Brandon Stover On Life

Emily Kennedy is Co-Founder & President of Marinus Analytics. Emily went form college researcher to tech founder helping thousands of victims in the $99 billion black market industry of sex trafficking, forced labor and slavery. What started off as a college research thesis on human trafficking turned into an internationally recognized AI and machine learning technology to identify and locate victims trafficking sold online and dismantle organized criminal networks.  

In their seven years of operation, they've assisted over 2,500 law enforcement and nonprofit users analyze over 400 million records to date. Their technology is 60 times faster than manual identification and saved law enforcement over 70,000 hours of investigative time in 2020 alone. To continue their impact of solving society's most pressing problems, they've applied their technology to include human services and cyber fraud. And in early 2021, they were announced as a finalist in the IBM Watson AI X PRIZE, which is a $3 million competition to build artificial intelligence for good.

Full show notes and worksheets can be found here: evolvethe.world/episodes/emily-kennedy

What You Will Learn In This Episode:

• How to take university research and turn it into a startup
• How to secure early stage funding without taking venture capital
• How to grow your customer base in early stages
• How to attract passionate and skilled talent to a mission driven startup
• How to set boundaries as a founder
• How to be a thermostat, and not a thermometer

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!

Today's Featured Founder is is Collin Tate, Founder of Kind Find which is a weekly brand discovery email series that introduces everyone everywhere to 100% vegan companies, crowdfunding projects, trends, job listings, and more. They are on a mission to help ethical eCommerce thrive and support the mass adoption and global growth of the vegan lifestyle.

Full show notes and transcripts can be found here: evolvethe.world/community/collin-tate

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!

Kathy Hannun is Co-Founder & President of Dandelion Energy. Kathy has spent the last decade focused on finding “Moonshots,” which are business opportunities that harness technology for large-scale positive impact for millions, even billions, of people. Starting as a rapid evaluator at Google X's moonshot factory, she took the leap at a moonshot idea for reducing fossil-powered heating costs and carbon emissions with earth powered geothermal energy.

Most recently, this innovative startup has raised $30 million in funding from top venture capitalists like Bill Gate's Breakthrough Energy Ventures, set a new standard for geothermal quality and cost-effectiveness, and empowered homeowners to avoid over 100 million pounds of carbon emissions and counting.

Full show notes and worksheets can be found here: evolvethe.world/episodes/kathy-hannun

What You Will Learn In This Episode:

• How to identify and validate moonshot ideas
• How to create an MVP for a moonshot idea
• Dandelion's 3 innovations that make it successful in the energy market
• How much a founder should disclose about their personal life during fundraising
• Why risk taking is necessary to solve global problems

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!

Full show notes and worksheets can be found here: evolvethe.world/episodes/landon-brand

What You Will Learn In This Episode:

• How to create ideas your passionate about
• Why to fund existing solutions rather than reinvent the wheel
• How to find your first users & turn them into a passionate community
• How to use fun, identity, status to fuel extreme growth adoption in your product
• The Magic of Public Benefit Corporations for mission driven startups

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!

Today's Featured Founder is is Rob Girling, Co-Founder & CEO of Artefact which an award-winning responsible strategy and design firm which helps leaders harness the power of design to make change and do good. 

Full show notes and transcripts can be found here: evolvethe.world/community/rob-girling

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!

Tom Dawkins is the Co-Founder & CEO of StartSomeGood. Tom has been the founder of 5 nonprofits and social enterprises and built the leading platform in cause-driven crowdfunding, innovative partnerships and social entrepreneur education. Since its conception in 2010, the platform has enabled more than 1000 projects to raise over $12.5 million to make a positive impact in the world. Their projects have an outstanding 53% success rate compared with 39% on Kickstarter and 9% on Indiegogo. In addition to their technology platform, they created a one stop shop for social entrepreneurs with accelerators, a social enterprise design course, live crowdfunding pitch events, a network community, and everything to help people design and launch social enterprises and impact projects.

Full show notes and worksheets can be found here: evolvethe.world/episodes/tom-dawkins

What You Will Learn In This Episode:

• The little known secrets from over a 1000 successful crowdfunding campaigns
• How to fund ideas facing the innovation paradox
• How to convene, not convert, your idea’s first audience
• The 5 heart grabbing hooks to get people raving about your crowdfunding idea
• Why the world’s biggest challenges are the biggest business opportunities
• The 4 phases of social entrepreneurship

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!

Jeffrey Hollender is Co-Founder of Seventh Generation, The American Business Council, & Hollender Sustainable Brands. Jeffrey went from dropping out of college and selling skill classes like the “art of flirting” or “how to marry money” to building one of the most successful sustainable product brands in the world, Seventh Generation, which sold to Unilever in 2016 for over $600 Million. Their line of over 100 products is distributed in most leading retailers including: Target, Whole Foods, Kroger, Safeway and Amazon. And for the last 30 years, from its humble beginnings as mail order catalog till now, the brand has been focused on nurturing the health of the next 7 generations.

