Dave Whorton is a hugely successful entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. After having founded four companies in Silicon Valley, he was hired by John Doerr at Kleiner Perkins, the famous venture capital firm. During his time at Kleiner Perkins, Dave backed, among many others, two promising start-ups that came to be known as Google and Amazon.

In 2005, having achieved “conventional” success in every conceivable way, Dave had a transformative conversation with an entrepreneur and friend that would deeply challenge his beliefs about business and brought him to found the Evergreen movement. Evergreen companies are privately owned companies that last a lifetime and beyond, grow at a paced rate and are fueled by a deep purpose and commitment to its stakeholders. Building Evergreen companies is a way to eschew the Venture Capital and Private Equity path which ends too often in exit by sale or IPO.

In 2013, Dave created the Tugboat Institute to convene Evergreen CEOs to help one another through inspiration, new ideas, best practices, support, and encouragement. Evergreen leaders want investors who will allow them to stay private forever, sharing in and contributing to the long-term success of their company.

Dave’s Evergreen investment approach was innovated with these entrepreneurs in mind. His investment fund Tugboat Ventures provides liquidity to founders, family members or legacy investors, and funds profitable growth initiatives. He aligns the interests of management, owners and investors by employing a structural orientation towards ongoing cash distributions instead of an exit.

In this conversation, Dave will share his experience as a "conscious" venture capitalist and inspire us to provide and find "evergreen" capital for our own companies.

We want to thank Circoolar, Institute for Futures and 22@Network BCN for their generous participation.