HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARION PORTER (This is a reprint of a post I wrote a few years ago about one of my heroes!) 100 (now 108) years ago today my grandfather Marion Porter Gunthrop was born in Great Falls, South Carolina. …

Musings about Work, Equality, Social Justice and Capitalism. Volume 12: Inspiration and Progress: Announcing the Conscious Venture Fund II In one of our recent online training sessions for the Conscious Venture Lab, my business partner Joe Mechlinski told the 42 companies on the platform, “Inspiration, is the notion that better is possible.” …

Musings about Work, Equality, Social Justice and Capitalism: Volume 11: Friedman at 50: Is Stakeholder Capitalism a Threat to American Democracy? Today is the 50th Anniversary of one of the most important writings on the practice of capitalism ever published. Milton Friedman’s essay in the New York Times Magazine entitled “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits.” If you’ve read any of my writings before you know that…

Musings about Work, Equality, Social Justice and Capitalism: Volume 10: A short thought on Economic Inclusion. A friend of mine in Boston asked me to provide some insights on economic inclusion for a newsletter/podcast they do for their co-working space. It was one of those things that makes you get succinct about ideas so I thought I would share: Structural racism as well as intentional and…

George Floyd I’m angry. I’m sad. I’m tired. This will not stand. A little bit of a preamble for this piece: For all the politicians trying to control the demonstrations in their cities and for all of you who are fixating now on the riots and looting, let’s try this on for…

Musings about Work, Equality, Social Justice and Capitalism: Volume 8: Beyond Sustainability: In the new world of stakeholder capitalism, ESG isn’t enough. Why understanding, and measuring, organizational culture (or ESC) is the new Frontier. I started out my life in the investment world as a co-founder of the first RIA (registered investment advisory or hedge fund) focused on investing in companies that…

Musings about Work, Equality, Social Justice and Capitalism: Volume 7: Capitalism after Corona Towards a More Human Form of Business: “Let’s see if we are who we said we were before we had to deal with this…” Winton Marsalis: “We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was never normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion…

Why we Must Invest — Explained in Three Books: Black Swans, Gray Rhinos, Momentum Cities and How Business Will Help Us Heal: Book 1: The last few weeks have had me thinking of the book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nasim Taleb. If you’re a venture investor and haven’t read it, you should do…