Venture+Philanthropy

10/07/2026

Every storm starts in good weather. 🦬

On this episode of Be the Bison, my friend Luis Delgado shares what happened when he felt God calling him to leave a steady job, with a new baby and a mortgage, to build his own business. There were days payroll was due, and the check showed up at 2 p.m. - God was faithful every time.

Then, just before the pandemic, Luis lost his entire team. What got him through wasn't grit alone. It was his herd: clients who understood, friends who showed up, and even a competitor who offered to send him help for free. “Without community, that's when you get taken out.”

Who's in your herd?

Read Luis's story and listen to the episode at ventureandphilanthropy.com/bethebison

10/06/2026

Smart. Faithful. Working 70 hours a week. And still stuck at a million dollars for the third year in a row.

I've met this founder dozens of times. After advising more than 200 organizations, I can tell you it's rarely the market, the economy, or a lack of drive.

The $1M ceiling is almost always a founder-capacity ceiling. When everything runs through you, the organization can only grow as far as you can stretch.

And it's about more than revenue. For a business, ministry, or nonprofit, the ceiling also caps how many families you can serve and how much you can give.

I just kicked off a 7-part series on breaking through, starting with what that ceiling is actually made of.

👉 https://insights.ventureandphilanthropy.com/post/why-most-organizations-stall-at-1m

10/02/2026

Bison Shout Out 🦬 — Amber Gunst, Co-Founder and CEO, FundLyst

Caught up with Amber Gunst today and got a first look at what she and the FundLyst team just soft-launched. Investors can get 3,000 pitch decks a month and give each one about 30 seconds. FundLyst's decision engine reads every deck, scores it against the fund's thesis, flags the key signals, and puts the strongest-fit deals at the top. One detail I loved: founder profiles sit below the deal information on purpose, to keep unconscious bias out of the first look.

They're focused on emerging funds (Fund II–IV) and family offices, and they're getting interest from incubators, accelerators, and economic development groups.

Two ways you can help Amber:
→ Know a family office, emerging fund manager, or accelerator buried in deal flow? Send them her way.
→ FundLyst is closing the last $170K of its round, ideally in $10K–$20K investments. If that's you or someone you know, reach out to Amber directly.

Grow with Purpose. Lead with Courage. Give with Impact.

09/29/2026

When Your Anchor Gives Way: Identity, Surrender, and the Power of Trust
Interview with Ron Forseth

As a high school sophomore, Ron Forseth stood alone at a payphone. The friends he'd built his entire identity around had just ditched him at the homecoming banquet. He dropped in his coins and called his sister for a ride home.

Something broke that night. By January, he didn't want to live.

Lying on his bed in the basement, he prayed to the Jesus his mother believed in, the mother who had been battling ALS since he was three: "If you want my life, you can have it. If you don't, I don't want it either."

He woke up, picked up the Bible she'd given him, and read for three days straight.
Fast forward more than four decades. The kid so off-key that a girl in chapel once laughed out loud at his singing is now the executive producer of The Singing Bible: every chapter of Scripture set to music in 44 renditions. 52,316 recordings. 6 million+ plays in its first month. Listeners in 219 countries.

As Ron puts it, it's God's sense of humor. His word for 2026 is TRUST, because whatever else we anchor our identity to (a relationship, a title, a bank account) will eventually disappoint.
🦬 Bison don't run from the storm. They walk straight through it.
🎧 Hear Ron's full story on the Be the Bison podcast:
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/033AH6fXt7kBcxWaqriSKa
Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/be-the-bison/id1896941182

What have you been building your identity on?

Society & Culture Podcast · Be the Bison Podcast is a leadership podcast for executives, entrepreneurs, and purpose-driven leaders who are navigating real-world challenges with courage and conviction. Through authentic conversat…

09/21/2026

A Bison Shout-Out and Introducing Don Neville 🦬

I want to introduce you to Don Neville, Managing Partner of a brand-new venture: The CFO Team.

Don built this for a specific moment when many founders hit a wall and don't quite know how to solve it: the company is well-funded, growing fast, and climbing toward $100M in revenue—but the finance function hasn't kept pace. A controller isn't enough, but a full-time CFO hire is a big, expensive, hard-to-reverse commitment. The CFO Team's answer is a seasoned CFO or an entire finance team, delivered fractionally — real financial leadership and strategy, sized to where the business actually is and needs to go.

Congratulations on the launch, Don. Excited to watch The CFO Team help the next wave of scaling companies get their financial house in order.

Grow with Purpose. Lead with Courage. Give with Impact.

09/11/2026

Charging the Storm: What a Yellowstone Bison Herd Taught Me on the Eve of 9/11's 25th Anniversary

Yesterday we traveled across one of the nation’s grandest drives - the Beartooth Pass and dropped into the Lamar Valley in Yellowstone. In the afternoon, I stood at a pullout along the Lamar River, watching a herd of bison graze across the valley floor. Lamar Valley earns its nickname, the "American Serengeti," honestly—wide-open grass, a river cutting through it, and animals that have been walking this ground for thousands of years, indifferent to the handful of us standing at the roadside with cameras and iPhones.

I hadn't planned to think about September 11th out there. But today is the 25th anniversary, and it turns out a Yellowstone valley is as good a place as any to sit with something that heavy — because it slows you down enough to actually remember where you were - instead of just scrolling past it on social media.

Here's the thing about bison that most people don't know until they've seen it happen, or at least heard a Yellowstone ranger explain it: when a storm rolls in off the mountains, cattle do what seems sensible. They run from it — away from the weather, trying to outlast it. But bison are too slow to outrun a storm, so they've evolved a different strategy entirely. They turn, face the wind, and walk directly into it. By charging toward the storm instead of fleeing from it, they cross through it in a fraction of the time. The cattle that run end up trapped alongside the storm for hours, suffering longer for their avoidance. The bison that charge are through it and grazing again before the sky even clears.

I've heard that story used as a leadership metaphor more times than I can count — "run toward your challenges, not away from them." And it's true, as far as it goes. But standing in that valley yesterday, a day before this particular anniversary, it meant something more to me.

Twenty-five years ago — today, by the time most of you read this — hundreds of firefighters, police officers, and 1st responders did the bison's thing in the most literal way imaginable. Everyone else in those towers, the Pentagon, or on that flight was running out or w

09/07/2026

Imagine your family sitting around a table 30 years from now.

The business has changed.

Some assets have been sold. New investments have been made. Children have become parents. Grandchildren are now helping make decisions.

Then the family faces a consequential choice.

Someone asks:

“What would Grandpa have wanted?”

Everyone remembers pieces of the story.

He believed in hard work.
Generosity mattered.
Family mattered.
His word was his bond.
And the business was always about more than making money.

But no one is quite sure how those values should guide the decision in front of them.

This is one of the great challenges of legacy:

Values deeply held by one generation can become vaguely remembered by the next.

Transferring wealth is important.

But what about transferring the principles that gave that wealth purpose?

A Mission-Driven Trust can help give those principles structure.

Not by attempting to predict every decision your children and grandchildren will face.

Not by creating rules for every possible circumstance.

And not by trying to control future generations from the grave.

Instead, think about giving them a compass.

A map shows the route based on today's terrain.

A compass provides direction when the terrain changes.

And it will change.

Businesses change.
Markets change.
Families change.
Opportunities change.

Your family's guiding principles can endure through all of them.

That begins by making the implicit explicit:

What do we believe?

What are these resources ultimately for?

What responsibilities accompany them?

How should generosity influence our decisions?

What do we want future generations to carry forward?

Those conversations can help shape the trust, governance, investment philosophy, charitable strategy, succession planning, and family practices surrounding your wealth.

The objective isn't to give future generations every answer.

It's to give them a framework for making wise decisions when you're no longer in the room.

Values without structure can disappear.

Structure without values can become bureaucracy.

But purpose combined with thoughtful structure can become something much more powerful:

a legacy capable of guiding generations.

Don't simply leave your family a map showing where you've been.

Give them a compass for where they're going.

Mission Driven Trusts | Give Your Values a Structure

venture + philanthropy
Vision + Purpose. Wealth + Legacy.

09/03/2026

Be the Bison Shout-Out - Rusty Shelton 🦬

Caught up with Rusty Shelton — Chairman of Zilker Media, strategist at AMG/ForbesBooks, author, and keynote speaker. If the name sounds familiar, it should: Rusty's own book on earned media and personal brand is an inspiration and reason for "Be the Bison".

Rusty's been in the trenches watching AI rewire how people and brands get found. His book, The Authoritative Advantage, discusses earned media — PR, awards, being cited by someone other than yourself — now shows up in 80%+ of AI search results (Claude, ChatGPT, and the rest), while plenty of companies leaning on paid ads are watching their web traffic drop 30-50%. His advice for using AI to your advantage: treat it as a thought partner for your thinking, not a ghostwriter for your voice — the difference between sharpening your ideas and publishing "AI slop."

Rusty provided me with an AI audit of my brand that provided some practical ideas for improvement, and I suspect he would do the same for you. I am looking forward to the Zilker Media tailgate this fall @ UT - "Hook Em".

Grateful for the catch-up convo, Rusty — and for the book that helped spark the shout-out!.
Grow with Purpose. Lead with Courage. Give with Impact.

08/31/2026

Imagine your family sitting around a table 30 years from now.

The business has changed. Children have become parents. Grandchildren are now helping make important decisions.

Then someone asks:

“What would Grandpa have wanted?”

Everyone remembers pieces of the story.

He believed in hard work. Generosity mattered. Family mattered. His word was his bond. And the business was always about more than making money.

But will they know how those values should guide the decisions they're facing?

That's one of the great challenges of legacy.

Values deeply held by one generation can become vaguely remembered by the next.

A Mission-Driven Trust can help give those values structure—not by controlling every future decision, but by helping future generations understand the principles behind the wealth they've been entrusted to steward.

Think of the difference between a map and a compass.

A map shows the road based on today's terrain.

A compass provides direction even when the terrain changes.

And it will change.

Businesses change. Markets change. Families change. New opportunities emerge.

The goal isn't to give the next generation every answer.

It's to give them principles strong enough to guide decisions you may never see.

Values without structure can disappear.

Structure without values can become bureaucracy.

Don't simply leave the next generation a map showing where you've been.

Give them a compass for where they're going.

Mission Driven Trusts | Give Your Values a Structure

venture + philanthropy
Vision + Purpose. Wealth + Legacy.

08/31/2026

Caught up with Brett Hurt today— someone I've admired for years. If you don't know Brett: he co-founded and led — Bazaarvoice, Coremetrics, and data.world — the kind of track record most founders spend a career chasing.

What's remarkable is what he's doing with it now to leave behind an enduring legacy. Brett's latest project isn't a company — it's a book and podcast called Love Conquers Fear, where he makes an unusual case: that science and spirituality aren't opposites; they're two sides of the same coin. He wrote it after years of study (100+ books on the subject), his own transcendent experiences, and conversations with people like Eben Alexander, the Harvard neurosurgeon whose near-death experience became the subject of the book Proof of Heaven.

We covered a lot of ground — and grateful Brett made time before catching a flight. Looking forward to more conversations — and to seeing where Love Conquers Fear takes him next. Check out his latest work @ https://www.loveconquersfear.org/

Grow with Purpose. Lead with Courage. Give with Impact.