The Obvious Future

Today I’m joining Obvious Ventures. While it’s a career change, to be sure, it was an easy decision. I feel like I’ve been training for this shift most of my professional career.

The Obvious Ventures vision aligns with my view of the world. Great companies, large and small, bring to their mission a need to make the world better. They bring world positive perspectives to their work. Companies that lead in this way have an advantage — they tend to be more future-proof than their competitors. If your business is based on fossil fuels, you’re not future-proof. If your business is based on exploitation of workers, you’re not future-proof. If your business has a view that health and wellness are secondary, you’re not future-proof. And if you’re not future-proof, you’re in trouble.

Whether viewed through environmental, medical or political lenses, the world is becoming more volatile. Entrepreneurs willing to take on these challenges, to support the new needs of consumers who care, and to level the playing field for those at risk of being marginalized are the entrepreneurs who will win. If you’re looking to be world positive not just in the way you do business, but also in your actual missions — your products, your services and your potential — then you’ve got an edge.

I graduated college in 1993, when the first issue of Wired Magazine was hitting the newsstands. After a brief detour in D.C., I dove in hard in the early days of the web, ultimately banding together with amazing co-founders to create Bigstep in 1998. Our mission at Bigstep was to help small businesspeople take part the in budding Internet revolution. We wanted to show the power of the Internet could be harnessed for all people, not just big players like Amazon and Microsoft. Today, the power of the network continues to help the little guy: Mobile, Social, Crowdsourcing and Cloud Computing are all empowering individuals and small businesses like never before.

After Bigstep, in 2003, I launched my first solar company with Bill Gross at Idealab. Al Gore’s movie hadn’t yet screened, oil was at $15 per barrel, and climate change was a nascent concern of a few environmentalists. Solar panels cost an uneconomic $5 per watt. A decade later, with some big wins (and some tough losses) behind me, I could clearly see solar moving into its world-positive heyday. While running global sales and marketing at Suntech, we became the largest solar company in the world, our prices were dropping below $1 per watt, and global sales topped $3B dollars.

Recognizing that there were still opposing forces lined up against renewables, I decided to seek them out and find ways to bring them into the fold. I joined NextEra Energy, the largest developer and owner of wind and solar resources in the country. NextEra Energy had the added benefit of owning Florida Power and Light, one of the largest investor-owned utilities in the country. Instead of finding opposition, however, I found a Fortune 150 company focused on scaling world-positive businesses. While driven by shareholder return, the view from the top was clear: focusing on future-proof businesses is the best recipe for long-term returns.

Fundamentally, however, I still believe that the critical shift will come from innovations of early stage companies built around sustainable systems. I am eager to return to the world of start-ups; this time as an investor. Having seen the long-term value creation and impact that world-positive businesses can deliver at scale, I’m excited to help build them from the ground up. We’re still in the early innings of sustainable systems and I can’t wait to roll up my sleeves.

And so, Obvious Ventures. Obvious offers powerful depth and capabilities. There is clear intention in the DNA of the founders and funders. Created by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs, the fund is already off to an impressive start. The fact that the entrepreneurs come with a powerful pedigree of creating world-positive businesses sets them apart. Because I’ll be focused on sustainable systems with entrepreneurs driven to change the world, I already feel at home.

While at Idealab over a decade ago, I often walked past a quote on the wall that focused me on the power of world-positive ideas.

All truth passes through three stages

First, it is ridiculed.

Second, it is violently opposed.

Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

-Arthur Schopenhauer

The quote is a humbling reminder that if our work is successful, the ideas themselves become obvious.