Warren Van Dyke "Pete" Musser (December 15, 1926 – November 25, 2019) was the chairman of the Musser Group. He was the founder of

Safeguard Scientifics Warren Van Dyke "Pete" Musser (December 15, 1926 – November 25, 2019) was the chairman of the Musser Group. He was the founder of Safeguard Scientifics, a venture capital firm that invested in technology companies. At the peak of the dot-com b ...

, a

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

firm that invested in technology companies. At the peak of the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (or dot-com boom) was a stock market bubble that ballooned during the late-1990s and peaked on Friday, March 10, 2000. This period of market growth coincided with the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web and the Interne ...

, Musser was a

billionaire A billionaire is a person with a net worth of at least 1,000,000,000, one billion units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling. It is a sub-category of the concept of the ultr ...

on paper; however, when the bubble burst, he lost almost his entire fortune. Musser was a philanthropist and The Musser Foundation has donated over $50 million to organizations including the

Boy Scouts of America Scouting America is the largest scouting organization and one of the largest List of youth organizations, youth organizations in the United States, with over 1 million youth, including nearly 200,000 female participants. Founded as the Boy Sco ...

. Musser has served on the

board of directors A board of directors is a governing body that supervises the activities of a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government agency. The powers, duties, and responsibilities of a board of directors are determined by government regulatio ...

of the

Cradle of Liberty Council The Cradle of Liberty Council (#525) is a Scouting America council created in 1996 with the merger of the former Philadelphia Council (covering the city and county of Philadelphia) and the former Valley Forge Council (covering Delaware and Montg ...

. The Musser Award for Excellence in Leadership from

Fox School of Business and Management The Richard J. Fox School of Business and Management is the business school of Temple University. Located in Philadelphia, the Fox School offers several Master of Business Administration programs (full-time MBA, part-time MBA, international MBA, ...

Temple University Temple University (Temple or TU) is a public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It was founded in 1884 by the Baptist ministe ...

and the Musser Scout Reservation in

Montgomery County, Pennsylvania Montgomery County, colloquially referred to as Montco, is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population of the county was 856,553, making it the third-most populous county in Pennsylvania after Philadel ...

, are named after Musser.

Early life and education

Musser was born in the

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Harrisburg ( ; ) is the capital city of the U.S. commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the seat of Dauphin County. With a population of 50,099 as of 2020, Harrisburg is the ninth-most populous city in Pennsylvania. It is the larger of the two pr ...

, area on December 15, 1926 and earned a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

in Industrial Engineering at

Lehigh University Lehigh University (LU), in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, United States, is a private university, private research university. The university was established in 1865 by businessman Asa Packer. Lehigh University's undergraduate programs have been mixed ...

in 1949.

Career

In 1952, at the age of 25, Musser went to work as a stockbroker trainee for

Hornblower & Weeks Hornblower & Weeks was an investment banking and brokerage firm founded by Henry Hornblower and John W. Weeks in 1888. At its peak in the late 1970s, Hornblower ranked eighth among member firms of the New York Stock Exchange in number of retail ...

. The next year, he left the company with others to form their own company. In 1955, his company acquired Safe-Guard Corporation and in 1966, Musser's firm changed its name to Safeguard Industries. Musser invested in technology companies in Philicon Valley such as

QVC QVC (short for "Quality Value Convenience") is an American free-to-air television network and a flagship shopping channel specializing in televised Shopping channel, home shopping, owned by QVC Group (formerly Qurate Retail Group). Founded in 19 ...

Comcast Comcast Corporation, formerly known as Comcast Holdings,Before the AT&T Broadband, AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corporation, not th ...

, and

Novell Novell, Inc. () was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as NetWare. Novell technolog ...

, which resulted in a $200 million profit. In March 1996, when Ken Fox and Walter Buckley left Safeguard Scientifics to form Internet Capital Group (later

Actua Corporation Actua Corporation was a venture capital firm. During the dot com bubble, the company had a market capitalization of over $50 billion. The company was originally known as Internet Capital Group, Inc. and changed its name to Actua Corporation in S ...

), they asked Musser for $5 million in funding, but he insisted on investing $15 million. At the height of the

, the company had a market capitalization of almost $60 billion, making Musser a paper

. Musser was a director of TyCom, a subsidiary of

Tyco International Tyco International was a security systems company incorporated in the Republic of Ireland, with operational headquarters in Princeton, New Jersey, United States (Tyco International (US) Inc.). Tyco International was composed of two major busin ...

, and in December 2000, he borrowed $14.1 million from Tyco executives Dennis Kozlowski and Mark H. Swartz On November 29, 2000, after the burst of the

, to repay a loan, Musser was forced to sell 6.5 million of his shares in Safeguard Scientifics for $8.25 per share, or $53.7 million. The stock price was down over 90% from the peak of $99 per share 9 months earlier. This left him with 560,000 shares in the company. In 2003, Musser defaulted on a $26.5 million loan from Safeguard Scientifics. Musser was a member of the board of directors of Brandywine Realty Trust from 1996, when the company acquired properties from a joint venture of Safeguard Scientifics, until 2002.

Personal life

Musser married and divorced Betty K. Musser (née Umstad) and then Hilary Grinker Musser, who was 39 years younger than him. Musser's son, Craig, a renowned kaleidoscope artist under the name Van Dyke, was partnered with Bruce Darda, a New York based tech executive, at the time of his death from AIDS in 1986. Musser spent lavishly on his residences, building his-and-hers tennis courts on his Nantucket residence and spending $100,000 on special garage doors. Musser also was a contributor to Republican causes. He died on November 25, 2019.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Musser, Pete 1926 births 2019 deaths 20th-century American businesspeople American chief executives American financial businesspeople Businesspeople from Philadelphia Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire Lehigh University alumni Pennsylvania Republicans People from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 20th-century American philanthropists