The Capitalist Revolution To Save Humanity

When we began covering and promoting Social Capital in business a few years ago, we were determined to show the value of people, and how a people-first approach to traditional business could lead to better business, better policies in business, and greater prosperity and happiness for all because of it. We were confident we could find plenty of examples to prove our point, and we did.

What we didn't expect as much was that "happiness for all" through capitalism extended itself into sectors we never even dreamed of when we set out to cover this. One of the biggest and most notable was the sector historically known for the creation of nonprofit or government social services provisions. Issues like healthcare for those who couldn't afford it, homeless resources, job creation, women's issues and education access, amongst others, are all important issues and concerns that typically drum up thoughts of government and/or nonprofit solutions

That inevitably also leads to a discussion of the seemingly never-ending battle over policy disagreements or the challenges of raising money for those causes. However, capitalist alternatives to these historically nonprofit or government policy issues have been springing up for the last decade or so. Their incredible success has led to many more entrepreneurs considering the model not just a possibility but a higher probability for success because of the volume and scale that for-profit businesses can achieve, not to mention the opportunity for aggressive funding as well as a slew of other advantages.

The formula for this dynamic new model has a few deviations, but all are focused on solving problems for underserved or undervalued populations by finding the pain point or need and then the value for consumers and/ or investors who genuinely would like to help but would also like an economic incentive to give them that extra little nudge. The capitalist model provides that in various ways by creating a company that serves the people with that need in a far more sustainable and powerful way than many government and nonprofit methods can.

Now, in all fairness to government and nonprofits, none of these companies believe they should be a replacement for those other avenues of relief, and, in fact, many of them work in conjunction with other avenues in some way. However, these companies have proven that capitalist solutions are not only a good idea but that they are an integral part of the goal of prosperity for all, including those underserved sectors, and can serve those needs in exponentially more powerful ways.

So, this month we decided to focus on ten business leaders who are simultaneously making a tremendous economic and social impact, and tell the amazing stories of how and why they took the routes they did.

We hope this article and these companies inspire and inform you as much as they did us. We also hope this is just the beginning of a great new world and new society where, one day, many of the perennial problems of human suffering become opportunities for powerful new profitable and dependable solutions.

David Heath, Bombas

We first honored David Heath in 2020 in The POLITICS of EMPOWERMENT in American Business as one of our Top 10 Social Capital CEOs for creating a capitalist solution to solving one of the most heartbreaking realities in America: Hundreds of thousands of homeless cannot afford or find socks. We have honored him every year since.

The CEO and founder explained to us why he felt the need to fix this through a capitalist solution rather than simply asking people to donate socks.

"So, my journey originally started with this kind of burning desire to be an entrepreneur," reveals Heath. "My dad's an entrepreneur. I went to school for entrepreneurship. I was the kid in the neighborhood who had lemonade stands, walked dogs, cleaned gutters, whatever I could do for a buck. So, when I graduated college, I think I walked through the world with my eyes open and my ear to the ground, always looking for opportunity, mostly driven from a business perspective. "

However, when he began really looking at what needs were not being served, one of the most important steps for any entrepreneur, he came upon a population that many looking to start a business might overlook--the homeless.

"I was scrolling on Facebook one day, and I came across this post from the Salvation Army that said most people don't know it, but socks are oftentimes the number one most requested clothing item in homeless shelters," explains David. "And I sat there, and I was, like, wow, that's pretty sad. Here's an item of clothing that I've never spent more than a few seconds a day thinking about that could be perceived as a luxury item for over 600,000 people living right here in the U.S."

That's when the entrepreneurial light bulb went off that maybe he could create a company that donated a pair of socks for every pair of socks that are sold. He then leveraged his entrepreneurial desire and spirit into fixing this problem over the long haul by creating a superior sock that sold like hotcakes.

