clients.

The sellers are plentiful and appetite for risk by institutional financiers is enormous even for the unorthodox. For instance, Swiss Re sold nearly US$800 million worth of "Lethal Epidemic Funds" to pension funds which would "benefit" if an epidemic wiped out many of their pensioners.

The Shiller group’s challenge is to determine how to price these products for both buyer and seller. But the fact is that there's a huge amount of capital out there looking for returns better than are now available in stocks and bonds.

"It all boils down to price," he said.
At the right price, there's plenty of players even willing to insure, and reinsure, the top three catastrophic risks currently in the world: North Atlantic hurricanes; an earthquake in California or one in Tokyo, said insurance executives.

Shiller’s product represents true breakthrough for humanity, an even greater benefit for our economies and psyches than our ancestors enjoyed.

Imagine what life was like before fire insurance was invented? It was nasty, brutish and bankrupt. House fires before insurance used to wipe out families and even cities. It still does in the developing world.

Now imagine life with protection against lower real estate prices for your home? Or protection against the bubble in your local real estate bursting, leaving you owing on a mortgage that's higher than the value of the underlying property?

Or, eventually, a way to protect your income until retirement age, whether you lose your job or not.
"There have been many attempts at this and like every innovation it takes time," said the shy Professor. "But we've learned from the mistakes of others, just as the Wright Brothers did. Lots of planes crashed before one actually flew. These will eventually fly and change the world."