After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Roberts and his friend Joel Rosenman tried to pitch a story for a television series about entrepreneurs who had more money than ideas.
[2] To do research they placed an advertisement in The Wall Street Journal identifying themselves as "young men with unlimited capital" who were looking for business ideas.
As they developed a plan, once it became clear there was no area around Woodstock that would meet their requirements, they moved the proposed location to Wallkill, New York.
But protests from local residents prompted another move in turn to its eventual site in Bethel, New York.
After the concert they produced subsequent events of the same type and operated a leveraged buyout firm in Manhattan.