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40 Under 40 They’re smart, they’re accomplished, they run multimillion-dollar enterprises — and oh, yes, they’re young. Some helm technology companies, others lead financial firms, others are at the top the health-care game. On these pages, meet the faces of the future. (Move over, Mr. Gates.) Spring 2008 , Page 45continued 4
Todd Hornbeck The original Hornbeck Offshore Services, founded in 1980 by Todd’s father, Larry, merged with New Orleans–based Tidewater in 1996. Hornbeck Offshore owns a fleet of more than 80 vessels — including 12 tugboats and 16 barges — which mainly serve the energy industry. The younger Hornbeck’s company went public in 2004, with trading beginning at $13 per share. 
Jeff Housenbold Title: CEO, Shutterfly City: Redwood City, California Age: 37 Recent Market Cap: $385 million Housenbold knows his way around the Internet: He had gigs at both eBay and AltaVista before signing on as CEO of Shutterfly in 2004. He had his work cut out for him: When he joined the eight-year-old digital-photo company, it had “a culture of survivorship, rather than a culture of winning,” he says. “The company lived through the carnage of the dot-com crash. Scarred by the experience, employees learned to avoid risk and not make waves.” He encouraged fresh ideas, and recruited talent at all levels of the company — focusing on properly nurturing, rewarding and enhancing that talent. “With annual revenues growing at 50 percent per year, it would be easy simply to focus on the top and bottom line, and not put into place the culture and discipline to become a great company,” says Housenbold, who got his undergraduate degree in economics and business administration from Carnegie Mellon and his MBA from Harvard. But the father of three young boys doesn’t (yet) think of himself as a success. Not until “we create shareholder value, a brand that will outlast any individual and a culture that will make employees look back on their time at the company fondly.” With 2007 revenues of $186.7 million — up 51 percent from 2006 — he’s well on his way.
Gray W. Hudkins In 2005, Hudkins took the reins at Langer, which designs, manufactures and distributes medical products for orthopedic, orthotic and prosthetic markets around the world. He was familiar with the territory; before joining the company in October 2004, he worked for Warren Kanders, chairman of Langer’s board and the company’s largest stockholder, at Kanders & Company. Hudkins managed Langer’s acquisition of Silipos, the skin-care and skin-protection concern, and joined Langer as COO soon after. On January 1, 2006, he took over as president and CEO. Much soon changed: In order to reduce cycle times and increase efficiency, Hudkins hired a consultant to overhaul manufacturing, with the idea of letting employees work as a team, rather than have only one task. True to his efficient nature, he made the consulting company’s fee contingent on its achieving operational results.
Joshua James James had eight majors at Brigham Young before moving on to its business school, where he met his future partner, John Pestana. The two had been creating Web pages for friends; they decided to charge for their services, and called their company JP Interactive. Within 18 months they had launched five other businesses, including ScriptSearch, a database of CGI and programming scripts. They sold it for a few hundred thousand dollars and consolidated their four remaining firms into MyComputer.com, which provided Web-maintenance tools to small and medium-sized businesses. They were close to a $57 million acquisition deal in October 2000 when the bubble burst; they had to let 48 people go with no severance. (James tracked them down in 2006 and reimbursed them.) The duo persevered, however, creating a small-business division that sold their products for $10 to $100 a month. In 2002, they sold it to Verisign and named the new firm Omniture — a marketing-intelligence company that tracks its customers’ Web sites: how much money is being spent on them and how effective their ad campaigns are. The Discovery Channel, Wal-Mart and Gannett now all use Omniture’s Web-analytics solution, SiteCatalyst. After 12 consecutive quarters of growth and six straight of profitability, Omniture recently closed on a $14.5 million round of VC funding led by Hummer Winblad Venture Partners.
J. Mariner Kemper Banking is in Kemper’s blood; his family has been in the industry since 1918, when it bought the City Center Bank in Kansas City. Kemper joined UMB when he was just 16. His task? To verify employment for credit-card applicants. In May 2004, the University of Puget Sound graduate became the company’s CEO, and quickly set about broadening its reach. That he did: Today, the multibank holding company owns and operates 141 banks from Illinois to Arizona. His ancestors are surely smiling.
Dara Khosrowshahi Khosrowshahi came to the U.S. from Iran at age 9; he earned a B.A. in engineering from Brown in 1991, and worked at Allen & Company until 1998. That year, he began working on the merger of Home Shopping Network and USA Networks, then went to Barry Diller’s InterActiveCorp, which bought Expedia in 2003. He became Expedia’s CEO when it branched off as a publicly traded company in 2005. He is passionate about travel and about creating positive experiences for his clients. “Every second of every day we have an Expedia customer returning from a trip,” he says. “How do we help them find inspiration for their next trip? How do we help our supply partners connect with the more than 50 million travelers who visit our Web sites monthly? Technology plus the creativity and enthusiasm of our employees make it possible.”
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