Article originally posted here by Paparelli

by Charlie Paparelli

“I need a technical co-founder!” Ted exclaimed.

Ted has deep industry knowledge. He knows how the industry works. He knows the industry language. He gets the industry culture. He knows the players. He identified the problem that needs solving. He realizes he needs to build a technology solution to solve this problem.

He is stuck.

He knows how to use technology but not how to build technology. He needs a technical co-founder to get this business off the ground. 

Ted worked with a couple of developers to build an alpha product. His goal was to prove a solution can be built and that his market would use it. This first cut at the product was put together with duct tape and baling wire, but it did work. More importantly, his market responded with a “Let’s build it!”

Here’s the problem.

Every talented developer already has his own company. At a minimum, it is a contract programming business. And being a good small business person, he is in search of revenue. The business founder, however, wants a real partner, an honest-to-God co-founder. He doesn’t want a partnership or joint venture with this talented developer. He wants a real partner.

The question Ted asked me was this, “How much equity is fair?”

If you are looking to get some programming done and you have no money, then this is the right question. If you are looking for a real partner, then this question is premature.

The question isn’t equity. The question is mission alignment.

Getting a talented tech developer to join you as a co-founder is really a business merger. The developer already has a business. And the developer’s business has a vision, mission, market, and product just like yours. You are asking him or her to drop their mission and adopt your mission. 

How hard is this?

Real partners are on the same mission. They are thinking about accomplishing their mission 24/7. It is all they think about and talk about. It is hard to birth a business. Really hard. You are creating something real and financially sustainable from an idea. And this is why it takes absolute alignment between founders in order to have a chance at being successful.

Maybe it is just transactional.

If the developer is not captured by your mission, then the relationship will forever be transactional. He wants to help you with your mission but only as a part of his business’s mission. He is excited about his business and mission and will not give it up. 

This results in a client-vendor relationship. You are not partners. In this case, work to get the economics right for both companies. If this is not possible given your personal cash and equity constraints, move on. Find another developer who will work with you.

The buy-in.

When I explained this to Ted, he said, “That will never happen. The developer I am working with will never give up his mission for my mission.” Ted threw his hands in the air and said, “I’ll never find a talented developer to be my co-founder.”

I said, “I agree. It is impossible. But all things are possible with God.”

Finding a partner is like finding a spouse. There is the initial attraction. You take your time and go on dates. You get to know each other better with each encounter. You get more involved with each other’s lives. You share your dreams. And if the attraction continues, you go deeper. You come to a shared vision, a shared mission. Then you get married.

I was talking to a Christian businessman yesterday who helps build startups in developing nations. The startups always have included in their mission, “To help build the local economy by creating jobs and sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” His fiancé knew what she was getting herself into. She gave him a wedding band with this inscription: “Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.” Ruth 1:16

I have to tell you, I was blown away by this level of love, trust, and alignment. But this is what it takes to come together at the start of a marriage. And this is what it takes to come together as co-founders of a new enterprise.

Take your time.

Like dating, it all starts with sweat equity. No guarantees, just trust. 

Your potential co-founder will go one of two ways as you begin working together. 

1. They will either show continually increasing commitment and engagement to you and your mission. 

2. You will see and feel them losing their enthusiasm and beginning to distance themselves. 

In either case, you will know if this is your co-founder.

This is the one!

Once you know this is your co-founder, it is time to formalize the equity deal. 

Here are a few criteria to consider:

1. How far along is the company?

2. What did you bring to this company?

3. What is your relevant business experience?

4. What does your co-founder bring to this company?

5. What is the business experience of the co-founder?

These questions prompt tough conversations. And this topic is just the beginning of tough conversations. This relationship, like marriage, will continue for a very long time. And no relationship is easy. 

by Jewel Burks

Since I’ve been able to work, I’ve worked multiple jobs. During summers growing up, I worked in the businesses started by my grandparents in Mobile, AL and passed down to my father and his siblings. You could find me doing everything from working the register at their BP gas station to preparing sandwiches in my father’s Subway. When I went to college, despite having a full ride academic scholarship at Howard University, I took full advantage of work study opportunities — working “security” in the evenings at the School of Business and working in the afternoons as a part-time instructor at MS², Howard’s on campus Middle School for Math and Science. Even as I worked my first full time job at Google, I moonlighted as a fashion model, signed to the now defunct, San Francisco based, City Model Management, and doing runway shows and local advertisements on the evenings and weekends to bring in an extra thousand dollars per month. Fear of being stuck in a generational cycle of debt and financial insecurity or not having enough money to pursue my dreams has always been a driving force in my life and decisions.

Click here to read the full article, originally by Jewel Burks

by Sound Financial Strategies Group

Emerging Markets are an often overlooked area of investment. Clint Sorenson joined The Chase this week to talk about international investing with Chris McAlpin. Check it out below.

by Bill and Dana Wichterman

Give someone a fish and they’ll eat for a day, but invest in a for-profit commercial fishery and their community could prosper and flourish for a lifetime.  Well, that’s not exactly how the old proverb goes, but it’s no less true.

And that’s why we’re leaning into impact investing: it’s sustainable, dignifying, cures and prevents poverty, helps people flourish, heals broken cultures, and draws from a much larger pool of funding to have a bigger impact.

Philanthropy is important, and it’s often the only way to address a problem. When someone is hungry and in need of their next meal, giving them a fish is the best thing to do. But it usually doesn’t address the underlying cause of the hunger. 

