Founder Guidance

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Adam Moore/Edges of Earth

Pete Malinowski didn’t plan on founding a nonprofit. He just wanted to bring oysters back into New York Harbor.

After a childhood spent on his parents’ oyster farm, Malinowski became an instructor at the Harbor School, the New York City public high school on Governors Island with a maritime-focused curriculum. He used oyster farming and restoration as a way to teach students about marine ecosystems. The school’s location provided an ideal environment for his work. “Historically, New York Harbor was full of oysters,” he explained.

He soon realized that a true restoration of oyster reefs to the harbor would require far more resources. In 2014, together with Murray Fisher, the school’s co-founder and then-director, Malinowski co-founded the nonprofit Billion Oyster Project, and serves as its CEO today.

“At the start, it wasn’t about a nonprofit,” Malinowski said. “It was ‘Can we train students to restore oysters to New York Harbor? Can oysters survive in New York Harbor? Can they reproduce? Can we build reefs? Do the reefs work?’ It was all just sort of answering these questions and moving forward.”

In a conversation with Founder Brew, Malinowski discusses his biggest challenges and priorities as a nonprofit founder, from permits and bureaucracy to the benefits of using the grant writing process to sharpen a nonprofit’s purpose.

What recommendations do you have for aspiring or first-time nonprofit founders?

We were fortunate to get some grants early on that created a runway for Billion Oyster Project, which had to do with timing, our positioning at the time. We wrote one big grant application and got a couple $100,000 from the Royal Bank of Canada, and then directly following Hurricane Sandy, we got some disaster recovery money to work on resilience oyster reefs as a resiliency tool, and then some water quality improvement money from the Department of Environmental Protection to do an oyster reef in Jamaica Bay.

We created Billion Oyster Project on the backs of those, and then very soon after got a National Science Foundation grant to develop our education programs. That was within six months of launching Billion Oyster Project. Those provided us with a runway and several years of funding that we could build around.

Grant writing is a really great way to hone your pitch, understand what resonates with funders, and get feedback on those and improve them and dial in your messaging, and that also leads to funding. Write 100 grant applications, and you’ll learn a lot from that process.

Read more about Malinowski’s experience founding the nonprofit Billion Oyster Project.—AM

      

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Founder Guidance

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Eva Longoria

Hollywood magic can make business seem simple, but every movie requires a team, budget, vision, and steady stream of decisions.

Producer, director, and actor Eva Longoria knows this firsthand. Outside of her production company, Hyphenate Media Group, Longoria is involved in a range of businesses. She co-founded tequila brand Casa Del Sol and co-owns soccer clubs Club Nexeca and Angel City FC.

Those experiences have shaped how she approaches entrepreneurship—and taught her a few lessons she keeps coming back to: Don’t let perfection delay progress. Take your ego out of the equation. And, perhaps most importantly, ask for help.

She’s now putting that last lesson into practice through “Call Eva,” a Lenovo-backed initiative that lets small business owners ask her about challenges they’re navigating. Longoria will answer select questions on September 16.

In a conversation with Founder Brew, Longoria reflected on her biggest business lessons, how her acting experience has shaped her approach to risk, and the value of collaboration.

What questions from small business owners made you realize there’s a need for founder-to-founder advice?

It’s a very lonely road. The main thing that they want is community. One of the biggest challenges is just feeling like you have to figure everything out on your own. Every time somebody’s sought out advice for me, it’s been about that.

What are some questions or situations that, with your background as an entrepreneur, you’re specifically equipped to help a founder navigate?

I’ve started several businesses. One thing is hiring people smarter than me in the industry of what I’m doing…I don’t write, but I know what I want the script to be, so I hire a great writer. I’m never going to be able to write that script, but I can definitely guide that process as a director, as a producer.

In my soccer team, I’m not a football expert. I don’t know what the left corner does. I don’t even know where he is on the field, but, boy, does my team know.

Surrounding yourself with experts and people who can answer questions and can do that…Along the way, I’ve learned, and that’s the biggest thing: Making sure you are resourceful, whether that’s mentorship, whether that’s expertise, whether that’s just community. There’s so many ways you can be resourceful.

Read more about Eva Longoria’s advice for entrepreneurs.—JH

      

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The Boring Co., Elon Musk’s Texas-based tunneling company, raised $3 billion in Series D funding. The round was led by the United Arab Emirates, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, and Valor Equity Partners. (TechCrunch)

Cognition, the company behind AI coding tool Devin, raised $2 billion in Series E funding led by Accel and Andreessen Horowitz, with investment from Avenir, Founders Fund, and General Catalyst. (the Wall Street Journal)

Sales and marketing AI tool startup Clay announced a $115 million Series D round, led by Wellington Capital with participation from DST Global, Sequoia Capital, A16Z Perennial, and Alphabet’s CapitalG. (the New York Times)

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Stat: $1.45+ billion. That’s the annual value of burgers sold at Shake Shack’s 703 global restaurants. Founder Danny Mayer originally launched the burger giant as a hot dog cart in Madison Square Park. (the New York Times)

Quote: “He didn’t stand out as the bright one in the family.”—Ed Zuckerberg, father of Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, reflecting on Mark’s childhood in suburban New York (Colossus)

Read: Instinct, a personal agent bot, lets users text an AI assistant to pay tolls, book DMV appointments, and negotiate with vendors while they sleep. But as AI agents take on more of our lives, how much personal information should we willingly hand over? (The Atlantic)

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