The Odyssey of Virgance: Prologue

Our tale begins somewhere in the storied halls of Branner, the largest freshman dorm at Stanford, where Brent was starting college in the fall of 1999. He met another young man by the name of Lukas Biewald. No mortal man could ever have imagined the monumental historical significance of this meeting. Autumn turned to winter, winter to spring. Years passed. Lukas graduated as a wily sorcerer of code, eventually neuromancing himself into a company known as Powerset. Brent graduated and roamed the desolate and barren Earth, searching for stories of hope. Humanity was at a crossroads. Then, in the darkest hour, whispers began to tell of an idea emerging from the darkness. A bright phantom spirit that was nowhere and everywhere at once...part presence, part idea, the townspeople said. Until one day, at the twilight of a time, it was born. O, and it was called Carrotmob. Brent unleashed it on San Francisco in March 2008, and made a video of the successful first Carrotmob event. A mighty wind blew this video to all four corners of the world, and then a great ocean of email rose up, sweeping Brent off his feet and into a massive whirlpool of ideas and opinions and requests and possible partnerships and blog comments. Such emails filled page upon page with enough ink to fill a thousand valleys.

But then, on the horizon, appeared a great winged bird. The bird plucked Brent from the whirlpool and placed him back on land. Suddenly, the bird spoke, and from its beak emerged the voice of Lukas! And the Lukasbird saith the following, "Hey dude, Carrotmob is pretty sweet...let me introduce you to my friend Steve who I worked for at Powerset." With that, the Lukasbird vanished in a thick flurry of feathers, and when the feathers dispersed, Brent was standing in Crossroads Cafe at Brannan and Delancey. And true to the prophecy of the Lukasbird, Steve was there. He solemnly spoke of the great Odyssey of his life that had brought him to this cafe:

"In days of yore, I began my career at an energy company. From my first day I knew it would be my fate to seek a new type of business. As I strove for individuality against the heavy weight of corporate conformity, I could see that my career path would take me over many mountains and across many long and dangerous waterways. The sea was angry, my friend," he exclaimed loudly, "and it pushed against me like an old man sending back soup for the second time! After struggling against corporate stagnation for 5 years, a wise man, whose name was unknown to humans because it could only be whispered by elves, saith unto me 'go west young man, go west' and so I did." He paused briefly to gather his thoughts, taking a long sip of his 16th apricot passion iced tea of the day. Briefly refreshed by this elixir, he continued to reflect on his arrival to California, how he cut his teeth on various startups, how he learned the ins and outs of Silicon Valley, and finally, how he came to realize that he wanted to use his powers to make the world a better place. Brent could see that Steve had many battle scars from his journeys, but his eyes flashed with energy as he described his visions of GreenFund and Lend Me Some Sugar, ideas that felt like long lost family to Carrotmob.

Steve and Brent discussed their ideas, and when they were done they spoke with one voice. Their plan was already clear, as if the very force they described had existed for eons, dormant seed awaiting nourishment. Now the fire is lit, smoldering in the belly of humanity. It is foretold that a day will soon come when Brent and Steve will join with software engineers, artists, front-end designers, biz dev people, community managers, an executive assistant and many an intern, and the smoldering fire will burst forth from the great web 2.0 volcano to light the fabled fire of progress in the good hearts of all people, in all places, for all time.

The legend continues....

Thanks to some of our Active Advisors

Josh Becker - (General Partner at New Cycle Capital) who has been a great help and mentor

Siqi and Alex - (Founders of Serious Business, one of the largest Facebook application companies) who have been a great help in building our team

Ryan Ferrier - (Founder of Serious Business and Steve's grasshopper who is now all grown up) simply for being Ryan, the most ballin'est player and helping us with all of our HR setup and ops stuff

David Anderson and Clayton Cornell - (The brains behind Green Options Media) who have been a great support in the environmental blogging community

Todd Parker - (Founder and General Partner of Hidden River Investments) for giving us office space and love

David Smith - (Executive Director of National Conference On Civic Engagement and Founder of Mobilize.org) for helping us to expand our horizons and think about the importance of civic engagement

...and many, many more that we will be adding over the coming days and weeks.