Ted Rheingold

Emergency room MD: “You’re cancelling your Hawaii trip. Scans show a number of lumps on your organs. We’re going to check you into the hospital immediately. Looks like Lymphoma. [I later figured out this was code for “we sure hope it’s lymphoma, because that's much more treatable than metastatic carcinoma.”] I told our Hawaii friends we couldn’t make it, huddled with family, got more scans and cell samples at the hospital and hid at home from the world and my future.

Ted Rheingold is a profit-from-purpose entrepreneur. He was the founding COO of Tala and founder of the social networks Dogster and Catster. Since 2001, impact VC firms have raised $13 billion to invest in companies that provide a social or environmental benefit as part of running their for-large-profit business. Indeed, $10 billion of that has been raised since 2010 alone.