Maverick Entrepreneurs’ Success Stories Inspire Zicklin Students

In a single week last month, students at the Zicklin School of Business had the chance to meet one unconventional entrepreneur in person and hear a biographer recount the fascinating, unlikely story of another. 

From left: Hilmarsson, Rosenberg, Gelles

Siggi Hilmarsson, founder of Siggi’s Dairy, spoke to a standing-room-only crowd for the Mitsui Lunch-Time Forum at the Weissman Center for International Business. A native of Iceland, Hilmarsson moved to New York to pursue an MBA. Homesick for the creamy, tangy skyr (Icelandic-style yogurt) of his childhood, he began making his own when he found American brands too sweet and artificial tasting. Hilmarsson started selling his concoction at farmers’ markets, where it proved so popular he eventually rented a dairy in upstate New York so he could make the yogurt in larger batches. Fast forward two decades, and Siggi’s yogurt is now available nationwide. 

What does Icelandic yogurt have to do with mountain climbing? If you know the story of Siggi’s and said, “Nothing,” you must not have heard journalist David Gelles’ interview with David Rosenberg, academic director of the Robert Zicklin Center for Corporate Integrity. Gelles, the author of Dirtbag Billionaire: How Yvon Chouinard Built Patagonia, Made a Fortune, and Gave It All Away, described how Chouinard, much like Hilmarsson, took an obsession with the quality of a single product and built it into a successful enterprise. 

Before he founded the outdoor company Patagonia, Gelles recounted, Chouinard was a mountain climber from the Maine backwoods who taught himself blacksmithing so he could make his own reusable pitons from hardened steel. A self-described “dirtbag” (which Gelles calls “a term affectionately bestowed on poor, itinerant outdoorsmen so uninterested in material possessions they are happy to sleep in the dirt”), Chouinard soon discovered that other climbers were willing to pay more for his higher-quality product. He founded Chouinard Equipment, which eventually brought him into the clothing business and the creation of Patagonia, selling apparel as well as outdoor recreation gear. In 2022, he transferred Patagonia’s voting stock to a specially created trust and nonprofit focused on protecting the environment, thereby giving the company away.

As different as their inspirations were, both Hilmarsson and Chouinard sensed what entrepreneurs everywhere know: If you want a certain product and can’t find it on the market, chances are you’re not alone. Why not make it yourself and see if others will buy it too? The skyr’s the limit! 

Categories: Centers, CI_Weissman_Center, CI_ZCCI, Current_Students, Faculty