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Tag: #Sustainability

The Heat of Summer: Cue Up the Global Warming Warnings

The Heat of Summer: Cue Up the Global Warming Warnings

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Since we’re in the heat of summer in most parts of the world, it’s a good opportunity to address climate change. For the record, according to Weather.com, last “July (was) on track to be the coolest in the U.S. since 2015, according to Todd Crawford, Director of Meteorology at Atmospheric G2.” Although not many of us were around to experience those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer, to quote Nat King Cole, re last summer, how quickly we forget.

 

CNN has been all over ‘climate change’ and recently hosted the founder (whom CNN misidentified as the co-founder) of the Weather Channel, climatologist John Coleman. Read More...

Eco-Friendly? Sustainable? Things that Make You Go ‘Hmmm.’

Eco-Friendly? Sustainable? Things that Make You Go ‘Hmmm.’

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And thank you, C+C Music Factory.

‘Sustainable,’ ‘circular economy,’ and ‘environmentally conscious’ are definitely practically de rigueur among entrepreneurs these days and we are totally on the same page. In fact, we’ve been composting for years. But are products et al that people call sustainable, truly sustainable – or eco friendly. There are just a few points/examples of things that make you go hmmm that we’d like to share as a sort of nudge to you, and/or to provoke something of a head-scratching moment. Pay attention: science can sometimes be something of a shifting target:

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Is There Nothing Bill Gates Can’t Do???

Is There Nothing Bill Gates Can’t Do???

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There’s no doubt that Bill Gates is considered something of a hero. With his wealth, power and influence, he has never shrunk from addressing some of the world’s most pressing problems. And he certainly has the wealth, power, influence – and hubris – to do just that.

The Microsoft Days

Back in the olden days of tech, there was a company called Microsoft, which is still around, but in the olden days, the CEO was the company’s founder – a Harvard drop out named Bill Gates, who stole his operating system from Xerox Parc (as did Steve Jobs). Back in the Bill Gates days of MSFT (before he turned the CEO spot over to Steve Ballmer no doubt due in no small part to the government’s antitrust case against the company), MSFT was known for basically three overarching things: products that didn’t work/were buggy/caused the air-sucking blue screen of death, as they were often released before their time; their predatory habits (in those days MSFT was referred to as the Evil Empire); and their desire to crush all competitors. Their charge was basically to win at all costs and if you believe that Gates has changed, here’s a must read: Bill Gates’s Philanthropic Giving Is a Racket.

Here are some of the verticals on which Gates is focused:

Education: Notes The Federalist (Bill Gates Tacitly Admits His Common Core Experiment Was A Failure), “Since 2009, the Gates Foundation’s primary U.S. activity has focused on establishing and implementing Common Core, a set of centrally mandated curriculum rules and tests for what children are to learn in each K-12 grade, with the results linked to school and teacher ratings and punitive measures for low performers. The Gates Foundation has spent more than $400 million itself and influenced $4 trillion in U.S. taxpayer funds towards this goal. Eight years later, however, Bill Gates is admitting failure on that project, and a “pivot” to another that is not likely to go any better.” Despite the fact that, according to The New York Times (The Common Core Costs Billions and Hurts Students), “It was a rush job, and the final product ignored the needs of children with disabilities, English-language learners and those in the early grades… There is nothing to show for it… Last year, (2015) average math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress declined for the first time since 1990; reading scores were flat or decreased compared with a decade earlier.” Read More...

Think Bigger

Think Bigger

We hear startup proposals from entrepreneurs – many of whom are Millenials and this is not a swipe at Millenials at all, not to worry – and oftimes their ideas include a social good component. We have nothing against social good – au contraire – and often, no matter what the full platform/pain-point solution, the entrepreneur tends to focus on the social good component. Often to the exclusion of all else, or they may bring it up five to ten minutes into the investor pitch.

Things To Remember:

  1. You’re there at the pitch to get money/funding from the investors
  2. The investors are about money, too – they have LPs to answer to
  3. No matter how worthy your social good angle, bottom line: consumers are selfish – what’s the value add to them, besides the fact that, say, you want to educate every single person in the world? Nice – how does your laundry detergent help me (and we mean the royal/inclusive ‘me’ here) to completely remove all stains (if that’s what you’re offering) at a price point that’s going to inspire me to give up my current laundry detergent. Nice that it’s also going to completely reverse the effects of water pollution and you also have a social good angle – you want to contribute 50% of the profits to help educate the world, but at, say, $200 for a box of detergent, no matter how good your overall intentions, that’s a non starter.
  4. Investors have the attention span of a gnat, with all due respect to our investor friends out there. It’s not that they’re necessarily ADHD: they’ve been there/done that/heard it all before/burned the tee shirt: they want to know about your product, not your conscience. Being able to pay back their LPs – with nice returns – that’s what helps them sleep at night. Too.

Get to the point, throw in the social good angle later, if you need to, or to roughly cite Jerry Maguire, it’s you lost me at ‘hello.’

Same with your customers. Read More...