Silicon Valley is known as the heartland of innovation in business, specifically venture capital and the ‘get big fast’ model of building a company toward a quick and lucrative exit. With its focus on growth over profit and its short-term time horizons, Silicon Valley’s traditional business model is quite different from the Evergreen® model. It may, therefore, seem to be a strange place to choose to found and build an Evergreen company. Yet Mac Harman did just that when he launched Balsam Brands over ten years ago.

In this Tugboat Institute® talk, Mac shares how he not only resisted the pressures and norms of Silicon Valley, but how he was able to use them to his advantage. His combined personal, professional, and educational experiences taught him that he wanted to bootstrap his business rather than raise outside capital. However, he was able to glean some important pearls of wisdom from the standard Silicon Valley model and, paired with his own convictions and vision, build an industry-leading Evergreen company that continues to thrive – right where it started in Silicon Valley.