In previous articles, I’ve touched on concepts related to creating mission-based organizations and I’ve highlighted companies that have built a culture of impact and sustainability into daily business practices. More than any defined monetary contribution, these cultural and community-based efforts are crucial to ensuring that the future of our world is as bright as the future of our businesses. However, for companies that are looking to create lasting impact through monetary contributions, apart from or in addition to more qualitative efforts, the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado has created... Read More

For the past several months, I have written about business in Boulder and throughout Colorado with a particular focus on businesses with an impactful or sustainable mission. These businesses have run the gamut from technology to consumer products to non-for-profits. The Colorado Impact Initiative is a push to bring many of the diverse impact businesses in Colorado together in one place at one time. The culmination of the Initiative’s will be the Colorado Impact Days, a public showcase and investor-focused event to highlight many of the impact businesses in Colorado. While it is important to give... Read More

The statistics around female entrepreneurship are either non-existent or depressingly bleak. Alicia Robb, a senior fellow with the Kauffman Foundation and a prominent researcher on issues of gender, race, and entrepreneurship notes that over the last 15 years 85% of all venture-funded businesses have completely male executive teams with no females in leadership roles. What’s worse is that only 2.7% of venture-funded businesses have female CEOs. Right now, in 2016, the face of entrepreneurship is still male. How can we change that face? How can we make that face more diverse across gender and... Read More

In light of an overwhelming response to last week’s post about the rise of the B Corp, I wanted to follow up on some of the questions that I received. Many in the community wanted to know more about how to become a B Corp from a practical perspective. I think most entrepreneurs understand the concept of the B Corp quite well and, based on the testimonials of existing B Corps, they are starting to understand the benefits of the certification to a company’s bottom line. In short, people get the why, they just don’t necessarily get the how or the when. What sorts of companies should apply for... Read More

No, the B Corp is not some new Transformers sequel or some government program designed to eliminate the lingering ills of the 2008 recession. The B Corp is a certification: nothing more than a label, plain and simple. It’s not even an official legal registration designation, it’s simply a signal to consumers that a company intends to behave in an ethically, socially responsible way and, in turn, the company intends to be held accountable for that promise. According to B Lab, the organization that issues the B Corp certification, “B Corps are for-profit companies certified by the nonprofit... Read More

Boulder is a town filled with doers: people who would rather get up at the crack of dawn and summit a mountain than sit on their couch and watch television. I believe that this characteristic, the preference toward action over inaction, is what drives so much of the entrepreneurial success in our community. For a town of around 150,000 people, Boulder pulls more than its weight in the international entrepreneurship scene. This means that each of us Boulderites have to do more individually, and thus be stronger as a community. This holiday season, think about the entrepreneur in your life, whether... Read More

We’ve all heard the ancient proverb: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime, right? Well, the meaning behind this proverb seems to be at the heart of a debate that has been sparked by Mark Zuckerberg and Dr. Priscilla Chan’s announcement that they would give away approximately $45 billion worth of Facebook shares over the course of their lifetimes. Any announcement made in such a public way by such a public figure is likely to ignite a firestorm of pushback and the Zuckerberg announcement was no different. Critics disparaged the Zuckerbergs... Read More

Confidence is self-belief. It is having faith in your own abilities. Confidence is just a surplus of positive thoughts impacting your attitude. When you are consciously or subconsciously thinking more good thoughts than bad thoughts, you will have confidence. It is that simple. We have all had an area of our life where we did not feel confident. Maybe it was delivering a public speech, stepping into the batter’s box against a really good pitcher, or playing an instrument that we were completely uncomfortable with. Our confidence, or lack thereof, was and always will be a function of our thoughts. I... Read More

Just the other day I overheard an older gentleman talking about somebody he knew who had an impressive college degree from a very prestigious institution who was apparently, “taking the easy way out”. The young man that he spoke of was working a dead-end night job somewhere for very little pay. The job was barely getting him by and apparently, he wasn’t “using” his college degree. He was a failure to this older gentleman. This kid was apparently “afraid” to pursue a career in the field that he had studied in school. The man continued, saying that this young man wanted to release... Read More

The CU Boulder campus is jam packed with creative, innovative and savvy-minded students. Denver, and Colorado as a whole, is thriving – It’s rapid growth due to the hundreds of thousands of people who are moving to the CO each month can be contributed to the economic success of the state. Much of this success is due to the explosion of small yet successful businesses popping up across Colorado, from dispensaries to breweries. A new App called Free & For Sale is launching in August. Not only will this App change the way that we buy and sell used items within our local communities,... Read More