#141—Dave Whorton: The Competitive Advantages of Evergreen Businesses

Outthinkers

Dave Whorton is a tech investor and founder who spent 20 years of his career at the highest levels of Silicon Valley venture capital and tech startups. At the preeminent tech venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, he worked directly with John Doerr for several years. He cofounded four companies, including drugstore.com and Good Technology.

This episode is longer than our usual shorter format—and with good reason. It's about companies that last longer. We dive deep into the world of evergreen businesses—those built to adapt and grow profitably for 100 years and more. Think of these as the direct juxtaposition to venture capital-funded enterprises—where those are built with the sole intention of selling, going public or shutting down if not performing, evergreen businesses are built to endure.

In 2013, Dave founded Tugboat Institute to connect, support, and inspire purpose-driven leaders of these businesses, and this upcoming May 2025, Dave, with Bo Burlingham, releases Another Way: Building Companies that Last...and Last...and Last. In this episode, we uncover some of the most profound insights from his book, so many of which fly in the face of current, common, dogmas around innovation and entrepreneurship, including:

• Why the companies VCs most often tout today as exemplars of greatness (Google, Microsoft) took very little VC funding—and why you should probably avoid VC investors as well
• The fact that the size of venture capital market has exploded multifold since 1999 and what that means for nature of how businesses are built and operate today
• The “Evergreen 7Ps” that characterize these companies, and specific case studies and examples of companies that live these values. Two of my favorites:
  • They pace their growth—and avoid hyperscaling
  • They pursue pragmatic innovation, rather than radical breakthrough innovation

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Episode Timeline:
00:00—Highlight from today's episode
01:02—Introducing Dave + the topic of today’s episode
03:19—If you really know me, you know that...
06:23—What is your definition of strategy?
09:00—Explaining the evolution of venture capital in the past 50 years
12:02—The pitfalls of taking venture capital
17:39—Introducing the Evergreen '7 Ps'
24:12—How to know if a business' pace of growth is healthy
26:50—People as a critical part of your strategy
33:58—Pragmatic innovation in evergreen businesses
38:53—What public companies could adopt from the 7 Ps to behave more like evergreen businesses
45:00—How can people can keep learning from you?
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Additional Resources:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davewhorton/
Link to book: https://www.tugboatinstitute.com/anotherway/
The Tugboat Institute: https://www.tugboatinstitute.com/

Thank you to our guests, thank you to our executive producer, Karina Reyes, our editor, Zach Ness, and the rest of the team. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. I'm your host, Kaihan Krippendorff. Thank you for listening.
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