Plus, there is way more money available for impact investing than philanthropy. The average net worth of a family is around $100,000, whereas a tithing family will give just $10,000 annually. Harnessing the power of the liquid assets (in retirement and non-retirement vehicles) to intentionally invest according to biblical principles means the potential year-over-year impact of the investment dollars is far larger with a much longer tail.

Business is driven by two things: customers and shareholders. And in a sense, shareholders are more important because they also care about customers – without whom they won’t make money. Witness the power of shareholders shaping culture through ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) investing, prompting businesses to behave far differently than if their sole concern were sales. With Christians managing more than $150 trillion, the power to shape culture is huge. 

In the developing world, impact investing has far more potential to alleviate poverty and lead to human flourishing than charitable giving. Consider Sunshine Nuts in Mozambique. Founded by former Hershey Foods chocolate buyer Don Larson and his wife Terri, they are working to create a sustainable, for-profit cashew processing facility in one of the poorest countries in the world. They are providing good-paying jobs, training, and in a high-quality and safety-conscious factory shaping a culture of meritorious work for its employees and suppliers. The workers receive a small bonus every day they show up on time, upending the prevailing culture that undervalues timeliness. And Sunshine Nuts investors are betting on getting a decent return on their dollar so they can turn around and invest their appreciated capital in another start-up that has a redemptive mission. 

The Sunshine Nuts employees probably don’t feel any gratitude to the company investors, because as far as they’re concerned, they’re trading their labor for their wages, giving them a sense of accomplishment and dignity that is absent when the poor are handed a fish. Work is a reward in itself since it’s one of the ways we reflect God’s image. Empowering the poor to earn their wages is ennobling in a way that charity just can’t be.

Impact investing can cure and prevent poverty in the first instance. Plus, wages create taxpayers, potential donors and investors.  The unbending power of profits, deadlines, term sheets and spread sheets bring a real-world crucible to communities that government and philanthropic programs may lack. And it’s this market power that has the strength to straighten out twisted cultures (and all cultures need straightening to greater and lesser extents).

Impact investing is akin to the yet-to-be-invented perpetual motion machine that just keeps on going and going. But these machines need capital to be built in the first place. That’s where Christians come in.

We could seek a return-focused investment strategy without regard for the second bottom line, but why? If God wants to steward all our resources for His Kingdom, we shouldn’t ignore how we are making money. After having been challenged by Henry Kaestner and Greg Lernihan to use all of our resources in an intentional double-bottom line way, we’re systematically going through our portfolio, transitioning away from vehicles that have no regard for social and spiritual impact to those that do.  

Admittedly, this requires effort – more effort than most busy people have time to expend. How can we vet all the companies in an index fund, much less a startup half-way around the world?

Thankfully, there is a movement in the Church to create organizations to do just that. 

Praxis, Lion’s Den, Impact Foundation, Talanton, Eventide, Kingdom Advisors, and of course, Faith-Driven Investor are among the growing number of Christian-led organizations empowering Christians to unlock the potential of their capital to remake the world and lead to human flourishing. To us, it feels like a work of the Spirit blowing through the Church, and we couldn’t be more excited about it.

Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch Prime Minister 120 years ago, said, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’” This includes our money – and not just our tithe, but our investments, too.  

Article originally posted here by Bill High

by Bill High

Retirement is a relatively new creation.

In the founding of America, it was expected that you’d work until your dying breath. Of course, some of this expectation was based upon shorter life expectancy.

As life expectancy grew, the reality grew that physical work would outpace the physical capacity to do that work. For instance, it wasn’t until 1889 that German Chancellor Bismarck introduced the modern idea of pensions, according to a Seattle Times article on retirement. A few year earlier, in 1875, American Express introduced America’s first employer-funded retirement plan, and in 1880 the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad followed suit. From there, private pensions grew.

The United States created Social Security in 1935 as a government-funded retirement system, followed by Medicare in 1965.

Perhaps unfortunately, retirement today is accepted as a matter of right. The idea of “saving for retirement” is commonplace. For many, age 65 is the magic number for retirement.

Rethinking Retirement

No doubt there are some realities of retirement. Some professions are better served by younger people—policemen, firemen, heavy construction. But perhaps it’s time to rethink retirement as a right and view it as an opportunity to contribute to the world in a different way.

For instance, the Bible only mentions retirement in Numbers 8.23-26. There, the Levites were to serve from age 25-50. After age 50, they could still serve their brothers by providing security for the tent of meeting. The necessity for retirement came from the fact that part of the work of the Levites required heavy lifting—a younger man’s job.

With retirement being a relatively new development, the question becomes, how best to steward those years? Is retirement meant to be a nonstop vacation?

I’ve heard the phrase, “Refire! Don’t retire…” (there’s now a book by that title, which I haven’t read). Retirement will look very different for each of us, but a clear vision and mission help to keep us focused on loving and serving others.

I imagine retirement as a focused season of blessing our families and our communities with all our resources (time, talent, treasure), even as abilities and resources change.

Along those lines, the late Bob Buford wrote Halftime (which I have read) and all the related resources that developed around the Halftime Institute. Buford sought to inspire middle-aged people to pause, reflect and plan to make the second half of their lives even more meaningful than the first.

And if reading a book is more than you want to bite off at the moment, Jeff Haanen wrote “Don’t Waste Your Retirement,” a great article posted on the Gospel Coalition blog.

So what do you think about the concept of retirement, and what are your plans for retirement?

[ Photo by Federico Giampieri on Unsplash ]