"And then I said, 'Okay, well, if I'm going to donate a lot of socks, I'm going to need to sell a lot of socks,'" explains Heath. "And if I need to sell a lot of socks, then going back to the business side of things, I've got to create a really good product, right? I've got to create a brand that resonates with people in a story and features and benefits that differentiate themselves from everything else in the market. So, I spent a year and a half [developing that]. I didn't come from the manufacturing or retail or apparel side of the world; it was a real grassroots, customer-driven, customer-centric-driven mindset where me as the customer let me go out into the world to see what products exist and how can I improve upon these products to address some of the needs I was looking for as a customer--softer fabrics, arch support, comfort foot beds, getting rid of that annoying toe seam across the heel, developing a sock that wouldn't fall down a bunch of times throughout the day, a running sock that had a blister tab. I took a lot of innovations and features and benefits that I've seen in really high-end, very niche-focused athletic socks--socks for marathon runners or hikers or basketball players, and so on and so forth. I took those features and benefits and then, basically, put them into a much more consumer-approachable mass-market type of product."

He took that same model to the next level creating underwear, T-shirts and, now, slippers. With more than $100 million in revenue, Bombas has donated more than 75 million items to more than 3,500 community organizations to date—all thanks to this model of mission-driven companies that are changing the world.

Along the way, David found he wasn't just helping to heal the homeless but to open the hearts of customers who found meaning and purpose in helping others.

"We've surveyed our customers, and we've said, 'Why did you buy this?', and the number one and number two reasons are always product quality and mission," David proudly proclaims.

Donald Thomson, CRDC

The fact that last year was the first year we honored him in our Top 100 is proof positive there are probably a lot of world-changing Social Capital companies changing the world that totally fly under the radar. Because this guy should be all over the news, since his company came up with a way to rid the world of plastic waste--with a for-profit company that puts those materials to valuable and profitable use.

"There has always been a deep interest in what could we do to help out society and the people in it," says Donald. "We quickly learned that if we were going to make a big impact we couldn't if we stood on the outside and scolded everybody for using plastic ... Collaboration is all about Social Capital. If we were going to do something with this plastic, then we should try to put it into something constructive."

CRDC, or Center for Regenerative Design & Collaboration, upon first blush sounds like a fancy name for a foundation or government program, but it's actually an incredibly effective and profitable company to "fully harness the potential of regenerative design," as it proudly proclaims on its website.

Declares Thomson, "I have been self-employed for the majority of my long career, and what inspires me to keep moving forward is an optimistic view of a business world in constant evolution towards a better society."

That career started years ago when Thomson designed and sold a patent, which allowed him the freedom to move to Costa Rica. But he didn't just spend the rest of his life living in the lap of tropical luxury. He started a construction and development company to create luxury homes for the wealthy that would subsidize low-end housing in Costa Rica for the poor, an idea in itself which is already pretty Social Capital-friendly. However, while selling his high-end housing, he noticed tons of plastic waste washing up on the beach during the rainy season, detracting from the appearance and value of these beachfront homes.

"We had a seven-kilometer stretch of beach, and it became a seven-kilometer dump," says Donald. "So it was hurting my potential business."

Meanwhile, his wife was teaching and helping underprivileged children through a music school she started. They were helping Donald to clean up the beach. One day, one of the kids stomped on a plastic bottle, compressing it into something Donald realized looked just like a high-end building material they used. He figured out a way to use that plastic waste in construction, but he quickly realized it was too small of an idea. But using it as an aggregate--in other words, turning that plastic into the rocks or sand that go into making concrete--provided a huge market to sell into and a chance to change the world.

So, Donald put his technical and business head to work and created a process and a company that could get rid of plastic bottle waste while creating a valuable and profitable product it could sell, as well as collect monies from the fees paid in many countries to take out the trash, so to speak. Beyond the amazing brilliance and ingenuity of this, this profitable company will change the world as we know it in a big way.

"To put it in perspective, our factory in Costa Rica is capable of processing four-and-a-half tons an hour, a hundred tons of plastic a day. And a hundred tons of plastic a day will completely eliminate the waste plastic problem in the country," explains Donald. "This will be the first country in the world to get its plastic problem completely under check."

