Al Gore's $100 Million Makeover

By: Ellen McGirtWed Dec 19, 2007 at 8:22 AM

Not long ago, he was the butt of jokes--lockbox, earth tones, a postelection beard. Then he dusted off an old slide show and jumped with both feet into the private sector. The untold story of how an epic loser engineered what may be the greatest brand makeover of our time.

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Joel Hyatt, CEO of Current TV, says he and Gore set out “to democratize—small d—television first and the media industry generally.”

Former Goldman Sachs exec David Blood cofounded Generation Investment Management with Gore. The firm now has nearly $1 billion under management.

Al Gore Inc.
"I have really enjoyed the business world much more than I expected," says the former Vice President. Among his business and financial interests.
An Inconvenient Portfolio
Al Gore's financial-services startup, Generation Investment Management, buys shares in companies that fit its founders' definition of sustainability. The firm doesn't disclose holdings, but public filings reveal some familiar names--Whole Foods, Staples, and General Electric. Here's a sampling of seven other lesser-known stocks in the portfolio as of March 31.
Video: The Future of Online Advertising--Current TV VCAM (viewer-generated commercial)
Current TV is tapping into the future of online advertising, working with advertisers to create viewer-generated commercials like this SONY HDV ad created by a 16-year-old. To date, some 32 VCAMs have hit the air. T-Mobile has selected three VCAMs already, and Pop Secret, Sony, and L'Oreal are also using VCAMs.

One problem he had in politics, he says, was identifying an issue too early--"'predawn' is the term I use"--to be able to act on it. But "in the business world, particularly at a time when things are moving so swiftly, if you can see it early, you can make a business opportunity out of it." He pauses. "For whatever reason, the business world rewards a long-term perspective more than the political world does."

By his own account, his makeover has been less the result of a conscious strategy than of a few smart initiatives that happened to ripen in sync--from Google's towering growth to the recent profitability of his media startup, Current TV. "I've remarked to Tipper how amazing it is that both Current and Generation [Investment Management] have reached the next stage of their development at almost exactly the same time." What defines the ventures he has taken part in, he says, is "a revolutionary and transformational concept" in industries that badly need change. But did he expect such enormous financial success? He pauses. "It's all been a pleasant surprise. And a lot of fun."

That's not how things looked in the first years after that trip back to Nashville. In the spring of 2001, Gore returned from a vacation in the Mediterranean with an unfortunate beard, and the late-night jokesters had a field day. His first business move--signing on as an adviser to Google--proved prescient, but Google wasn't yet a powerhouse. Almost no one took note. (On his first day at Google, Gore recalls with a laugh, "Larry [Page] and Sergey [Brin] and the entire executive team had false beards on.")

His most public effort was dusting off a slide show on global warming he had put together in 1989. It was full of depressing data about melting ice caps and killer hurricanes--not a likely vehicle to spark a resurrection. As recently as May 2004, he took some serious ribbing for presenting a version of it at an event timed to coincide with the goofy global-warming film The Day After Tomorrow. A few months later, when television producer turned environmental activist Laurie David invited her A-list pals to see the slide show, she had a hard time getting them to attend. "People were still mad about the election," she recalls. "And nobody cared about global warming."

What has changed since then is, in part, political: John Kerry fared worse than Gore at the polls, and President George W. Bush has seen his approval ratings tumble. Hurricane Katrina played a role, too, stirring fears of climate change. But Gore's business efforts have also come together in a crescendo that cannot be ignored. In fact, to understand the personal drive and vision behind Gore's revival--and the philosophy that continues to take his business, if not his political, brand forward--the place to begin is with his two entrepreneurial efforts, Current TV and Generation.

Joel Hyatt is comfortably ensconced in his loft-style San Francisco office at Current TV, Al Gore's now-profitable cable network. Hyatt, the CEO, is a longtime friend of Gore's who made his millions by founding Hyatt Legal Plans, a provider of low-cost legal services that was acquired by MetLife in 1997. He has taught entrepreneurship at Stanford's business school and chaired the Democratic finance committee during the 2000 election. He doesn't talk easily about his front-row view of Gore's disputed loss, and when he does, his voice shakes with emotion. "It's hard to move on from something like that," he says.

But he did. After the election, Hyatt began talking with Gore about the sorry state of television and the role that the broadcast media play in the public sphere. "The line between news and entertainment is blurred," as Gore now puts it. "Much of TV is mind deadening. It's a one-way conduit of knowledge." The two men discussed what Hyatt calls "an utter lack of innovation in the media industry"--a barely disguised oligopoly, as they saw it, controlling both content and competition. "We decided that we wanted to build a new kind of media company to democratize--small d--television first and the media industry generally," Hyatt says. They would give viewers from 18 to 34 the means to create and control what went on the air--a user-generated model now familiar thanks to the likes of YouTube and MySpace, but a shot in the dark for TV back in 2002.