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The Luckiest Roommates

Sep 18 2008
Yearbook opened up
Warren Buffett and Chuck Peterson
Ortenberg and Chazen
Sander, Herlihy, Giarraputo, Coraci
Gates and Ballmer
Armstrong and Beatty
Wilson and Anderson
Egan and Morino
Moskovitz, Hughes, Zuckerberg
1 of 12
Fortuitous Pairings
View the slides to see a few fortuitous pairings that led to big successes in business. Text by Jessica Liebman.
Wharton, Univ. of Pennsylvania
Berkshire Hathaway
Buffett left after two years but later earned his bachelor’s degree and M.B.A. In 1956, he formed his first partnership, Buffett Associates, with seven people, including Peterson.

Univ. of Wisconsin
Liz Claiborne
In 1975, Ortenberg and his wife, Liz Claiborne, founded their fashion business with a loan from Claiborne’s uncle. Chazen signed on as a partner a year later.

New York University
Happy Madison Productions
Herlihy is a regular co-writer on Sandler’s films, and two other friends from N.Y.U. have worked with the actor as well: Giarraputo is co-producer of Happy Madison Productions, and Coraci directed The Wedding Singer and The Waterboy.
The Luckiest Roommates
Microsoft
Mutual friends introduced the Currier House dormmates. Gates quit Harvard; Ballmer graduated and later became Microsoft’s 24th employee and first business manager.

Connecticut College
Associated Content
Armstrong, a Google vice president, backed Beatty’s idea in 2004 for an open-source website similar to Wikipedia.

The Univ. of Texas, Austin
American Empirical Pictures
The two made their debut in 1994 with Bottle Rocket, a short film that was later remade as a feature. They still collaborate regularly, most recently on The Darjeeling Limited.

Northeastern University
EMC
The duo founded the data-storage company in 1979. Egan retired in 2001 and is now chairman emeritus; Marino became a film producer and recently bid on the Boston Red Sox.

Harvard University
Facebook
Zuckerberg enlisted the help of his roommates to develop the social-networking site before dropping out of college. Moskovitz is now vice president of engineering at Facebook, while Hughes moved on to run the website for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

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