Entrepreneurial Career
After receiving an MBA degree, Gerstner started serving as co-CEO of a travel company National Leisure Group (NLG), in 2000. He worked at NLG for three years, and he helped NLG buy Boston-based venture capital firm General Catalyst and Japanese multinational conglomerate company Softbank.
In 2003, he co-founded and served as a CEO of a local search start-up called Openlist. After operating it for a couple of years, the co-founders sold the start-up to a Seattle-based conversational analytics company Marchex (Nasdaq: MCHX), in 2005.
Gerstner then worked as a portfolio manager at a Boston-based investment capital firm called PAR Capital for the next three years. From 2007 to 2011, he was an investor and advisor to a Seattle-based online real estate marketplace company Zillow.