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Disclosures

The Evergreen Journal’s mission is to chronicle the Evergreen movement – and cover the people, companies, and ideas driving the Evergreen approach to company building. We publish this in service of you – the reader – in the hopes that it will provide knowledge, insight, and ideas that will help you professionally and personally, help the Evergreen community, and thereby help society in general. Our view is that to do this properly – the only way we know how – is to have an absolute and unbending commitment to the truth. This means that everything we write will be factually accurate to the best of our knowledge, and we do our best to make sure our knowledge is comprehensive. If we unwittingly publish inaccuracies – which we will, every publication does – we will correct them when we realize our mistake. We welcome reader submissions to editors@evergreenjournal.com if you believe we have made a mistake, spun, hyped, or otherwise misrepresented something. We will publish respectful contributions that have merit.

The Evergreen Journal is published by Tugboat Institute, which is part of the Tugboat Group. The Tugboat Group’s broad mission is to support entrepreneurs, and it does this currently with three branches: Tugboat Institute, Tugboat Evergreen, and Tugboat Ventures.

Tugboat Institute’s purpose is to support the Evergreen movement through content and community building. It does not invest in companies, though it receives membership fees from selected Evergreen companies. Membership in Tugboat Institute is neither a requirement nor a guarantee of coverage in the Evergreen Journal, but we will inevitably write about, and publish submissions from, Tugboat Institute members since they are leading Evergreen companies. We view this as consistent with our editorial mission because the criteria for membership in the Institute is in alignment with the criteria for editorial coverage in the Evergreen Journal (we don’t admit companies into Tugboat Institute that wouldn’t be worthy of coverage on Evergreen Journal). The decision making process for the editorial in EJ and membership in Tugboat Institute are independent of each other, but readers should know that Tugboat Institute may have a (small) commercial relationship with companies that are covered by and/or write for the Evergreen Journal (as virtually every business publication has when they charge for conferences, advertising, or sponsorships). Editorial integrity is far more important to us than a membership fee, but readers will have to make up their own minds in the end.

Tugboat Evergreen and Tugboat Ventures support entrepreneurs with investment capital. The former invests in Evergreen businesses, the latter in non-Evergreen businesses. It will be rare, but not impossible, that Evergreen Journal will write about or publish submissions from companies in the Tugboat Ventures portfolio. It is also possible that we will write about or publish submissions from companies in the Tugboat Evergreen portfolio. In both cases we will clearly state when that is the case, even though portfolio status has no bearing on the editorial decision making process. It may also be the case that EJ writes about or publishes a submission from a company that is not currently in the Tugboat Evergreen portfolio but becomes one in the future. As with Institute membership, investment and editorial decisions are made independent of each other and one is not a requirement nor guarantee of the other. The staffs of EJ and Tugboat Evergreen are separate, though top Tugboat executives may wear both hats. Company information that is confidentially shared with Tugboat Evergreen in the course of an investment process is never and will never be published in the Evergreen Journal.

The Evergreen Journal exists to support the Evergreen movement and Evergreen companies generally, and has no role in the investment process. If there is any doubt, we will err in not publishing. For context, Tugboat Evergreen will invest in a small number of companies (and such investments will be disclosed) and Evergreen Journal will write about hundreds, if not thousands, of companies. We don’t believe this is a significant barrier to the Evergreen Journal’s ability to deliver on its editorial mission, but readers should be aware of this possibility.