A few months ago, I gave a great SaaS Founder CEO a Gift.
A real gift.
Read MoreTag: Venture Capital
A More Inclusive Workplace
A More Inclusive Workplace. At a time when many Muslims are feeling increasingly unwelcome in the U.S., more businesses are seeking to maintain Muslim-friendly workplaces. As Bloomberg reports, “The motivations may be principled, but the moves are practical. Managers want to keep talented workers and avoid conflict, and litigation.” The practices companies are implementing are modest (such as making sure major events don’t conflict with Muslim holidays and eliminating pork and alcohol from events), yet they add up to a much more welcome environment. And companies battling for talent are smart to make these changes: by 2035, Muslims will be the second largest non-Christian group in the U.S.
Unilever Buys Dollar Shave Club. Unilever is getting into the razor business, having paid $1 billion for upstart Dollar Shave Club (Fortune). It’s a big win for investors–and strong evidence that inspired disruptors continue to make an impact. In particular, as Ben Thompson notes, it’s evidence of the eventual disruption of everything. Why was Unilever an ideal buyer? Because it doesn’t have an existing shaving business to protect. The shift to new sorts of businesses continues. And, here on NewCo Shift, read VC David Pakman’s take, Dollar Shave Club: How Michael Dubin Created A Massively Successful Company and Re-Defined CPG.
Read MoreThese Six Companies May Well Change the World. We Should All Be Rooting For Them
For their second act, the founders of “Total NewCos” are reaching for far more than a payday.
You had a good idea, and you started a company around it. You hired a strong team, nearly killed yourself for years, and despite numerous failures along the way, you made it work. And now you find yourself at the receiving end of our nation’s most fabled business narrative: Your company has been acquired for a princely sum, and you’re wealthy enough to retire.
Now what?
Read MoreThe Rise of the Startup Neighborhood
Today’s Top Stories
— Venture Capital Investment Heads Downtown: Firms are investing more in cities, not suburbs.
— The Human Company Design Manifesto: Sara Holoubek introduces a management approach that creates value by investing in people.
— Not Enough People or Not Enough Skills? A new jobs report makes some wonder where the bottleneck to growth is.
— Cities, Serendipity, and Other “Spaces for Innovation”: Greg Lindsay on how to engineer for serendipity
— The Special Sauce at McDonald’s: Community
— A City-Based Visualization of Funding Flows: An analysis of 14 years of city-specific funding data
Venture Capital Investment Heads Downtown
When you think of where venture capital firms invest, you might imagine suburban office parks. Don’t. New research from Richard Florida and Karen King finds that investment firms and the startups they fund are increasingly of the city (CityLab). In particular, they find more than half of all startup companies and VC investments located in urban zip codes. These “startup neighborhoods” tend to be more walkable and bikeable than the norm; one-third of all venture-capital investment, they find, goes into neighborhoods with more than 30 percent of workers who walk, bike, or use mass transit when commuting. Suburban “nerdistans” still exist, but there’s a clear shift to dense urban neighborhoods.
A City-Based Visualization of Funding Flows
What might you learn if you analyze 14 years of city-specific funding data?
Humans have always associated innovation with place — from Florence to Silicon Valley. However, research on the geographic distribution of venture capital, insights necessary for progressive cities to thrive, is tentative at best.
But the data is out there.
Read MoreA Venture Capital Firm Goes B Corp
Foundry Group’s Seth Levine talks about how the new certification changes the way it works–and what stays the same.
Last week the Foundry Group venture capital firm announced that it had become a benefit corporation. More commonly known as B Corps, those are for-profit companies certified by the nonprofit B Lab to “meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.” It’s a designation in keeping with the firm’s stated mission: “Foundry Group is passionate about helping outstanding entrepreneurs turn promising ideas into market-defining and market-leading companies.”
We spoke to Foundry Group managing director Seth Levine about what the move means to his company and beyond. (Note: Both Seth and Brad Feld, another Foundry Group managing director, are angel investors in NewCo.)
Read MoreKickstarter’s Mission Is Non-Negotiable
Many businesses have awesome mission statements that they ignore. This one carries the force of law.
When Kickstarter announced its conversion to a public benefit company last fall, there was a general murmur of appreciation around the Internet industry — the company had always been unique, and its commitment to more than profits seemed consistent with its quirky image and its founders’ passion for the arts. Most coverage noted that Kickstarter was joining a small but growing group of funky Internet startups like Warby Parker, Etsy, and the Honest Company that proudly fly their “B Corp” flags.
But you’ll get a rise from Kickstarter co-founder Perry Chen if you lump Kickstarter in with those other B Corps, no matter how well-intentioned they might be. There’s a profound distinction between a “public benefit corporation,” or PBC, and a “B Corp,” Chen told me during a recent visit to Kickstarter’s Brooklyn headquarters. Both are for-profit companies who wear their missions on their sleeves, but B Corps have no legal responsibility to uphold their values. PBCs, on the other hand, have a legally binding duty to provide benefits to society. One is an accreditation, like “Fair Trade,” the other is an entirely rethought corporate structure.
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