Dave Whorton

Summary

Dave Whorton is passionate about purpose-driven companies that prioritize long-term shared success and people-first values and practices. At sixteen, Dave began his first job at Hewlett-Packard, working alongside manufacturing line workers at three divisions over four summers. It wasn’t until later in his career that he would come to realize the profound influence of HP's founders and their "HP Way," which sparked his dedication to serving businesses like early HP. Early in his career he founded four companies including Good Technology and Drugstore.com and worked for stints at top venture capital and private equity firms, KPCB, TPG, and Interwest. During this time, he witnessed the VC industry pivot from a proven forty-year playbook of managing risk with staged, reasonable financing to something much more aggressive: Get-big-fast, which later evolved into growth-at-all-costs. The lack of any profit discipline and manic pressure to grow didn’t feel right to him after being on the other side of it with Good, but he didn’t perceive an alternative… yet, that is. A pivotal conversation opened his eyes to a different kind of founder - seasoned entrepreneurs who were building profitable, innovative, people-first businesses that were designed to last beyond their lifetimes as independent, thriving businesses with no plans for an exit or IPO. Dave set off on a journey of interviewing a number of these entrepreneurs, and later included non-founder CEOs —eventually over 300. He found that these companies were often underappreciated and underserved. In 2013, Dave founded the Tugboat Institute to support and connect these leaders, coining the term "Evergreen companies" to describe these businesses. Since that time, members and friends have urged Dave to write a book about discovering an important alternative to Silicon Valley’s model—namely, Evergreen companies. After five years working with his co-author Bo Burlingham, Dave captured his learning journey and the key principles of Evergreen companies in his book, Another Way: Building Companies That Last…and Last…and Last. Dave’s hope is that Another Way greatly increases awareness of Evergreen companies and their incredible importance to our communities and society—and inspires new founders to build their own Evergreen companies that endure for generations. Dave has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Berkeley and an MBA from Stanford. Dave enjoys spending time between innovative Silicon Valley and mindful Sun Valley, Idaho.