NO. 1 DRAFT PICK
Atif Rafiq
College: University of Chicago Graduate School of Business
Age: 26
Hometown: Flushing, N.Y.
Other Degrees: B.A. in mathematics and economics, Wesleyan University, 1994
E-mail: atifrafiq@aol.com
Web site: http://gsb.uchicago.edu
RESUME AT A GLANCE
After a two-year stint as a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs, Rafiq jumped to AOL's corporate development and business affairs group. While there, he helped pioneer AOL's model of "strategic portal arrangements" and executed multimillion-dollar deals with major e-commerce players. During B-school, as director of business development at Audible (ADBL), he helped engineer a marketing alliance between the spoken-word audio company and Amazon.com (AMZN). He's an early adopter, too: His senior project at Wesleyan in 1994 was titled "Creating the Information Superhighway."
HOOP DREAMS
Rafiq says he'd like to be a principal in a VC firm, but he's also open to a senior business development role in an early stage dot-com. If you want him for your team, you'll have to move fast: Rafiq says he's currently in discussions with Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, (dossier) Technology Crossover Ventures and Softbank.
When we quizzed him about the viability of Kozmo.com's (dossier) business model, he said that the one-hour delivery service has a future if it can figure out how to scale nationally and make the economics of delivering a $2 latte attractive.
Meanwhile, the former AOL dealmaker has some advice for startups looking to dance with the portals: "Up until now the model for many startups has been to raise big VC dollars, pursue high-risk, high-reward partnerships with portals to lock up traffic and accelerate going public before competitors. Startups will now need to do deals with the portals that include more risk sharing and true partnership." For the right company, Rafiq just might reveal his secret to marketing success.
THE JUDGES SAY
"The combination of top-notch investment banking and substantive online experience is killer," says Jonathan Goldstein.
Rating: 9.7
Salary: $129,000
