MarketWatch founder preaches hard work

Breaking financial news, media entrepreneurship and IPOs can be fairly obscure topics.

But Larry Kramer -- the founder, CEO and chairman of MarketWatch.com -- is just the man to help clear things up.

MarketWatch.com, the leading multimedia publisher and distributor of business and financial news and data, is geared not only toward Wall Street traders, but also toward the entire Internet community.

The company was just acquired by Dow Jones, the owner of The Wall Street Journal, for $520 million.

Kramer discussed the recent success of his company as well as media entrepreneurship, the ups and downs of the Internet and big media with interested students in Huntsman Hall last night.

"You have a right to believe that if you go to our front page, you'd know what is going on in the financial and news world," he said.

MarketWatch.com currently employs 120 reporters, editors and columnists in nine bureaus located around the world -- including in Tokyo, London and New York City -- and publishes anywhere from 800 to 1400 news items daily.

Kramer also explained the differences between newspaper and Internet journalism.

"On the Web, if you write something that's wrong, you can still correct the version of the story," he said, whereas "in the paper, you sit and stare and hope you haven't screwed up too much."

Another important difference involving Internet journalism is that it has "a never-ending deadline."

MarketWatch.com took in $80 million in revenues last year and $4 million in profits.

"Nice, for the second year of profitability," he added.

Kramer also addressed his idea of success.

"It shouldn't be that you have an [initial public offering] and become millionaires overnight," he said. "You're supposed to build up, work hard and then make money."

Marketwatch.com's IPO, however, did in fact create several millionaires.

Kramer had expected the company to be valued around $16 million; however, initial valuations placed the company between $90 and $100 million, drawing laughter from the mostly MBA-student audience.

Audience members were impressed by the speech.

"I came because I didn't know much about the media and IPOs," said Hitesh Kumar, a Wharton MBA student. "He was quite insightful, and [the speech] was interesting and useful."

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