The entrepreneurial spirit is complex. Sometimes it makes you create companies; sometimes the startup is just yourself, as you keep on developing your multi-faceted persona and meaningfully contribute to the success of a large diversity of ventures.  The latter characterizes a long-time friend, Melissa Eisenstat.

She worked for me in my first company in France very early in her career, right after she completed her double masters at Wharton (MBA and International Studies). I never really liked hiring trainees or interns in the various companies I ran or helped, knowing all too well that in startups, the air is so vibrant that it is hard for newcomers to jump into the fray, learn by capillarity and yet, show results. I still don’t know to this day how she survived within our gleeful mess, but she did and in no time, she had added to her French, which she already spoke fluently, all the gallicized high-tech and database jargon – so much so that when she came back to the US, she had to learn that “rubrique” did not translate into “rubric,” but into a “field.”

From one success to the other… Twenty years later, Melissa’s career is a series of successes. She spent three years at Apple Computer, four years at Pillar Corporation, a start-up specializing in financial software, before making a big jump by moving to CIBC Oppenheimer as the firm’s senior software analyst. She stayed there for nine years, working at least 70 hours per week, traveling 70% of the time, turning frantic each time Bill Gates was sneezing, yet sending chills to Siliconites by openly stating that Commerce One’s business model didn’t hold water or downgrading Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) from “Buy” to “Hold” during its litigation with the Department of Justice in 2000.  In 2002, she became President of Palladian Research, an independent equity research firm where she grew the revenues 50% in 2003 and expanded the research organization from two to eight analysts and the product line from two to seven publications within one year, all of which was no less stressful. “The more you work, the more workaholic you become, and I would have probably continued to speed through existence on autopilot, were it not for my seasonal addiction to sky, and above all, my lifelong passion for music. In 2004, I made the drastic decision to focus on my cello…”

“… And of course, I worked nearly as much! As a child, I started to play the piano and, shortly after, the cello. In fact my parents were encouraging me to audition for conservatories instead of choosing to get a BA in Soviet Studies at U Penn” - incidentally, Melissa also speaks Russian. Melissa’s father, Al Eisenstat (Apple’s historic chief counsel), plays the trombone and both her parents are dedicated music lovers. “When I returned to music as an adult, though, I was playing my cello five or six hours per day every single day of the week. Of course, that’s what I had to do, and even more, to get back into shape! This was exhilarating. I joined the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony in 2004.” Given that Melissa would never settle for anything ordinary, I should mention that the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony (www.chambersymphony.com) that David Bernard founded in 1999 is probably one of the most remarkable non-professional ensembles in the country, offering professional-level music and performing in New York anywhere between All Saints Church and Carnegie Hall. “I had a moment of guilt along the way for focusing on what I liked best,” Melissa adds. “So I got lured into joining Lehman Brothers Inc. in September 2006. I hated almost every single day of the nine months I spent there. I couldn’t stand so much arrogance. The good thing is that it reinforced my dedication to music.”

As we were having lunch this week at Sfoglia opposite the 92nd Street Y, “a quintessential New York institution,” Melissa was joyfully going back and forth between the Debussy and the Ravel she is learning and her missions in various NPOs, especially at the Hope Funds for Cancer Research, which makes post-doctoral grants for basic research in rare cancers and that she joined as Trustee and Treasurer in 2008. No matter what, she works a lot! And so does her husband, Jonathan Blau, managing director and head of the leveraged finance strategy and portfolio products group at Credit Suisse – but also one of the original actors (a “Microkid”) in the 1981 The Soul Of A New Machine, an epic where Tracy Kidder chronicled the efforts of Tom West and his team at Data General at Westborough, MA, to build a minicomputer code-named “Eagle” in order to catch up with DEC.

Marylene Delbourg-Delphis

For more information about:

The Park Avenue Chamber Symphony and David Bernard: http://www.chambersymphony.com and http://www.davidbernard.com

The Hope Funds for Cancer Research: http://www.hope-funds.org/

Although it was written in 1981,The Soul Of A New Machine is one of the best book on the history of the computer industry and easily available. You may also want to check this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine