What are we doing as individuals to save the planet?  Emily asked that the other night.  We are seeing the havoc we are wreaking on our planet.  Water levels are rising, the summers are getting hotter and the winters are getting colder, the icebergs are melting, and much more.

How do we all do our part?  Lego just announced that the companies first sustainable blocks will be made from plant-based plastic that comes from sugarcane.  Many clothing manufacturers are turning to recycled materials.  States are requiring (or allowing) groceries to charge for a bag making consumers think about bringing their own bag to the store.  I think we should ban styrofoam as a product but that is another conversation.

What are we doing?  We are using solar panels in every single project we are building.  In one of the projects, we are using geothermal power for heat and air conditioning.   We drive electric cars.  We are building a passive building including energy sources that will essentially allow us to be able to use our own electricity.  I have invested in companies like Evrnu that transforms textile waste into new fibers.

I am a big believer that the generations of today will figure out ways to fix the faults of the generation before.  Change always wins and change is what pushes us forward.  When it comes to the environment, we also all need to do our individual part to make sure that our planet is here for every generation to come.

I am a lover of interior decor.   It is something I have loved and been interested in since I was in high school.  I grew up in a very modern house that had a living room with two deep red walls mirroring each other, a thick purple shag carpet, a glass sculptured Pace table that centered the room with an l-shaped white boucle couch that wrapped around it with a funky white leather chair that sat across from it.  The carpet that ran through the house including the stairway that had hanging steps was a deep red.  It was quite mod.

Companies the provide the rugs and textiles have always been “to the trade” meaning that a consumer can not walk in and buy 10 yards of fabric to redo their chair and get the “30%” discount that is given to designers.  Not exactly sure why that began but decorators usually get paid by the hour including a percentage of the amount of furniture and product they buy.  It is generally 30% so the industry fuels each other.

I have never understood it.  If a designer buys $20 of furniture or $500k, the hours of ordering it and installing it are the exact same.  Now with sites like 1stDibs and others, the design industry is starting to change.  Decorators are having more clients want to pay a fixed fee for their services.  Decorator marketplaces have emerged so everyone can use a decorator.  Pinterest has become a design heaven.

It is time for the middle person, who is essentially the decorator, not be the only person who can buy from companies that have only sell “to the trade”.  They could reprice all of their inventory at the price it should be, aka 30% off, and sell directly to consumers who want to buy 10 yards of fabric.  I am not sure if there is a new disruptive model out there that is in start-up mode or has already launched but I believe it is about leaders of these companies reinventing their model.  Just like retail has to reinvent itself, the companies in the design world should be reinvented too.

There are too many start-ups who are playing in that field putting pressure on the big companies to change direction.  It is time.

Four years ago, after several drinks with friends, we came up with the idea at a party with people who are involved in politics, some more than others that we should run together.  It was prior to the NYC mayor race.  The concept we came up with is essentially a group of people who each had very different skills but together could be a force, would be a new way to run Government.

I remembered the conversation after reading my friend Carmen Busquets Instagram’s lamenting grief for her country, Venezuela.  It is immense greed and corruption that has destroyed her country.  As a nation, we are literally watching a country be taken apartment by extremists.  It is so sad on multiple levels.

Boards run companies.  Some work better than others but it keeps the President or the Chairman of that board in check.  There always has to be a leader and there are several different roles held on boards based on the skills and interest of each board member.  You can agree to disagree but when decisions are made and the vision is no longer moving in the right direction, or there is massive mismanagement, it is time to get a new leader.  The leader doesn’t always leave but they take on a different role.  There might be rifts but it is mostly civilized.

As Carmen asked, as we talked about at the party four years ago, what if a board ran the Government?  There are boards around leaders of the world but most of them are hand-picked to execute on the leaders’ vision with zero push-backs.  That is what we are seeing in Governments around the globe and it leads to dictatorships such as Syria, Turkey, Venezuela.  History shows us exactly what happens when dictators take over.  Nothing good.  It is not pretty.

Perhaps each board member would be elected with four years terms.  It would force the board to consist of a very diverse group of people, perhaps some from different parties.  They would have to constantly compromise to move forward with the leaders’ vision in mind, but maybe they would think differently about how to run a country or a state or a city through a very different set of eyes that reflect everyone one of us.

Is it time to change Government?

Happy Labor Day!  Today we are taking the day off from our regularly scheduled show.

See you tomorrow….

What a summer it has been.

I was pulled down a rabbit hole of a construction project.  Remarkable that I still like building and design.  Beginning to see the light on this particular project but definitely not there yet.  It was an all-consuming summer that took over my head and my attitude.  Not pretty but there are always silver linings to anything.

I always ponder this time of the year about the year ahead.  To me, September is really the start of the year.  I fear I have become jaded in the world of investing.  What I am seeing is stupid early stage valuations that I just can’t get my head around.  How a company is worth $7m without a real product is beyond me.  It says something about the bigger picture of the start-up world.  More players, more money, more of the same but perhaps a name brand behind it and higher valuations.  It is so reminiscent of the 90’s.  There are always a few gems in the rough and I would bet on a few investors finding them but not all of them.

The world is in turmoil.  The market has been high for too long.  A down market is on the horizon and I am not sure when it is going to show up but it is going to show up.  I fear it will show up in a heartbeat and a lot will come tumbling down.

I am an optimist at heart.  Always have been.  This rant sounds extremely doom and gloom but it is more realistic than anything else.  We are in strange times.  The good news is that women are finally having an equal voice at any table and it is long overdue.  I am excited about the companies I have invested in and many of them are finally finding their path.  It doesn’t happen overnight.  I am going to dig deeper into other projects we have in our queue.  And who knows, maybe I will open that chocolate chip cookie shop…..

Partnerships that work usually have a solid yin/yang.  It is about being complimentary.

Fred and I have done countless projects together.  We respect each other’s decisions, stay in our lane most of the time, and are extremely complimentary of each other’s interests.  It has worked for many years.

I am fascinated with partnerships.  Ones that work forever and then one day they don’t.  Is it that they drove into the wrong lane too many times?

When co-founders are both product people the probability of both of them lasting many rounds of capital rounds are slim.  If one is a product person and the other is a great operator or manager, then the chances are much better.  Together they balance each other out.

We can point to so many partnerships that worked.  I am not sure that the business end of the partnership would have had the same success without the creative end and visa-versa.  Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, YSL and Pierre Berge, Marc Jacobs and Robert Duffy, Charles and Ray Eames and there are obviously more but the success of partnerships works across many verticals.

I have invested in singular founders but there is definitely something great about having someone else next to you and even better if they are the ying to your yang.  It is the same for projects.  Having someone at your side who is interested in the same end product who has a different set of skill sets is a real bonus.

I read the news that Tuft and Needle had agreed to merge with Serta Simmons Bedding.  The terms of the deal were not disclosed but Tuft and Needle did $170M in revenue last year so it is not a big leap of faith to believe that they got something in the $800m and up range for their business.

What is so amazing about this is that the founders never brought in venture capital money and run a profitable business.  What does that say about all the capital being poured into businesses that spend to grow?  Tuft and Needle is 6 years old so think about that.

I have invested in countless founders who are undercapitalized yet they are succeeding by being scrappy and getting to profitability quickly.  Acquiring eyeballs (aka marketing) costs money but there are plenty of things you can do with little cash.  Obviously, Tuft and Needle figured that out.

Certainly, this is not for the VC books but I love these kinds of investments.  They did not raise a dime but the companies that have proved the model, built a brand and just need some cash to get them to the next step are solid for an angel.  It also confirms that you can still build a big business without VC capital and personally that makes me extremely happy because it pushes everyone to rethink their business.

The nursery rhyme line that keeps running through my head these days is “ring around the Rosie, pockets full of posies, ashes, ashes, they all fall down”.

The rug is being pulled out from under bad players all the way around.  Watching the inner circle of Trumplandia finally come home to roost.  Obviously, bad behavior had been going on forever and to them, it appeared to be business as usual.

We are seeing other bad players fall down.  Bad male behavior and also bad female behavior too.  Nobody can hide.

Remember when gay marriage wasn’t even fathomable.  But once the Supreme Court passed the law, all is forgiven and it appears to be the norm.  It wasn’t ok and now it is.  It seemed to have happened overnight.

Is this generation just saying enough is enough?  What is it?  Do people just feel safer saying no more?  Is it because of social media where you are able to tell the world something in the privacy of your home?  Are people more comfortable pointing at someone and saying this happened and it is not ok?  Think about the young woman at Columbia University who carried a mattress around all semester and openly pointed out her supposed rapist.  That would not have happened 5 years ago.

I would gather that historians are looking at history and pointing to why we are seeing this type of change all over the place.  Are we trying to find our moral compass?

Maybe I should be thinking about musical chairs.  Whoever doesn’t get a seat, ends up in jail.

Danielle Gould is the Founder and CEO of Food+Tech Connect, the site of record and connector for the food tech sector. Danielle and I sat down to talk about everything from the future of the food industry, to what’s finally prompted her to start taking on outside funding (and why she’s waited so long!) A truly insightful episode on taking your roughest moments as an entrepreneur and changing them into positives, as well as the challenges facing the food industry now and going forward.

I really enjoyed this talk.  You can listen to it on iTunes here.

The great thing about cobbler is it is just about two things.  The fruit you choose and the biscuits you make for the topping.  I do love making a pie and a tart but the ease of a cobbler or a crumble (which I plan on making today) just seems to fit the summer frame of mind.

Here is a peach blueberry from last week’s series of desserts.

Heat oven to 375.

Prepare the fruit.  5 cups of fruit in a 1 1/2 quart baking dish works perfectly ( a little less or a little more wouldn’t kill anyone ).  Toss the fruit with 1/3 cup sugar and 1 tbsp. flour.  Set aside.

The dough.  Mix together 1 1/2 cups flour, 1/2 tsp. salt, 1 1/2 tbsp. sugar, 2 1/4 tsp. baking powder.  Then take 6 tbsp. cut up cold butter and work into the flour mixture until it resembles a coarse meal (like little pebbles).  Slowly add in 3/4 cup heavy cream to get the dough wet.

Spread the fruit in the bottom of a baking dish.  Make round patties out of the dough.  I did 6 of them.  You could make 8 and do them smaller.  Again, it is summer and this is a freeform dish.  Arrange the patties on top of the fruit.  Bake for about 35-40 minutes or until the patties are browned and done.

Serve at warm or at room temperature.  Make sure you have plenty of vanilla ice cream on hand to serve with the cobbler.  Delicious!