As most of you are aware, Dave Whorton and I have written a book about Evergreen® businesses—or rather, more precisely, about Dave’s discovery of the Evergreen way of building and running a company. Until then, the Evergreen companies had been completely unrecognized as a business phenomenon, not to mention a critical component of the American economy.

I had been introduced to Dave by his erstwhile partner Chis Alden, who had approached me about attending the second Tugboat Institute® Summit in 2014. I was the co-founder of the Small Giants Community, based on my book titled Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big. Alden thought some members of the community might be interested in attending the conference. I couldn’t make it, but I was fascinated by the concept, especially given its unlikely origin in Silicon Valley, the last place you’d expect to find any interest in private companies that eschewed venture capital and never intended to be sold. I resolved to find out more and possibly write about it for Inc. magazine, where I was editor-at-large at the time.