Today, CRDC is a rapidly scaling international company with operations in Costa Rica, the U.S., South Africa, the UK, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Samoa. It is now building factories to create this product all over the world.

For Donald, this is just the beginning of what he sees as the future of not just his company but the world for fixing serious issues through capitalist models.

"In my opinion, 'business for good' is quickly becoming the norm and not the exception, as almost all companies are now being judged by their consumers on their social, environmental and economic ethics and values," says Thomson. "What was once almost the exclusive environment for nonprofits is now mainstream and competitive business, and, as such, the boundaries between nonprofits and profits are blending and evolving. In today's world, there is a direct correlation between sales and a company's alignment with its consumer's values and expectations, and those expectations are a healthy, equitable and inclusive world."

And when it comes to that fancy name of his company, there is a pretty good reason for it that connects directly to this article and how business can create powerful change through a profit-driven model.

"Regeneration when defined as where the sum of the output is greater than the sum of all the inputs implies a yield gain or profitability," explains Donald. "Therefore, in this context, all businesses in the future should strive to sustain regenerative yields that provide positive gains for themselves and the society and environment they operate within."

Imagine that!

Rachel Romer, Guild

We've honored Rachel Romer every year, the first time soon after we launched this Social Capital section, recognizing her in "The POLITICS of EMPOWERMENT in American Business," recognizing her for empowering people who would otherwise be sentenced to a lifetime of lower wages into higher-paying jobs through her company, Guild .

Solving a problem was the initial focus; creating a business around it came later. "Guild started as a research initiative--fueled by work from our founding team across 2008–2015 in the community college sector, in the Obama administration, and across Stanford's School of Education & Graduate School of Business," Rachel relates. "We had a simple problem statement: How do you help the hundreds of millions of workers who need skilling gain access to it in order to prepare for the future of work?"

The resulting research pointed to a few founding principles for adult learners--connecting school and work, eliminating or significantly reducing cost, and providing career coaching and services support--which fueled the proposal that ultimately became, first, Guild Education, and now Guild. "But," says Rachel, "we actually thought we'd be a nonprofit!"

However, Rachel recalls they quickly learned the complexities of relying on philanthropy to fund innovation and, instead, found a business model that allowed them to serve learners without them having to pay tuition costs out of pocket and, at the same time, having employers invest in the tuition and learning providers in the coaching services. "Our mission-aligned business model set up Guild to become both a public benefit corporation (PBC) and a certified B Corp, which has been a fantastic model to support our scale as well as our social impact."

As a PBC, Guild operates under a constrained version of stakeholder versus shareholder capitalism. "Through that mechanism--both in our company charter and in our ongoing B Corp certification--we've chosen to hold ourselves to a higher bar, asked others to measure our impact, and ensure we're a force for good in the world," Rachel. "It's allowed us to hold our learner and member outcomes as a central measurement of success--and, as our business has grown, we've never needed to sacrifice on our mission."

As a capitalist solution, Guild exemplifies Social Capital in action. Structuring Guild as a PBC allowed the business to raise money and invest in its technology and services at a much quicker rate than if it were a nonprofit--which Rachel notes has enabled Guild to better deliver on its mission to unlock opportunity for America's workforce by supporting many more working adults on their career journey.

"Growing up, my family was incredibly entrepreneurial though we never used that word. Instead, we approached it as public service or 'solving big problems.' It's always been part of my DNA." This drive and the accomplishments it has led to are why we are pleased to name Rachel a Social Capital business leader. And there was a further personal impetus. "While the problem Guild solves revealed itself in my graduate school research, it's also deeply connected to my family's story," Rachel shares.

"My family's experience is an example of an A / B test on higher education in America. On my dad's side, my grandfather was able to pay for 22 of us grandchildren to go to college without accumulating debt. My mom was one of nine and one of the few siblings to put herself through college, but they all found paths to middle class careers--college or not. Come my generation, things have changed. The cost of higher education has skyrocketed, and the ability to land in the middle class without higher education is much harder. My cousins on my mom's side have faced a tremendous financial barrier that the cousins on my dad's side never had to grapple with."

