Entrepreneurship, Paul Revere Style

Other early investors included San Francisco banker Paul Stephens. Frank Bonsal, a big-deal venture capital maven at New Enterprise Associates (his personal money, not NEA's). Steve Walker of Walker Ventures, whom they met through Smith's father, was another investor. They eventually raised $12 million.

The tutoring company they created is privately held Smarthinking, where Gergen is chairman and owns less than 10 percent. Smith is chief executive and owns a little bit more. They started in a Capitol Hill apartment, where 15 people squeezed into three rooms. Now they are in downtown D.C.

This is the business: Provide high-quality online tutoring 24 hours a day. Here is a differentiator, which is business talk for what sets Smarthinking apart from competitors: The company can get experts online with you to walk you through the material.

Universities buy access to the site in blocks of several hundred to several thousand hours. Gergen and Smith found a woman from Oxford University in England who put together the tutoring team. The site sticks with some two dozen standard subjects that are not interpretive, like physics, biology, chemistry and algebra.

They went through some bleak, cash-poor months where they had to scrounge an additional $250,000 from investors. There have been three rounds of fundraising.

Gergen would not disclose the revenues, but he said that they are in the millions, that Smarthinking has a positive net income and that it serves 200,000 students at 1,000 universities, including many state schools and community colleges.

(Disclosure: In some ventures, Smarthinking partners with Kaplan, a for-profit education company owned by The Washington Post Co.)

Gergen's latest thing, this one with Gregg Vanourek, is New Mountain Ventures. The co-authors are plugging their new book, "Life Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives."

"We are working with university sophomores who have been in college and starting to think about what they are going to do with their life."

Here's a hint: Get to know lots of people. And save money.

Gergen isn't rich -- yet. He is married with two children and lives in Mount Pleasant in the District. His wife, Heather, works at the Washington office of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Christopher said they both save religiously in their tax-free retirement plans. They also are building a 529 tax-free savings plan for their children that is invested with American Funds.

"As a family investment strategy, because I have so much wrapped up in the private-equity world, we are trying to diversify and have a stable investment strategy," he said.

Something Paul Revere would have taken to heart.

More on Christopher Gergen can be found at the WashBiz blog at blog.washingtonpost.com/washbizblog.