2016 Best MBAs: Pete Mathias, Dartmouth Tuck

Pete Mathias Dartmouth

Pete Mathias

Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth         

“When Pete Mathias asked a question from the back row in our first class of the Entrepreneurial Thinking course in January 2015, I mistook him for a harsh analyst. Must be a Quant. With clarity, he asked for more insights into the business model of the new venture pitched by a Tuck alum. His voice deep. His question pointed. His bespectacled look serious.

I was wrong. Pete’s not an analyst, and he’s not harsh. He’s a Poet. A Classics major. Drummer in a hot rock band, touring the world. Co-founder of a music label. A passionate entrepreneur and MBA student.”

Age: 29

Hometown: Chicago, Illinois

Undergraduate School and Degree: Undergraduate: Dartmouth College (BA, Classics), Graduate School: University of Oxford (MSt, American History); Harvard Kennedy School (MPA)

Where did you work before enrolling in business school? As the drummer for Filligar, a touring American rock band. I also started a label Decade Records which brought me to b-school with my bandmate and brother Johnny, who’s also at Tuck with me.

Where did you intern during the summer of 2015? At Kin Community, a series C media company (Los Angeles).

Where will you be working after graduation? At Decade, the music/media venture I co-founded.

Community Work and Leadership Roles in Business School:

  • Selected by multinational media company Bertelsmann as “a creative shaping the future of the media landscape” and invited to advise senior executives at “Talent Meets Bertelsmann” in Berlin and Madrid
  • Founded Heartstring, a mobile music app bringing the soundtracks of the world’s finest composers to social videos (won two campus pitch competitions: Founders Grant and ‘The Pitch’)
  • Appointed a “Student Fellow” by leading Boston VC firm .406 Ventures, a program for exceptional entrepreneurs, and subsequently serve as a business-building resource for Dartmouth startups

Which academic or extracurricular achievement are you most proud of during business school? On the tour bus or in the recording studio—that’s where I was before b-school. I had virtually no business mechanics, only instincts. So when, after only a year in b-school, I was invited to give strategic guidance to senior executives at the entertainment powerhouse Bertelsmann (including the CEOs of BMG, RTL Group, and Penguin Random House), that was special for me.

What achievement are you most proud of in your professional career? Serving as a U.S. Cultural Ambassador. For the past few years the U.S. State Department has sent me all over the world with my band Filligar as representatives of American music and culture (I actually missed a week of class this winter to tour Russia).

Who is your favorite professor? When you schedule office hours with a professor and they teach you not only a Discounted Cash Flow but also the must-listen jazz drummers, that’s a special professor. Anant Sundaram (Corporate Valuation)

Favorite MBA Courses? Entrepreneurial Thinking. Private Equity Field Study. Managerial Accounting.

Why did you choose this business school? I wanted a place that would bring out the best in me—and Tuck has been exactly that. Here, I can talk to any professor, any time without appointment. I can join a Fortune 100 CEO for lunch, find funding for my startup idea, consult a leading venture capitalist on my business model, study with world-class faculty in world-class facilities, all while getting to know my entire class. It was also very important to me, as someone who has toured every American city and many more globally, to be at a business school looking outward, intellectually and strategically, to the rest of the world.

What did you enjoy most about business school? Knocking on any professor’s door and inviting their perspective on my latest ventures. At school, I have regularly met with faculty—from expert marketers, to organizational development geniuses, to venture capitalists, to corporate strategists, to data miners, to accountants and economists—who have helped elevate and inform my own enterprises.

What was the most surprising thing about business school? The tempo. Applying, two years in the classroom seems like forever. But business school flies.

What was the hardest part of business school? I started a new venture in business school, Heartstring. Time is business school’s scarce resource; if you start something like I did, difficult tradeoffs (coursework, ice hockey, formals etc.) are required.

What’s your best advice to an applicant to your school? Visit. Or if that’s not possible, Skype with a current student.

I knew I wanted to go to business school when…I saw the limits of venture building through trial and error. I wanted to learn business from the best and brightest faculty, the equivalent to training with a master musician rather than trying to teach myself.”

If I hadn’t gone to business school, I would be…still playing music as I am now, but without any architecture supporting my long term vision of building a media institution.”

Which executive or entrepreneur do you most admire? Ryan Spaulding. He started a blog and grew it into one of the world’s best brands in music: The Outlaw Roadshow.

What are your long-term professional goals? I come from a world of making something from nothing. Being around like-minded people, focused on transforming ventures into their exciting possibilities, is a professional requirement for me.

Who would you most want to thank for your success? People who have shared their time, their attention with me over the years. You can’t be a band without an audience; you can’t be a student without a teacher. I would be anywhere without the time others invested in me.

Fun fact about yourself: I am a twin, one of five kids and we’re all in the arts/film/tv/music/media.

Favorite book: Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead. The life of a band is rich with business lessons; this text is living proof.

Favorite movie: It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Favorite musical performer: We toured with Counting Crows and watching those guys play every night was transformational. It’d be like thinking you understand global economics after an MBA macro class and then sitting down at a Federal Reserve board meeting.

Favorite television show: Portlandia

Favorite vacation spot: The recording studio.

Hobbies? Ice hockey. Freestyle skiing.

What made Peter such an invaluable addition to the class of 2016?

“When Pete Mathias asked a question from the back row in our first class of the Entrepreneurial Thinking course in January 2015, I mistook him for a harsh analyst. Must be a Quant. With clarity, he asked for more insights into the business model of the new venture pitched by a Tuck alum. His voice deep. His question pointed. His bespectacled look serious.

I was wrong. Pete’s not an analyst, and he’s not harsh. He’s a Poet. A Classics major. Drummer in a hot rock band, touring the world. Co-founder of a music label. A passionate entrepreneur and MBA student.

In two of my courses during his first year, Pete demonstrated a remarkably unique combination of collaboration and conviction.

Collaboration: Pete gladly joined on to the team of a classmate’s new venture called Fliq for the Tuck First Year Project (FYP). I was the Faculty Advisor for the team, meeting with them for several hours each week for three months and iterating on their prototype development and customer tests. Working as second fiddle with a founding entrepreneur is not easy. Pete’s experience as a drummer in a band clearly paid off. He helped the Fliq founder and team keep pace and execute several experiments, leading to important changes in the app and top scores for the Fliq FYP team.

Conviction: Pete was eager to start something himself. He was eager to learn about investing, yet clear that he did not want to be just an investor. Riffing off of his passion for music, by the start of his second year, he co-founded Heartstring with his talented bandmate brothers, Teddy and Johnny, and landed a coveted two-year fellowship at venture capital firm 406 Ventures in Boston (the only MBA student accepted into their program). So often, we see MBA students expect outcomes to magically appear on their doorsteps. Not Pete. He has the vison to see opportunities and capacity to execute on them. And, by the way, Pete is simultaneously pursing a Master in Public Administration degree from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.” — Trip Davis, Executive Director, Office of Entrepreneurship & Technology Transfer, Dartmouth College

DON’T MISS: CLASS OF 2016: THE BEST & BRIGHTEST GRADUATING MBAS

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