Slow Scaling
My first trip back to the Bay Area in 6 years, moving from the fastest pace of the valley to the stillest space of the woods how do I find a new cadence that has integrity?
The valley invites a creativity and ambition for vision, it rewards bold moves and brazen confidence and builds the future but also has to bear Theranos and its vapour-ware. The magic that can happen in raising funds can be exciting and slide easily into addictive ruts, looking for the next hit. I know it, I’ve been there, it has saved me and also broken me.
How do I dare to dream and build team whilst holding firmly onto reality and adding value as we go? No-one wants to be a zombie but is the knee jerk reaction of hockey stick growth really the only answer?
Can we grow on a different trajectory? A regenerative and additional journey like David Blume from Santa Cruz shows us here?
Can we agree to move together with a slow scaling? building communities of like minded angels, advisors and team who expect things to grow and develop but not with unnatural expectations?
What does healthy momentum look like to build trust and relationship for the long term? How do we allow good ideas to pollinate quickly through the system whilst the individual business scales slowly.
How does Margaret Meads famous line fit into our modern investment landscape?
I need the valley for its brain, bravery and creativity but I won’t take its venture capital — not until this culture shift is complete.
How can we model slow scaling in a satisfying and enjoyable way which creates a new expectation of what progress is with a group that can we see and share in the quality of the slow scaling? After all the object of all this good environmental work is simply to slow down entropy
Here are a first form of words about the journey I am inviting my committed community of thoughtful individuals from across London & San Francisco into.
We ❤️ Bio diversity
We want to make sure earth is a place worth visiting in 2080
We do this by valuing nature to make it cheaper to have a regenerative relationship than an extractive one!
We will know it’s working when the FTSE and NASDAQ have regenerative companies at the heart of them
We plan to see this happen this decade.
The ocean is the office where our final battle will play out.
We start with Our businesses and Our Carbon and listen to the seabed and soil quality, the calories and water tables.
We are Valuing Nature together
We want your head and heart to get back to our body. We need each other to slow down and net off
our collective impact
The power is in our conversation, let us talk and figure out where we are and what’s next?
Let’s start from the ground up and connect our business machines back to our biology, grow an interdependent voice that scales up the supply chain until our whole financial system basks in the beauty of our biodiversity.
We will do it slow and and we scale it through the system together.
With thanks to Amanda, Alexander and David for the inspiration on this trip.
