Another Way: Building Companies That Last...and Last...and Last

From the inner sanctum of Silicon Valley and short-term capitalism comes the story of a VC who lived it, then left it, and found a better way to build companies.

Dave Whorton was John Doerr's associate partner at high flying Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers during Silicon Valley's big shift. After Netscape's IPO, he witnessed the VC industry pivot from a proven forty-year playbook of managing risk to something much more aggressive: Get big fast. Don't worry about profitability. Cash out and find another venture.

And for a while, Whorton took part in this whirlwind as he pursued his dream of becoming the next Hewlett or Packard. He played an integral role in Google's first venture capital financing and started two get-big-fast companies himself. It wasn't long, though, before it all got to be too much. Whorton recognized that if "get big fast" was the formula for building a great technology company in the twenty-first century, he was happy to let someone else do it. It just wasn't for him.

That could have been the end of the story, but instead it turned out to be the beginning of another, very different one. Whorton didn't just walk away; he went on a journey to find a better way to build companies: a way focused on long-term stability and steady growth, funded through profitability; a way in which leaders were committed to a Purpose greater than personal wealth generation, to being People First, and making their companies endure. He calls these companies 'Evergreen, ' and in Another Way: Building Companies That Last . . . and Last . . . and Last, he's started a movement to inspire more entrepreneurs and business leaders to follow this path he's uncovered.

Whorton's story, combined with his Evergreen 7Ps(R) framework, offers practical steps to create and lead enduring businesses. Full of revelations, practical advice, and real-world examples of companies going Evergreen, Another Way is as instructive as it is inspiring.

Dave Whorton is an experienced tech investor and founder who spent the first twenty years of his career at the highest levels of Silicon Valley venture capital and tech-boom startups. At the preeminent tech venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, he worked directly with chairman John Doerr for several years. He cofounded four companies, including drugstore.com and Good Technology. In 2013 he founded the Tugboat Institute to connect, support, and inspire purpose-driven leaders of Evergreen businesses--those built to adapt and grow profitably for one hundred years and more. Whorton considers Evergreen company leaders and their businesses to represent capitalism at its best. For twenty-five years Bo Burlingham was Editor at Large at Inc. magazine. He is the author of five books, the most recent of which is Finish Big.