A Teddy Bear Story, By John
Sortino
I am the founder and was
the CEO of the Vermont Teddy Bear Company for 15 years. The ride was really fun, a lot of hard work
and full of great stories.
In 1993, the 13th
year of my leadership, we went public; I sold 20% of the company for 10 million
dollars. We were the third most success
IPO on NASDAQ in 1993. The share I created
when I started the company was worth one cent.
The day I went public, I
sold that same share for 10 dollars. By
the end of the day, that penny stock had climbed to over 20 dollars. The
Teddy Bear Company was worth 100 million.
I had 1,300,000 shares. In one
day, I made 13 million dollars.
The Teddy Bear Story is
about stock, and all the stores of this Entrepreneur CEO and founder.
If you are going to become
an entrepreneur and start a company, you will someday have great stories too.
