Glide, the legendary church in the Tenderloin of San Francisco, is a world-class example of radical inclusiveness.
Glide has reached out into the margins and opened its doors to everyone. Whether you have a fancy home or live on the street, whether you are a drug addict or a prostitute, whether you are black, white, Latin, Asian, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Democrat, Republican, straight, queer, transgender – even if you are a venture capitalist – you are welcome at Glide.
Two of the world’s most influential venture capitalists, Ben Horowitz and Lars Dalgaard, were actually given the stage to speak to a full house at Glide a few nights ago on issues of leadership and community; TechCrunch has a nice review of the evening here. After Horowitz and Dalgaard finished speaking, my comment and question was along these lines.
“You mentioned Glide holds the secret to life. That is that Glide teaches that if you want to have a fulfilling life, you can care for others. Jan and Cecil are living models of this. And actually all wisdom traditions of the world teach us this too. We know how to be happy and lead fulfilling lives. However, somehow we have focused so much on profit and growth that much of the suffering in the world – from modern slavery to ecological devastation – is of our very own doing.
“So my question for you is: In your privileged position of leading venture capitalists, how do you encourage the CEOs you invest in to look beyond profit and exaggerated growth and to leverage their businesses to help to create the world we all want to live in?”
Their answer was that to attract young talent today you have to care about others and show that you are giving back as a company. They used Marc Benioff’s 1% model as an example.
I realize (albeit sometimes impatiently) that all great journeys and especially those of social justice movements are taken one step at a time, over the course of multiple generations. However, my point of view is that the time has passed for companies to simply ‘give back,’ and most especially at the 1% level. At this stage, with the great mess that we have made in the pursuit of profits and growth, we are either onboard with the notion of fundamentally integrating an approach of business that embodies a sense of universal responsibility or we are not. VCs like Ben and Lars are perfectly positioned to encourage their portfolio companies to do this. The notion of continuing business as usual and then ‘giving back’ is simply nonsensical in the face of the scale of the pressing issues we have before us.
We are but brief guests on this planet, passing by and borrowing it for our lives. Our children and their yet unborn children are counting on us to figure out how we might consider them and their well-being every single day, in every single business decision we make, as if they actually mattered. Not just after we have made our money but in the very way in which we make our money.
This is the great opportunity we have today. How might we weave together the sister Bay Area legacies of innovation and social justice in order to revolutionize the way business is done so that it works in service of the world we all want to live in, where profits and growth exist within a greater context of universal responsibility?
In full disclosure, although I am a practicing Buddhist, I have been a long time member of Glide. I was also previously a software entrepreneur and CEO of a Silicon Valley tech company. I am most grateful for Glide and Felicia Horowitz for hosting this event, and I hope it is just the beginning of many more conversations on this topic.