for how to build and lead an extraordinary company—one that enriches the world improves our lives and revitalizes our planet.  It starts with a fresh and necessary perspective on the fundamental purpose of business, as well as a vision of its greatest potential, as opposed to the various kinds of harm caused by many businesses today in the name of maximizing profits and growth. From here it examines three essential dimensions of an evolutionary business: individual consciousness and development (the “I” dimension); authentic human relations and company culture (the “we” dimension); and reimagined products and services, strategies, operations, and structures (the “it” dimension).

While progressive business practices receive increasing media attention, the solutions thus far presented have neither the comprehensiveness nor depth necessary to significantly reduce human suffering and sustain planet Earth.  Moreover, any solutions created must be pragmatic.

The ideas for evolutionary business that are presented here stem from the authors’ engagement with many of today’s leading startup businesses, like Slack, Snapchat, and Dropbox, as well as from established corporations such as Patagonia and Amazon, to inspire entrepreneurs and business leaders to do the most meaningful and successful work of their lives.

The site’s approach is informal and accessible, built around narratives from the authors’ experience coaching, consulting, and investing.  This is neither an academic nor a “How-to” business or leadership site; its goal is to support a broad-based evolutionary business movement.  We hope to enlist readers’ hearts and souls along with their minds. The site is designed to galvanize entrepreneurs and business leaders, investors, consumers, workers, community leaders, environmentalists, social reformers, and all others interested in finding ways to better serve humanity, heal our planet, and live a purposeful life. We welcome you to evolutionary business and are honored to be on this journey with you.

About the Creators

Geoff Graber and Matt Auron are the co-founders of Evolution, renowned coaching, consulting, and investment firm that supports leaders, teams, and organizations that strive to be world-enriching entities. Clients include Slack, Snapchat, Twitter, Uber, Google, LinkedIn, Paypal, Facebook, and Kleiner Perkins, along with over one hundred other startup and high-growth companies.

Evolution is regarded as the premier coaching provider in Silicon Valley.  Over the past eight years, the firm has grown to include more than three dozen Partners--men and women who are expert coaches and consultants supporting evolutionary businesses and their leadership. In addition, Evolution is an active investor alongside prominent venture capital firms in a number of the startup companies they coach, including Slack, Radiology Partners, Relativity Space, Density, and Verse. 

Matt and Geoff began working together to build Evolution after Matt left his role as leader of healthcare provider DaVita’s “Wisdom Team”, an internal training, development, and culture arm that played a significant role in the company’s transformation from bankruptcy to success. Previously, Matt worked with a progressive preschool non-profit organization, LAUP; served as a lobbyist and policy-maker in his home state of Minnesota for the St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce and on Capitol Hill as an intern and temporary staff for Rep. Peter Deutsch; and was the frontman in a touring rock band, Wayside.

For more than 20 years, Matt has also supported thousands of men on personal journeys of healing and self-discovery, leading wilderness retreats and facilitating group programs for the ManKind Project (MKP). When he moved to Los Angeles in 2007 to attend Pepperdine’s Organizational Development Master’s Program, he met Geoff in just such a group. 

Geoff had also recently arrived in LA and was beginning to work as an executive coach, after a career starting and leading businesses. Prior to Evolution, Geoff founded three companies--IQI Accessories, Muse Communications, and Scout OnDemand--and also led the first video game company in China for EA; was part of a team that launched the first venture capital firm in China for IDG; and launched a mobile games business as part of his role leading Yahoo! Games.  

Geoff was born and raised in California, where he graduated cum laude from UCLA in 1991 with a degree in East Asian Studies and Business. He launched his first company after spending a year as a senior financial analyst at Bank of America’s venture capital arm. In 2005, while at Yahoo!, Geoff experienced executive coaching for the first time as part of a leadership program that included Fred Kofman, author of, Conscious Business and founder of the consulting firm Axialent. Soon thereafter Geoff went to work for Kofman’s firm. 

Both Matt and Geoff are long-time meditators and bring that, and other forms of mindfulness, to their coaching practice.  Under Matt and Geoff’s leadership, Evolution combines deep individual work with broad-based, strategic initiatives that sustain the success of businesses as they rapidly scale.  They are sought-after coaches for entrepreneurs, executives, and venture capitalists who recognize the need for a better, more ethical, and more imaginative way of doing business.