Forty Years in Technology
Hank graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and served four years in the Marine Corps as a communications officer, including a tour in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969 with the 3rd Marines and 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion, where he earned the Navy Commendation Medal with Combat V. He later took an MBA from George Washington University and ran sales and marketing at Telenet, the first public data network in the United States. At DSC Communications he was group president and the first inside director other than the CEO, and the company grew from $20 million to $600 million in revenue during his tenure.
He then ran three venture-backed companies as chief executive: DAVID Systems, acquired by Chipcom in 1994; Concentric Network, which he funded with an initial $10 million from Kleiner Perkins and Goldman Sachs, took public in 1997, and merged into what became XO Communications in a transaction valued at $2.5 billion; and Danger, maker of the T-Mobile Sidekick, which Microsoft bought for $500 million. He was chairman, president, and CEO of Tessera, and chaired Xura and SPTS through sales of $360 million and $370 million. His 2011 book Great Again, published by Harvard Business Press, argued for the policies that let American companies build and manufacture at home, and he has written on the subject in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Harvard Business Review. The Microsoft deal closed in April 2008. HnR was formed that July.
The Early Years
The first years were an education. He started in California and was barely underway when the 2008 collapse arrived. He sold down and rebuilt the program around Pennsylvania, where the state breeding incentives made a self-sustaining model possible. That reset shaped everything after it. Value-based mare selection, disciplined portfolio management, and a willingness to sell horses he liked have been the operating rules ever since.
The Results
The results have come from both halves of the business. On the breeding and sales side, Be Envied, bought for $37,000 in foal to City Zip, produced a filly HnR sold as a weanling who went on to win the 2016 Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Sprint (G1) and take the Eclipse Award as Champion Female Sprinter under the name Finest City. Kindle, a $50,000 yearling purchase, produced Allah Maak, sold by HnR as a weanling and later the topper of the Keeneland September Yearling Sale at $2.2 million. Grand Prix, a homebred half-sister to Finest City, won her stakes and sold as a broodmare prospect for $600,000.
HnR has also bred horses that reached black-type level racing for others. Daddy Is a Legend, out of the mare Randie’s Legend, became a multiple graded stakes winner of more than $660,000 after ten years of patience with a dam who never made it to the races. Palazzi won two graded stakes at Woodbine and earned over $580,000. Fielder, a Pennsylvania-bred stakes winner, earned $545,470 across 72 starts.
On the racing side, HnR campaigns its own runners. Living the Life (IRE), purchased privately in England as a lightly raced maiden winner, won the All-Weather Championship at Lingfield on Good Friday, then came to America and won the Presque Isle Downs Masters (G2) twice and the All American (G3) against males, retiring with $1,028,394 from 35 starts. Others have carried the silks with black-type success of their own: Prodigy Doll, graded stakes-placed with $335,520; Living Magic, a multiple stakes winner of $222,917; Mister Nofty, a stakes winner of $149,125; and Made in America, a stakes winner of the Forego Stakes with $112,010.
Across eighteen years the silks have made 74 stakes starts and won 14 of them, with 24 of those starts coming in graded company. The placement record holds as the class rises: the stable is in the money in half its graded starts, a shade better than its rate below graded level, and better still at Grade 2, where thirteen starts have produced two wins and six placings.
Beyond breeding and racing, Hank has also held stallion interests in Silver Train, El Padrino, Jump Start, and Smarty Jones.
