Unexotic Ventures

Lovely people, It's been quite a year. Our Unexotic Adventure ends here... Thank you to all the fine folks we've met on this trip. Our top Lesson -- and it was a totally unexpected one -- was this:

We excited more passion, and attention, and money, in bashing the powerful than in uplifting the weak. Bashing is necessary, but it's not our preferred line of business. The article had plenty of bile : ), but the venture was focused on betterment and that's a different labor.

To all those striving to lift up without putting down, you're in a tough-ass business. We have titanic respect for your work, and wish you mammoth success in fulfilling it. If we were able to help in any way, we're humbled by the opportunity... Best to all for the coming year.

Congratulations to our past winners and nominees for their phenomenal work in bringing attention to issues *unexotic* -- under-the-radar, underfunded, under-reported, unglamorous: - Anti-Ageism activist Ashton Applewhite, founder of @ThisChairRocks & @OldSchool_Info

Congrats to this year's winners & nominees: - Acclaimed journalist Anand Giridharadas @AnandWrites, formerly of the @NYTimes, whose output was unexotic avant la lettre. - Entrepreneur, founder, & future US President @AndrewYangVFA, CEO of @Venture4America

Congrats to this year's winners & nominees: - Amy Goldstein's Janesville, a chronicle of a collapsing Wisconsin town. Winner of the @FT/@McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award - @ClevelandHustles by @LebronJames & @BoninBough: a TV show spotlighting entrepreneurs in the Midwest

Congrats to this year's winners & nominees: - @ConbodyNYC for pioneering a prison-inspired fitness movement - @CTurlington's @EveryMomCounts for its rigorous focus on improvin maternal health - David Roth & Associates' clever dating campaign for @JDate featuring coding grandmas

Congrats to this year's winners & nominees: - @DanSagalyn & his team at @PBSNewshour for a moving, urgent report on Veterans Struggling for a Diagnosis - @EarHustleSq's intimate look at life behind bars - @EncoreOrg and its $100K Encore Prize, recognizing entrepreneurs over 50

Congrats to this year's winners & nominees: - @CRAguh's ambitious venture @Everyone_On to bring high-speed low-cost Internet to rural US communities - The @NewYorker's George Packer and his epic Unwinding - @FT's @HannahKuchler on How Silicon Valley Discovered the Rest of America

Congrats to our winners & nominees: - @IamFastFreddy's bold, disruptive prison-focused startup @Pigeon_ly - The Johnson Family, @TheJudgeHatchett & a groundbreaking lawsuit against @CedarsSinai highlighting maternal mortality - @JerryZMuller's gripping book The Tyranny of Metrics

Congrats to this year's winners & nominees: - John Jeremiah Sullivan, Author & Editor at @TheParisReview and his gorgeously-written Pulphead - @KristaTippett's Civil Conversations from @OnBeing - Startup @GetMahmee creating an online community for expectant and new mothers

Congrats to our winners & nominees: - @MosiSecret's poetic tribute to The Magnificent Seven & elite Black schooling, - @Gladwell's chronicle of educational dysfunction in his Revisionist History podcast - MIT startup @Rendever re-enabling a trip down memory lane for the aged

Congrats & thanks to: - @RuralSourcing, which trains tech talent rurally, and gets American companies to outsource their IT work to local American teams - @SarahKendzior, best-selling author of The View From Flyover - @Service2School an innovative startup serving Veteran scholars

Congrats & thanks to: - @TeamCoworker, a mammoth online forum helping workers to improve their workplace - Timothy Shenk, Editor of @DissentMag, for his prescient piece in @TheNation on Democracy's Revenge - @Veterati prodividing career mentorship to current and former soldiers

Our latest picks: - The launch of @ThisChairRocks' groundbreaking Old School - The valuable work of @First72Plus in guiding newly-released prisoners - A death & a lawsuit against @CedarsSinai to benefit new mothers + Congrats to winner @SarahKendzior... unexoticventures.com/radar

Congratulations to this month's picks: - Phenomenal reporting by @DanSagalyn, @NickSchifrin & @Hari of @Newshour on the struggle for Veterans just to breathe - Gritty, unflinching chronicles from the Midwest by @GlobeandMail's award-winning @SarahKendzior unexoticventures.com/radar

A Midsummer break and a review of our Unexotic Winners thus far... Congrats to: @Venture4America @TheParisReview's JJ Sullivan and his Pulphead @CTurlington's @EveryMomCounts @NewYorker's George Packer and his Unwinding @IamFastFreddy's @Pigeon_ly. unexoticventures.com/radar

Ladies & Gents, we have an Unexotic 1st: our entire Radar this month is devoted to 1 pick -- The story of Frederick Hutson and his prison-launched startup, Pigeonly. @Pigeon_ly @IAMFastFreddy Congrats, man, and wishing you and your team every success. #radar-start" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">unexoticventures.com/radar#radar-st…

“Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is American renewal. Not just as a graduating class, but as a generation,” says Commencement speaker @SlaughterAM. #WashU18

MUST READ piece by @MichaelRStrain of @AEI on business and "skills gaps": 1. Invest in training of lower paid workers 2. Hire based on skills, not pedigree (cites @OpptyatWork ) 3. Raise wages #MarketSolutions Nails it. cc: @business bloomberg.com/news/articles/…