Ethix Wins SF Bay Area Social Enterprise Alliance Pitch Night

Posted by Brian Thivierge on

SEA Pitch NightOn Tuesday of last week I received an email letting me know that Ethix had been selected to present at the Social Enterprise Alliance Pitch Night in San Francisco.  I had been eagerly awaiting the news as it had been some time since I had completed the lengthy application to be included in this event.   I was excited and started to think about what I wanted to say about our company.

Social Enterprise Alliance is “An alliance of leaders across sectors advancing social enterprise to benefit communities.”  This is very much in our wheel house here at Ethix and I was looking forward to the opportunity to get feedback and insight from this audience.  Thursday came around and I headed over the bridge from our Oakland office and into the city.  On arriving, I was welcomed by Antonio Aguilera, President of the SEASF Board and Jan Cohen, a veteran social entrepreneur and SEA Board Member who spoke with myself and the other pitchers about how to make an effective presentation on our young companies.  We picked numbers to determine the order of our pitches and settled in with a packed house to commence the contest.

I pitched second of five and was inspired by everything I heard that night.  It is really amazing to be a part of the Bay Area’s vibrant community of changemakers.  At the end of the evening the audience was asked to vote.  Ethix and Yellow Leaf Hammocks came out in a dead tie for first place in the first vote.  It was very exciting.  In the run off vote, Ethix took the day!

This has been such a powerful validation for myself and my amazing team of partners who are working to build this company.  We know that we are doing something powerful through re purposing a much maligned model in financial services to make it work for communities but it is really meaningful to share that and have it validated by an organization like Social Enterprise Alliance.  I feel very appreciative of the opportunity and pretty psyched about the results.

The Not So General Election

Posted by Brian Thivierge on

 

Vote with your business

Just a few short days until our next general election.  Everybody, well almost everybody, gets a vote.  Not everybody feels like they have a say.  Democracy gives us a chance to choose every 4 years but each and every day we are making choices that probably have a greater impact on our economy, our culture and our collective health than the ballot that we cast.  If I think about my day, I can choose to get up at 6am instead of 7:30am and have time for a swim or a trip to the gym before work.  Then I can pick between the kale and eggs in my fridge or the really amazing (and I mean really amazing) chocolate croissants that are just a quick stop on my way into the office.  Hmmmmm??????  Bike or drive, lunch box or restaurant… it goes on and on and, when I think about it, these are all economic decisions.  What products will I buy and what industries will I support?  Am I funding the problems or driving resources into areas where people are looking for solutions.  The thing is that we live in a economy that is shaped by a cultural and political system rather than a culture that is shaped by an economy.  I think that means that our real voting power lies in how we spend our time and our money.  How we allocate our resources.  The great American thing about that is it brings us back to the fact that we really do live in a democracy even while our politicians butt heads and behave like arses in Washington.  Vote with your business, vote with your wallet, vote with your feet and your facebook friends and your page fans and then tweet tweet tweet away and vote some more.

And while you are at it.  Vote for Ethix.  We “”sell” the difference we want to see in the word”:)