She continues, "This experience within my own family, and the opportunities my education afforded me, inspired the founding of Guild."

Davis Smith, Cotopaxi

We've honored Davis Smith for specific Social Capital characteristics in "Be Nice! How America's Top Social Capital CEOs Can Teach Us the Power of Kindness" and "Empowerment: The Ultimate Social Capital" and called attention to his company, Cotopaxi, for the Social Capital values it operates by. But now we look not at his leadership of the company but at its creation in the model of capitalism.

"When starting Cotopaxi, I was very aware that we were entering a category [outdoor gear and apparel] that was incredibly competitive, with many billion-dollar incumbents that had been around for decades. However, this also meant that, if we could somehow break through as a brand, there was an opportunity to build a billion-dollar brand committed to a new way of doing capitalism: using business as a force for good in the world," Davis explains. "The niche I saw in the market was an opportunity to build a brand focused on eradicating extreme poverty, which I believed would connect deeply with a young consumer that felt brands needed to represent more than just environmental sustainability, which we saw as table-stakes."

As Davis has shared with us in our exclusive interview "Davis Smith Wanted A Profitable Company That Would 'Do Good' by Respecting People Worldwide – It Worked," he grew up in the developing world and saw first-hand the amazing impact nonprofits had in the world. But he also recognized that theirs was a constant struggle to achieve their full impact because they always lacked resources, as he observes, "They were rarely the best fundraisers, but a huge part of their role was to constantly beg others for money." He felt he could apply his 10 years' experience as an entrepreneur to solve this problem. "If I could build a company that could really scale, we could use our profits to sustainably fund nonprofits positively impacting the world. This would allow them to focus more efforts on doing good and less on begging others for money. The Benefit Corporation model doesn't replace nonprofits but, instead, amplifies the work they do," he says.

Davis credits one of his college professors with opening his eyes to an entrepreneurial potential. "I started my undergraduate studies after moving to the U.S. from Bolivia. My family had moved to Latin America when I was four years old, which changed the lens in which I saw the world," he relates. "I imagined I'd work for a nonprofit creating a more just world and even did an internship working for a nonprofit in Peru. A professor at the university became a mentor of mine." This man was a philanthropist who used the wealth he'd made as an entrepreneur to fight poverty, and Davis says he dreamed of working with him to expand his efforts to Latin America, where Davis had grown up. "Instead, he convinced me that if I really wanted to make an impact on the world, I shouldn't work for him or another nonprofit, but I should become an entrepreneur.

"He was convinced I could make a bigger impact through entrepreneurship, which became my new life mission--to find a way to use the power of capitalism to do good in the world," says Davis. Which is exactly what our Social Capital movement is all about.

Porter Braswell, Jopwell

There are a whole lot of amazing facets to Jopwell and Porter Braswell, not the least of which is he turned the need and desire to increase diversity in the workforce into a profitable business model. He also changed the whole conversation around it from preachy PR buzzwords into one about the long-term profit and success of industry and society. His reasons for starting that journey were pretty inspiring as well.

As the CEO and co-founder of Jopwell, Porter Braswell created a profit-driven infrastructure to create a sustainable stream of thousands of connections between leading companies and Black, Latinx and Native American students and professionals.

Porter Braswell is an amazingly diverse person himself. He was on the varsity basketball team in college but, once he realized he had zero chance of making it in the NBA, he set his sights on the financial industry after college. Jopwell originated from the frustrations he experienced at Goldman Sachs, where he was often asked to support diversity recruiting efforts in addition to his trading responsibilities.

He quickly realized there was a challenging gap between the desire to recruit and hire underrepresented talent from communities of color and the available solutions to reach those at scale or a level that traditional nonprofits and government programs were succeeding at. Then, a personal tragedy after a close family member passed away gave him the nudge he needed to turn that into a business.

