The Co-Founder of Square on How Nonprofits Could Benefit from “Stacked Innovations”

The Co-Founder of Square on How Nonprofits Could Benefit from “Stacked Innovations”

For many entrepreneurs, launching a single successful startup would be enough. But for Jim McKelvey, his success involves a half dozen different startups, the best known of those being Square. But another one would be LaunchCode, a non-profit organization based in St. Louis that is building a skilled workforce by creating pathways for driven people seeking careers in technology. He is also the author of The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time, and he is with us now.

CEO of DivInc on How Cities Can Create a More Inclusive Startup Community

CEO of DivInc on How Cities Can Create a More Inclusive Startup Community

DivInc was the first early-stage tech startup accelerator in Texas, exclusively for people of color and women tech entrepreneurs. And it’s an organization that’s on the move, expanding into other cities, focusing on social justice, innovation and serving women of color entrepreneurs through their Startup Sistas initiative. And it’s a pleasure to have with us now their co-founder and CEO, Preston James. 

Suzanne DiBianca, Executive Vice President of Corporate Relations and Chief Philanthropy Officer of Salesforce, Joins Denver Frederick

Suzanne DiBianca, Executive Vice President of Corporate Relations and Chief Philanthropy Officer of Salesforce, Joins Denver Frederick

When people asked me who was going to be on the show this Sunday, and I told them Salesforce, the almost universal response was, “Cool!” Now, I don’t hear that that often…not about a guest on the show or, frankly, about much of anything else I might ever be doing. One of the things that has helped make Salesforce cool is that they had philanthropy baked into the business model from the day they opened their doors. And the architect of that, along with their CEO, has been Suzanne DiBianca, the Executive Vice President of Corporate Relations and the Chief Philanthropy Officer of Salesforce, who is with us now.

Andrew Yang, Founder of Venture for America, Joins Denver Frederick

Andrew Yang, Founder of Venture for America, Joins Denver Frederick

If you are a smart kid in the U.S. today, you’re going to do one of six things in one of six places,” says Andrew Yang, founder and CEO of Venture for America. Learning how to build a business is not one of those things, and Cleveland and Detroit are not among the places.

What Mr. Yang means, as he explains in this segment from the Business of Giving, is that today’s top college graduates tend to gravitate toward a handful of fields (financial services, management consulting, the law) in a handful of cities (New York, Washington, Boston, San Francisco). As did he, going from Brown and Columbia to a Wall Street law firm before realizing it was a bad fit and starting a successful career in start-ups.

Now Mr. Yang brings that experience to bear at Venture for America, a nonprofit he seeded with $120,000 of his own money. In this interview he details how Venture works to develop the next generation of entrepreneurs through fellowships and mentoring and shepherd that budding business talent to cities most in need of an economic boost. He also discusses Generation Startup, an upcoming documentary about the organization, and Venture’s goal to create 100,000 new jobs across the country by 2025.