Eyeglasses company Warby Parker is the poster child for the current surge of successful companies created by alumni of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Founded by Jeff Raider, Andrew Hunt, Neil Blumenthal and David Gilboa in Wharton’s Venture Initiation Program in 2010, Warby Parker has since opened more than 120 retail locations and had an initial public offering in September that brought its valuation to $6 billion.
While it may be the best known startup to emerge from Wharton in recent years, Warby Parker was predated by a number of even more prominent companies.
Here's a look at some of the big-name firms you might not know were founded by Wharton alumni:
BlackRock
Robert Kapito, president of New York-based investment firm BlackRock, graduated with his bachelor’s degree from Wharton in 1979. Joining forces with Larry Fink, the duo started BlackRock and built it into a Fortune 500 money manager. The firm had more than $10 trillion in assets under management at the end of 2021.
Boston Scientific
Medical device manufacturer Boston Scientific is partly the brainchild of Peter Nicholas, a 1968 Wharton graduate. The Marlborough, Massachusetts-based publicly traded company specializes in minimally invasive medical devices and the Taxus Stent, a drug-eluting stent that helps to open clogged arteries. Nicholas retired as CEO in 1999 after 20 years at the helm and retired from the company's board in 2016.
Comcast
Media and technology giant Comcast is the biggest Philadelphia-based company to come from a Wharton alumnus. Ralph Roberts graduated from Wharton in 1941 and went on to build one of the largest media conglomerates in the world when he started Comcast after buying American Cable Systems in 1963. Roberts died in 2015, and his son Brian Roberts — who also attended Wharton — is now CEO of Comcast.
CVS Health
CVS Health co-founder Stanley Goldstein started the nation's largest drugstore chain alongside his brother and a friend. Goldstein, a 1955 graduate of Wharton, opened the first CVS store in a Boston suburb in 1963. He retired from board of CVS in 1999. CVS now has more than 9,900 retail locations and is headquartered in Rhode Island.
H&R Block
H&R Block was founded by brothers Henry and Richard Bloch, the latter of whom attended the University of Pennsylvania. Richard started at Wharton when he was 16 years old, graduated in 1945 at the age of 19, and co-founded H&R Block in 1955. The Kansas City company reported $3.4 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2021. Richard Bloch died in 2004.
J.D. Power and Associates
J.D. Power III, the namesake of J.D. Power and Associates, received his MBA from Wharton in 1959 before becoming the trusted name in vehicle customer satisfaction. In a 2009 interview with Wharton magazine, Power said Wharton’s programs give students a “full range of studies that help you in everything.” Power died in 2021.
Tesla/SpaceX/The Boring Company
Serial startup founder Elon Musk, currently the richest man in the world according to Forbes, was once a Philadelphia resident when he attended Wharton. The man behind companies including Tesla, SpaceX and tunnel maker the Boring Company graduated with bachelor's degrees in economics and physics from Penn in 1997.
Zocdoc
Digital health startup Zocdoc was formed in 2007 by Wharton alumnus Cyrus Massoumi with Nick Ganju and Dr. Oliver Kharraz. The platform lets patients search for doctors and book appointments online. New York-based Zocdoc raised over $375 million and is valued at over $1 billion, according to Crunchbase. Massoumi was forced out of the company in 2015, according to a lawsuit he filed in 2020. He later started venture fund Humbition and Dr. B, a vaccine search site created to get unused vaccines to people who want them.