"This was a realization that life can end at a really early stage," reveals Porter. "I remember thinking to myself, 'Am I meant to be a person that buys and sells currencies. Is that my calling?' As a person of faith, and that matters a lot to me, I started to really examine what am I meant to do with the time that I have here on this planet."

When he really started thinking about it, he came to a very important and groundbreaking realization that would inspire and direct the whole objective and design of Jopwell.

"I constantly came back to, 'I am a product of diversity recruiting initiative and efforts,'" explains Braswell. "I have been very fortunate to go to very elite institutions where I have had access to incredible professional opportunities. And, despite my day-to-day job to be paid to be in the markets, I was consistently asked to go back and recruit others that looked like me. So, I thought there had to be a more efficient and effective way where I can assist not just financial institutions but all institutions with diversity recruiting. I saw it was a major pain point. It was something I was passionate about. And when I took a step back and thought about what I could do with this time that I have, balancing business with making an impact was really attractive to me."

Enter capitalism, and a company. He and one of his former colleagues, Ryan Williams, believed there had to be a better way to connect top talent with employers while building a diverse professional community into a profit-driven opportunity. So, they left Wall Street to build Jopwell in 2015 and partnered with more than 100 companies, including Spotify, Peloton, UBS and the NBA, among many others, to build and nurture more inclusive workforces throughout their organizations.

"I knew that there were a lot of incredible nonprofits that existed in this space, and they have been doing incredible work for decades. My realization that I had was that a lot of publicly traded companies have worked with these nonprofits for years but that nothing has changed. And when you take a step back and you examine why that is the case, it's because nonprofits are not set up to do things at scale, for many different reasons."

The result was that even when companies were working with multiple nonprofits to achieve their goals on this front, there just wasn't enough of a reliable supply of candidates from nonprofits to make a real difference.

"So, my insight was, 'A: Why is this a nonprofit? We are solving a business pain point here. Any other business pain point that you are solving is not going to be a nonprofit. So why should diversity recruiting be a nonprofit? The second thing was that, in order for us to reach scale and do the things that we needed to do, we knew we needed resources and capital." That meant showing potential investors a success rate in terms of changing the equation and getting more diversity into the workplace.

Flash forward seven short years later and the result is hundreds of thousands of members and tens of thousands of people actively in the application process through their company. "It's been an incredible journey, says Porter. "Once you decide you are going to do something and you are doing it for the right reasons, I think the world works for you."

Seth Bogner, HeartPoint Global

Honored as a Top 100 Social Capital CEO for 2022, Seth Bogner is chairman and CEO of HeartPoint Global, a company that is on a mission to provide innovative, minimally invasive and accessible cardiac care globally to ensure those who would otherwise suffer from or die of cardiovascular disease receive the care they need. HeartPoint Global's first and only patented structural non-surgical heart system (INTELLISTENT) addresses a variety of life-threatening cardiovascular diseases, specializing in pediatric Left Ventricular Dilated Cardiomyopathy (DCM) and congenital heart disease (CHD). "I saw this as a business niche because of the tremendous need in the market," he says.

Seth chose a capitalistic for-profit route rather than nonprofit, recognizing significant advantages. "We can bring in investors who provide capital and add their expertise to scale the business," he explains. As a for-profit, companies face no limits to raising capital and revenue generation, whereas nonprofits are limited in funding sources and have many restrictions to retain their tax-exempt status. "Additionally, a for-profit company can often employ more people, contributing to a healthy economy. By having a for-profit company, we can also afford to hire the best in the medical field and justly reward them for their excellence."

HeartPoint Global was able to bring in Paul Vogt, M.D., former head of Cardiac Surgery at Zurich University Hospital and the initiator and president of the board of the EurAsia Heart Foundation, a Swiss nonprofit, as chairman of its medical advisory board. "Our board and staff greatly value Dr. Vogt's skills, and we have benefitted immensely from his expertise, deep understanding, and alignment with our passion and values. His work with the EurAsia Heart Foundation has been an invaluable resource for us. We have the unique advantage of working with a nonprofit and have benefitted immensely from this association," says Seth, reiterating, "A dual model of servicing both the developed and developing world allows investors to profit and do social good simultaneously."

