(co-written with Jamie Finney, Founding Partner at Greater Colorado Venture Fund. His work on VC and small communities can be found at greatercolorado.vc/blog. ) This essay is part of a series on alternative VC: I: Revenue-Based Finance: a new option for founders who care about control II: Who are the major Revenue-Based Finance VCs? III:...
[Continue Reading]How business leaders can promote wearing masks and stop COVID-19
The overwhelming consensus of medical opinion is that in order to mitigate COVID-19 as effectively as some other countries have, America needs to make mask-wearing normative. How can you help? Some ideas: Incorporate masks into your visual communications. In your advertising, brochures, website, etc., incorporating masks will help change social norms. By analogy, very few...
[Continue Reading]How universities can keep alumni excited and connected
A new board member of the Alumni Association for one of the Ivies reached out and asked me for some ideas on how they could better engage their graduates. I took this as a challenge, and brainstormed a list of ideas on how universities can do more to engage their alumni community. I thought this...
[Continue Reading]Partisan Activism 101 for Investors and Executives
You care passionately about certain political causes. How can you use your professional influence to help create change? When your grandchildren ask you, “What did you do during the craziness of 2020?”, how will you answer them? Reid Hoffman, cofounder of Linkedin, writes: Traditionally, CEOs … have tried to avoid mixing business and politics, perhaps...
[Continue Reading]How Non-Partisan Business Leaders Can Help Fix America
10 non-partisan action steps for investors and executives to help fix our broken political process Almost everyone agrees that the American political system is dysfunctional. You love our country, and you want to do something about it. But, becoming politically active can be a challenge, particularly if you’re in a business leadership role. No matter...
[Continue Reading]7 Easy Steps to Make America Functional Again
Paul Graham, cofounder of Y Combinator, wrote in a thoughtful essay: “The defining quality of an ideologue, whether on the left or the right, is to acquire one’s opinions in bulk. You don’t get to pick and choose. Your opinions about taxation can be predicted from your opinions about same-sex marriage.…Accidental moderates, on the other...
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