John Freund

John Freund is an American satirist and business executive. Freund and collaborator David Porter created the 1981 satirical poster Bedtime for Brezhnev and co-authored the 1982 satirical book The Official MBA Handbook or How to Succeed in Business Without a Harvard MBA, Freund is the co-founder of Intuitive Surgical, and the co-founder and former CEO of Arixa Pharmaceuticals. He founded Skyline Ventures in 1997. After completing his B.A., Freund received an M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He received an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1982. and sales of Bedtime for Brezhnev earned them enough money to pay their second year tuition.

In 1982, Freund and David Porter co-authored the book The Official MBA Handbook or How to Succeed in Business Without a Harvard MBA, which they published under the pen names Jim Fisk and Robert Barron, respectively. The idea for the book first emerged when Freund and Porter approached the publisher Simon & Schuster to distribute Bedtime for Brezhnev, but the head of trade paperbacks instead suggested the pair write a satirical book about MBA's. At the time of the book's release, both men were preparing to start jobs with investment banks. Freund negotiated a licensing agreement with SRI for surgical technology that formed the nucleus of Intuitive Surgical's line of products. Skyline was the lead investor in SI-Bone, a manufacturer of sacroiliac fusion implants that became commercially available in 2009. Following the investment, Freund joined the board of directors. In 2016, Freund co-founded the antibiotics manufacturer Arixa Pharmaceuticals and served as the company's CEO. an oral version of a β-lactamase inhibitor called avibactam that was previously only able to be administered intravenously. Freund ran Arixa Pharmaceuticals as a virtual company, crediting low-overhead costs in the development of ARX-1796. a physician and biotech entrepreneur.