HeartPoint Global's product INTELLISTENT is the first and only minimally invasive, adjustable heart system that brings affordability, accessibility and the potential to save millions of lives in the developed and developing world. It is a patented, safer and affordable solution that reduces the risk of cardiovascular treatment. Notably, it allows pressure adjustments during and after the initial intervention to improve pulmonary flow of the heart-lung system. It is the first of its kind adjustable, minimally invasive percutaneous intervention to replace surgical Pulmonary Artery Banding (PAB).

"I have worked in the business world for a long time, so it seemed natural to want to start a business to provide a solution to the millions of lives at risk due to inadequate cardiac healthcare," Seth shares. He brings a background in principal investing, structured finance, restructurings and merchant banking across numerous industries. "I can now apply my knowledge from those experiences to the greater mission of HeartPoint Global," he says. "Using my talents and experience in a business with an important social mission embedded in everything we do is satisfying."

Laura Katz, Helaina

Baby formula was headline news in February last year. Contaminated product from one of the only two companies that provide this inarguably crucial product caused several babies to become ill and two to die, and the recall--and resulting lack of supply of the product when the problem became known--threatened the health of tens of thousands more. Here was a societal need that had been festering below the radar for years.

But it wasn't under the radar to Laura Katz, who had founded Helaina just three years earlier to address what she saw as an even more basic problem. "I was only 23 when I witnessed this essential part of the food system being left behind," she says, noting that the infant formula category has remained mostly stagnant since the 1960s, when commercial formula first became widely popular. "As a food scientist, I observed investment and new technologies funneled into areas like alternative meat and dairy."

"We really think about food as medicine, so creating a platform that allows us to bring real immunity properties to food products is something people are always going to think about, especially right now," Laura told PitchBook during an interview at the health conference at Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, last November, where Helaina was among the featured startups.

Helaina is a nutrition startup that utilizes fermentation to produce breast milk proteins with the same health and immunity properties as breast milk. Laura reports the company has raised $25 million in funding "to help provide parents with the freedom of choice in feeding their infants."

That funding is, itself, a success story. "Just 2.1%, I believe, is the percentage of female founders who get funding," she says. But Helaina seems to be in a special category. As she told The Star last year, "When we connect with investors, a lot of them say to us, 'We wish this product existed when we had children.' For us, that's been a way into really starting these conversations. It's helped a lot with fundraising."

While feeling fortunate for having attracted outside people as backers who care about Helaina's mission, Laura also credits the valuable assistance of one of her mentors, who was not only one of Helaina's first investors but helped her by introducing her to potential investors in every round of funding. "It's those types of people who help you get where you need to go," she says.

Noting that any human over the age of 1 can live on varied nourishment but that formula (or breast milk) is the sole source of nourishment for infants, Laura emphasizes the need for innovation and investment in food technology to support foods that are essential to human health. And she's built her business to serve that social need because, she says, "The future of nutrition, the ability of our babies to thrive, and gender equality in the workplace depends on it."

Antonio Nuño, Someone Somewhere

"We strongly believe that employability and sustainability are two problems that need to be solved by finding market-based solutions. It may take a little bit more time in the beginning, but once product-market fit is found the impact potential is 100 times bigger," says Antonio Nuño, co-founder and CEO of Somebody Somewhere, making the point that underlies our Social Capital focus.

"Someone Somewhere is a lifestyle brand that provides employment to artisans in Mexico's poorest villages," Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian told us when he nominated Antonio as a Social Capital business leader for our feature "Leaders' Picks For Best Leaders Of 2022!" That describes the solution. But the problem it answers? "After visiting a lot of communities, we realized there was a very clear pattern of really, really talented people that were just missing the connection to the market," Antonio told us in our exclusive interview, "Someone Somewhere Visionary Business Model Partners With Artisans."

