SUMMARYStanley Anderson, who previously worked at HP, Intel, and the Palo Alto Research Center, is now CEO of Costa Pickleball, a Las Vegas startup that sells decorative high-performance pickleball paddles. He is developing a quieter paddle design that he believes could help the company compete in the market. Anderson credits his career path and management approach to lessons learned at MIT.
In corporate America, Stanley Anderson ’79 says, executives often assume that their peers grew up in privileged circumstances.
He did not.
“I spent my early years trying not to get recruited into gangs, getting shot at, watching my friends get murdered, and thinking that if I don’t leave, I will die,” says Anderson, who was raised in Chicago. “I was fortunate to survive.”
But he thrived, building an impressive career at the likes of HP, Intel, and the Palo Alto Research Center. Now he is applying his management expertise as CEO of Costa Pickleball, a Las Vegas–based startup that sells high-performance paddles in decorative designs. Beyond giving customers a way to, as he says, “bring their identity to the court,” he is also betting on technology: He’s developing a quieter type of paddle he expects will provide a competitive advantage.
Succeeding in today’s pickleball market will be tough, but Anderson thinks he has what it takes, partly thanks to an important lesson he learned at MIT: “There’s nothing you can’t accomplish if you are willing to put effort into it.”
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