Dave Whorton Email & Phone Number

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 loved their persistence and purposefulness, and came to see that many embraced the culture and values very similar to those he so deeply admired in his teenage years at HP. Yet, he found that these companies were often underappreciated and underserved, and ignored by the media and business schools due to having no plans to raise VC or PE on the defacto growth path to an IPO or sale.In 2013, Dave founded the Tugboat Institute to support and connect these leaders, coining the term "Evergreen companies" to describe businesses that are purpose-driven, privately owned, profitable, growing, and committed to lasting shared success. Today, Dave Whorton is a thought leader in the Evergreen movement, unifying, curating ideas, and encouraging a growing community of entrepreneurs and business leaders who are starting and growing companies that will positively impact our world for generations to come.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.

Listed skills include Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital, Start Ups, Strategic Partnerships, and 23 others.