Antonio believes that more people than ever care about the social and environmental impact of their purchases, but has observed most of the genuinely ethical products available make us sacrifice other things, like design and durability, or are significantly more expensive. "We thought that if there were a brand that made amazing products that also turned out to be sustainable, a completely new market segment would open. Later on, we realized that this value proposition would be compelling for other companies, too, so we opened our B2B channel to help them build more ethical and sustainable value chains," he says.

"I always knew I wanted to focus my time and energy on solving our world's biggest problems, and I believe that poverty and climate change are the two issues that our generation needs to solve," Antonio says, sharing, "I have always loved design and traveling, so I'm very lucky that these four elements are a core part of what we do at Someone Somewhere."

That luck ripples outward exponentially, and we are pleased to again honor Antonio for his leadership in the Social Capital movement.

Jill Koziol and Liz Tenety, Motherly

We first honored Motherly co-founders Jill Koziol and Liz Tenety way back in our inaugural feature in 2020 "SOCIAL CAPITAL: WHAT is it? DO you have it? HOW do you earn it?" for uplifting the self-image of millions of women through their genuine caring for women who were being patronized, marginalized or just plain not recognized--all because they didn't fit into the societal image of mothers.

"Seven years ago, I launched Motherly with my co-founder, Liz Tenety, simply because it didn't exist," shares Koziol. "We couldn't find the women-centered, expert-driven, empowering guide to motherhood that we needed ourselves. Since then, we've created a global community of more than 40million mothers and spend our days informing, inspiring and educating you to live your best life as a woman and a mother."

They created Motherly to be an active online guide and gathering place for millennial mothers that offers a popular weekly email newsletter that "empowers women in four areas: Work, Life, Love, and Child."

But, as Jill shares in her exclusive Q and A "Jill Koziol and Motherly Celebrate All Moms As – Gasp – Successful Women," this business seemed like such a no-brainer that investors were hesitant to fund it because they couldn't believe it hadn't been done already.

Discussing what it means to be a trailblazer in this space, Tenety is very clear about what drives Motherly's approach to offer evidence-based information and speak to its audience as the multi-faceted women they are.

"The space that was the most outdated--the space where I thought I could make the most impact--was in motherhood," she shares, describing the inspiration that came to her in the midst of performing some of those very responsibilities. And her impressive journalism experience combined with insights into tech companies in her new home in California's Silicon Valley gave her the background and the vision to create the kind of content she craved.

From what she calls her "light bulb moment," realizing "there was no evidence-based, non-judgmental platform that spoke to our generation of mothers," Liz found immediate support for her idea to create that platform from her husband and a serendipitous call with distant acquaintance and now Motherly co-founder Jill Koziol, already a successful entrepreneur from whom Liz asked feedback for her idea. "And her feedback was, 'I love it and I want to do this with you.' Seventy-two hours later, she had a business plan. That was the beginning, and we haven't slowed down since that first call," Liz relates.

From the very beginning, Jill and Liz put their financial heads and hearts together to fund and create a profitable company that accomplished all those noble goals for mothers that were not being served. And they have not stopped even when tough economic times or bottom-line thinking threatened the model that depended heavily on revenue from classes.

"I went to my board, and they thought building up the classes platform would be the route to monetizing, and I said, 'We're going into a potential recession here; people aren't going to spend their disposable income on this,'" explains Koziol. "'Women need more free resources and support right now when it comes to parenting, and so we're going to make this free and available to them.'"

What that meant from a business perspective was growing even more registered users. "We'll not only be the most valuable parenting platform to our audience, but the most valuable parenting platform to our advertisers. This will allow for targeting in a powerful way in a cookie-less world as ads change in the future with privacy. We'll have a lot of first-party data on this audience because of the information they share with us and what we're giving them for free."

What that eventually led to was their annual State of Motherhood Report, which was the largest statistically significant study on motherhood in the U.S., a pretty amazing accomplishment that in years past may have been left to a government organization to compile.

"Our goal at Motherly is to fully and completely understand today's mother," proclaims Jill, "and be able to serve her in every way she needs, from content to commerce and educational resources."