May 2025
6h 13m
English
Overview
Dave Whorton was John Doerr's associate partner at high-flying Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers during Silicon Valley's big shift. After Netscape's IPO, he witnessed the VC industry pivot from a proven forty-year playbook of managing risk to something much more aggressive: Get big fast. Don't worry about profitability. Cash out and find another venture.
And for a while, Whorton took part in this whirlwind as he pursued his dream of becoming the next Hewlett or Packard. It wasn't long, though, before it all got to be too much. Whorton recognized that if "get big fast" was the formula for building a great technology company in the twenty-first century, he was happy to let someone else do it. It just wasn't for him.
Whorton went on a journey to find a better way to build companies: a way focused on long-term stability and steady growth, funded through profitability; a way in which leaders were committed to a Purpose greater than personal wealth generation, to being People First, and making their companies endure. He calls these companies "Evergreen."
Whorton's story, combined with his Evergreen 7Ps® framework, offers practical steps to create and lead enduring businesses.
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