TINTON FALLS – Entrepreneur Mark Lore can still remember when his biology teacher at Ranney School would always announce the students who got the highest and lowest scores on a test.
Roa was the worst, scoring 8 out of 100.
“It was very embarrassing,” Lore said. “I wasn’t the best student, but I was very proud. I was very motivated. I got the highest score on the next exam.”
Lore, who has launched startups Diapers.com, Jet.com and his latest venture, Wonder, was named Friday as the inaugural member of the Ranney School’s “Hall of Legends,” with a $1 million donation. commemorated the occasion. to the school to build a new playground.
This event marked a homecoming for Roa. He addressed students, classmates, family and friends during a fireside chat moderated by alumnus and former Southern District of New York Attorney Preet Bharara.
“Mark is not only a distinguished alumnus who embodies qualities of leadership, contribution, and creativity, but also an amazing, visionary, innovative, world-class, and truly transformative person who has accomplished many things. ” said John Griffiths, the school’s principal.
These days, Lore, 53, is working on Wonder, a company that has created a new food concept called “Fast Fine,” where consumers can order meals made by top chefs for pickup or delivery. The company has 21 locations in the region and plans to open an additional 80 locations within the next 16 months. The expansion also includes stores in Monmouth and Ocean counties.
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Meanwhile, Rohr and former New York Yankees player Alex Rodriguez, who own minority stakes in the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves and WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx, are embroiled in a dispute over control over majority shareholder Glen Taylor. are. A decision on the matter is expected to be made after an arbitration hearing in November.
Mr. Rohr touched on the ups and downs of his student days and his career, and left a heart-touching message for the students.
Connolly Chavez, 17, a senior at Rumson University, said: “Even though he wasn’t the best academically, it was great to see him push through his career and be so successful.” That’s very wonderful,” he said.
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Ms. Lore attended Ms. Ranney after moving with her family from Staten Island to Middletown when she was 10 years old. Lore said he was something of a clown in the ranks of those detained on Saturdays. But he found a teacher who saw his strengths and spent extra time to bring them out.
He was a member and leading athlete on the school’s track and field team, winning the 1989 New Jersey Independent School Athletic Association championship in the 55-meter dash with a time of 6.5 seconds.
And he made lasting friends. On Friday, 10 of the 34 members of Lore’s senior class attended the commencement ceremony. That includes Preet’s younger brother, Vinit Bharara, who worked with Lore to found Diapers.com, a diaper delivery service, which he sold to Amazon for $545 million.
Rohr detailed a roller coaster of 100-hour work weeks and more failures than successes, noting that successful entrepreneurs need to be resilient.
He started Wonder with 450 food trucks equipped with high-speed impingement ovens to cook food on the street, but told investors he would scrap the idea, start over and take an $80 million loss. Ta. He said he decided to open a brick-and-mortar location instead because it offers a more consistent experience and better food at a lower cost.
“If we didn’t have trucks, we would never have had the technology to do what we do in brick-and-mortar stores,” Rohr said after our fireside conversation. “That’s why you always have to look for the silver lining.”
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Lore said he is not driven by money, but by the chance to build something from the ground up that can bring joy to people’s lives. Some of his ideas, such as Diapers.com, solve everyday problems. Some are not, such as building a utopian city called Telosa to provide generous social services without heavy taxes.
But by learning what makes each person special and treating them with empathy, he said he developed a leadership style that stuck with Lanny. And he learned that the past is the past. You have time to recover from a bad performance.
“Don’t waste your time worrying about things you can’t change or might happen,” Lore says. “It’s just day-to-day. Do the best you can today and be patient. Like, ‘I’m going to go to this college, I’m going to get that job, I’m going to get this internship, I’m going to get this job.’ You don’t have to plan your whole life with this person. ‘It’s too prescriptive and you lose some of your creativity and what drives you. ”
Michael L. Diamond is a business reporter for the Asbury Park Press. He has been writing about New Jersey’s economy and health care industry since 1999. He can be reached at mdiamond@gannettnj.com.
