The Film


Chai Ling is currently Founder, President, and CEO of Jenzabar , an internet company providing a Web-based intranet application for students and teachers.

A July 25, 1999 Boston Globe article (" Harvard Wars with Firm over Web Site ") details a dispute between Jenzabar and the Harvard Business School, "with Harvard's lawyers contending that Jenzabar was trying to capitalize on the business school's blue-chip reputation. The business school's lawyers demanded that Jenzabar stop posting a claim on its Web site that the Cambridge-based company's main product had been designed by the same technowizards who designed the business school's intranet system...'The Harvard Business School name stands for excellence and integrity,' said Loretto Crane, a business school spokeswoman. 'It's not surprising that people want to leverage some sort of relationship with it. It's also not surprising that the school is concerned when it's used inappropriately.'...

The dispute has been embarrassing for Jenzabar's team, which includes many politically connected individuals, including former Massachusetts Treasurer Joe Malone, the company's director of development. Legal counsel is provided by former governor William F. Weld and his law firm, according to a Jenzabar spokesman. The company's chairman is Chai's fiance, millionaire Robert Maginn, who lost a race last year to succeed Malone as treasurer...

The controversy started in May. The business school received a call from an information technology manager at SUNY-Buffalo who said a Jenzabar sales representative had told her flatly that the company had developed its intranet system at the business school. When business school officials logged onto Jenzabar's Web site, they discovered that Jenzabar stated that its 'core application' was 'developed by the technology leaders who also developed the award-winning Harvard Business School intranet system.'

That's quite a stretch, business school officials say. 'It's a collection of half-truths that ultimately portray something false and mislead the public,' a business school source said...

A Jenzabar spokesman said the company acted promptly to correct any misimpressions, but business school officials said it was not until a few weeks ago - nearly two months after Harvard lawyers objected - that the questioned claims were removed from the company's Web site."



Additional information about Jenzabar can be found in the article "Internet's Odd Couple" (Steve Bailey, The Boston Globe , 27 January 1999), which includes the following excerpts:
Chai and [former Massachusetts state Treasurer Joe] Malone have hooked their futures, at least for now, to the frenzied promise of the Internet. Start a company, put Net or .com in the name and get rich - it has become the American way, whether you grew up as the All-Everything kid from Waltham High or were smuggled out of China in a crate.

Malone, just days out of the treasurer's office, has signed on as the latest addition to Chai's CollegeNet Inc., a Cambridge Internet start-up with some big-name financial backers. Among them: Reebok president Paul Fireman and Steve Perlman, the founder of WebTV.

... Malone found his way to this newest of mediums in a very old-fashioned way: through a pal. The chairman of CollegeNet is Robert Maginn, the Bain & Co. partner who ran a losing campaign to replace Malone as treasurer. Malone supported Maginn in the race, won easily by Democrat Shannon O'Brien; Maginn didn't forget Malone.

... Chai has spent the last five years in Boston, working as a Bain consultant for three years and finishing her MBA at Harvard Business School last summer. She developed the idea for her company at Harvard, where her class was among the first to use the business school's new $11 million intranet that allows students to conduct research and communicate with faculty and alumni.

CollegeNet's product expands on Harvard's capabilities and is being offered free to colleges. Revenues will come from advertising and commissions on electronic commerce sales. Chai is stingy with details, but says she hopes to have "hundreds" of colleges signed up by year-end. New venture partners should be on board soon, she says.

In a Feb. 5, 1999 follow-up column, Steve Bailey notes an omission:
Last week I asked what could have brought together former state Treasurer Joe Malone and Chai Ling, the famed Tiananmen Square leader. The answer: the Internet.

Maybe I should have wondered what could have brought together Chai and Robert Maginn, the Bain & Co. partner who ran for Malone's spot last fall and then helped Malone land a job at CollegeNet Inc., where Chai is now chief executive. The answer is something even more powerful than the Net. It must be love.

As it turns out, Maginn, chairman of CollegeNet, and Chai are engaged and living together in Cambridge. I trust they have disclosed their relationship to their investors, even if they didn't to me.

Chai Ling

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