But after being ousted by his own company in 2010, he took his idea of doing good to a whole another level becoming a leading authority on corporate responsibility, sustainability and social equity. He created a coalition of over 250,000 businesses called the American Sustainable Business Council which drives progressive public policy. 

In 2013, with his wife and daughter, he created Hollender Sustainable Brands, which started Sustain, Sustain Natural, a new brand of female-focused, all natural sexual wellness products that sold. The company has rapidly grown and was acquired by Grove Collective in 2019.

Full show notes and worksheets can be found here: evolvethe.world/episodes/jeffrey-hollender

What You Will Learn In This Episode:

• What Jeffrey's first business was after dropping out of college
• The first business Jeffrey sold to Time Warner
• Why Jeffrey's guilt ended up leading him to Seventh Generation
• How Seventh Generation started from a failing mail order catalogue
• How Seventh Generation got it's first customers
• The troubles in Jeffrey and Alan Newman's co-founder relationship
• Whether it is right for you to have a co-founder
• The absolute must haves before entering into a co-founder relationship
• How Jeffrey made a key decision to cut 80% of Seventh Generations revenue source
• Why educating your customers can have positive effects
• How to create company culture
• How Jeffrey took being fired from Seventh Generation and what he learned
• How Jeffrey practices the art of reflection
• Why businesses need to do good rather than less bad
• How Jeffrey got into the condom business and built Sustain Naturals
• Why to be truly sustainable we need to implement a whole systems approach
• How Jeffrey navigated selling three companies
• The most important lessons he teaches social entrepreneurs
• How to fuel innovation in your startup
• How we can solve major global issues

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!

Today's expert is James Bidwell, Co-founder of next generation strategy consultancy, Re_Set and owner and Chair of the world's leading source of global innovations, Springwise. Both his companies are members of 1% for the Planet and certified B Corp companies - committed to business as a force for good. His book, Disrupt: 100 Lessons in Business Innovation is an Amazon bestseller and explores how meaningful innovations are changing the way we live and work and how we can best look after our planet #innovationthatmatters. He is also Chair of the UK Steering committee for 1% for the Planet.

In today's lesson James reveals how to innovate and thrive in a disrupted world. 2020 has been a powerful wake up call for all of us. We have seen a seismic shift in that last 12 months and the pace of change has accelerated faster than ever before. It is vital that we adapt, find new ways to stay relevant and most importantly, innovate.  There is a huge opportunity now to be brave and bold.

Today's lessons:

1. The importance of an MVP
2. The importance of agility and flexibility
3. The vital role of real time intelligence

You can download this expert's playbook at https://www.evolvethe.world/learn/how-to-innovate

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!

Today's Featured Founder is Chris Wexler, Co-founder and CEO of Krunum has created the best in class AI technology and machine learning to remove digital toxic waste from the internet like Child Sexual Abuse Materials and other indicative content to improve and speed content moderation. As a pure social enterprise, Krunam brings the best in market forces to the fight against one of capitalism's worst toxic waste, human trafficking.

Full show notes and transcripts can be found here: evolvethe.world/community/chris-wexler

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!

Sebastiaan van der Lans is the Founder of WordProof & Chairman of the Trusted Web Foundation. Sebastiaan is an open source nerd who won Europe’s Blockchains for Social Good contest in 2020 for his innovative dutch startup that is on a mission to restore trust in the internet through transparency and accountability via blockchain timestamping.

And with fraud, fake news, and privacy issues the internet has been  hungry for this! Within just 6 months of launching they had 162,173 timestamps, 25,000,000+ Unique Pageviews, and 17,000+ Views of WordProof content on youtube. And the spread across the internet keeps climbing. As of today, they have had 1,023,572+ articles, media files and legal documents time stamped by their product.

Full show notes and worksheets can be found here: evolvethe.world/episodes/sebastiaan-van-der-lans

What You Will Learn In This Episode:

• Why Sebastiaan was drawn to the web and the power of open source
• How community and open source democratize the internet
• Why Sebastiaan invested $60,000 of time into building a free GDPR plugin
• How to test out developers before hiring them for bigger projects
• The origin of blockchain and what drew Sebastiaan to it
• Why trust on the internet is such a big issue
• How Sebastiaan is going to save the internet with a digital fingerprint
• How to bring more transparency and accountability on the internet
• The "levels" strategy for making social media more believable
• The secret way Sebastiaan funded his blockchain startup
• How WordProof got it's first users
• How to explain something as complicated as blockchain to everyone from investors to policy makers
• The ultimate strategy to win a startup competition
• Why Sebastiaan started a nonprofit alongside his startup to educate people about the internet
• How the State of Misinformation has effected the internet
• How to not fall prey to misinformation
• How we can apply open source and community prinicples to other problems
• How to make the internet have more human to human connection
• How 5 minutes of time turned in 20k return on investment

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!