TINTON FALLS - Even to this day, entrepreneur Marc Lore can recall the time his biology teacher at Ranney School would make it a point to announce the students who received the best and worst scores on a test.
Lore, who got an eight out of 100, was the worst.
"It was very embarrassing," Lore said. "I wasn't the best student, but I had a lot of pride. I was very motivated. The next exam I had the highest score."
Lore, who has gone on to launch start-ups Diapers.com, Jet.com and his latest venture, Wonder, was inducted Friday as the inaugural member of Ranney School's "Legendary Hall of Fame," stamping the occasion with a $1 million donation to the school for a new athletic field house.
The event marked a homecoming for Lore. He spoke to students, classmates, family and friends at a fireside chat moderated by fellow alum Preet Bharara, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
"Marc is not only a distinguished alumnus who exemplifies the qualities of leadership, contributions and creativity, but he's also achieved so much that's been incredible, visionary, innovative, global and truly transformative," said John Griffith, Head of School.
These days, Lore, 53, is working on Wonder, a company that has created a new food concept called "fast-fine," in which consumers can order meals created by top chefs for pickup or delivery. The company has 21 locations in the region with another 80 planned in the next 16 months. The expansion includes stores in Monmouth and Ocean counties, he said.
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Meantime, Lore and former New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez, who own a minority stake in the NBA's Minnesota Timberwolves and WNBA's Minnesota Lynx , are locked in a battle with majority owner Glen Taylor for a controlling share. That case is expected to be decided after an arbitration hearing in November.
Lore touched on the highs and lows of his school days and his career, leaving students with a message that hit home.
"It's pretty cool to see how he wasn't the strongest academically speaking, he was still able to push through his career later on and become so successful," said Connoly Chavez, 17, a senior from Rumson.
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Lore attended Ranney after he and his family moved from Staten Island to Middletown when he was 10. He said he was something of a class clown who would land in detention on Saturdays. But he found teachers who spotted his strengths and spent extra time with him to draw them out.
He started — and starred on — the school's track team, winning the New Jersey Independent Schools Athletic Association championship's 55-meter dash in 1989 with a time of 6.5 seconds.
And he made lasting friends. On Friday, 10 of Lore's 34 members of his senior class attended the induction. Among them: Vinit Bharara, Preet's brother, who teamed up with Lore to create Diapers.com, a diaper delivery service that they sold to Amazon for $545 million.
Lore detailed a roller-coaster ride filled with 100-hour work weeks and more misses than hits, noting successful entrepreneurs need to be resilient.
He started Wonder with 450 food trucks equipped with high-speed impingement ovens that would cook food on the road, before scrapping the idea and telling investors he was starting over and taking an $80 million loss. The company decided to open brick-and-mortar stores instead because they provided a more consistent experience and better food at a lower cost, he said.
"Had we not had the trucks, we never would have been able to have that technology to do what we do in brick and mortar," Lore said after the fireside chat. "So you always have to look for the silver lining."
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Lore said he is driven not by money, but by the chance to build something from scratch that can bring joy to people's lives. Some of his ideas, like Diapers.com, are solutions to ordinary problems. Others, like building a utopian city called Telosa to provide generous social services without the heavy tax burden, are not.
But he said he has developed a leadership style that took root at Ranney, learning what makes each person special and treating them with empathy. And he learned the past is the past. There is time to recover from lousy grades.
"Don't waste time worrying about things you can't change, or worry about things that might happen," Lore said. "It's just every day, do the best you can today and be patient. You don't need to have your whole life planned out, like, 'I'm going to go to this college, get that job, this internship, work with this person.' It's too prescriptive. You lose some of the creativity and what drives you."
Michael L. Diamond is a business reporter for the Asbury Park Press. He has been writing about the New Jersey economy and health care industry since 1999. He can be reached at mdiamond@gannettnj.com.
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Entrepreneur and NBA owner Marc Lore comes back for Ranney School honor, and $1M gift
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