Monthly Archives: March 2017

Title: Chief executive officer of WealthForge, a Henrico County-based firm that operates an online platform that helps businesses connect with investors to raise private-placement capital

Education: University of Richmond, bachelors degree in business administration, 1993, and masters in business administration, 1997

Career: Started as a trading specialist at Wheat First Securities in December 1993 and left as a senior vice president and regional sales manager in December 2005; joined Scott & Stringfellow in January 2006 as CEO of Clearview Correspondent Services and left in December 2015 as the president of BB&T Securities Services; joined WealthForge in December 2015 as chief revenue officer and became CEO in July 2016.

In which part of the metro area do you live? Henrico County

Best business decision: To leave the relative comfort and security of a large corporate employer for the growth opportunity at a startup.

Worst business decision: There are too many to list, but most of them relate to not trusting my instincts and then acting decisively to address an issue.

Mistake you learned the most from: Early in my sales career, I signed up a client (or two) who seemed like they would be lucrative relationships but turned out to be trouble for me and the people who had to directly support them. It helped me understand that demanding a high standard of quality is a business decision that pays off again and again.

What is the biggest challenge/opportunity in the next two to five years: Our challenge is to build on the early success that WealthForge has enjoyed into a scale business that makes a broader impact. A good friend once told me that business is about talent and I agree. We have a great team at WealthForge, so I believe that our biggest opportunity is to continue investing in our team so that we can continue to show the world that our value is growing.

First job after college: The Vanguard trading desk at Wheat First Securities.

If you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently: A million little things, but no major things. Even the failures and frustrations along the way serve a purpose if you can learn from them and grow. I would probably take more care in maintaining some of the relationships I have formed over the course of my career that I have allowed to grow distant over time.

Book/movie that inspired you the most: Atlas Shrugged. I have read it several times at various stages of my life including high school, early in my career and again a few years ago. It began a process that continues today of reading, learning, and critical thinking about how to decide for myself what is important in life.

Favorite/least favorite subject in school: Least favorite was history; favorite was language. I studied Spanish and German.

See the article here:

Getting to know: Bill Robbins, with WealthForge - Richmond.com

Although Americas political system seems unable to stimulate robust, sustained economic growth, it at least is stimulating consumption of a small but important segment of literature. Dystopian novels are selling briskly Aldous Huxleys Brave New World (1932), Sinclair Lewis It Cant Happen Here (1935), George Orwells Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949), Ray Bradburys Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and Margaret Atwoods The Handmaids Tale (1985), all warning about nasty regimes displacing democracy.

There is, however, a more recent and pertinent presentation of a grim future. Last year, in her 13th novel, The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047, Lionel Shriver imagined America slouching into dystopia merely by continuing current practices.

Shriver, who is fascinated by the susceptibility of complex systems to catastrophic collapses, begins her story after the 2029 economic crash and the Great Renunciation, whereby the nation, like a dissolute Atlas, shrugged off its national debt, saying to creditors: Its nothing personal. The world is not amused, and Americans subsequent downward social mobility is not pretty.

Florence Darkly, a millennial, is a single mother but such mothers now outnumber married ones. Newspapers have almost disappeared, so print journalism had given way to a rabble of amateurs hawking unverified stories and always to an ideological purpose. Mexico has paid for an electronic border fence to keep out American refugees. Her Americans are living, on average, to 92, the economy is powered by the whims of the retired, and, desperate to qualify for entitlements, these days everyone couldnt wait to be old. People who have never been told no are apoplectic if they cant retire at 52. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are ubiquitous, so shaking hands is imprudent.

Advertisement

Soldiers in combat fatigues, wielding metal detectors, search houses for gold illegally still in private hands. The government monitors every movement and the IRS, renamed the Bureau for Social Contribution Assistance, siphons up everything, on the you-didnt-build-that principle: Morally, your money does belong to everybody. The creation of capital requires the whole apparatus of the state to protect property rights, including intellectual property.

Social order collapses when hyperinflation follows the promiscuous printing of money after the Renunciation. This punishes those who had a conscientious, caretaking relationship to the future. Government salaries and Medicare reimbursements are linked to an inflation algorithm that didnt require further action from Congress. Even if a Snickers bar eventually cost $5 billion, they were safe.

In a Reason magazine interview, Shriver says, I think it is in the nature of government to infinitely expand until it eats its young.

In the book, Florence learns to appreciate the miracle of civilization. It is miraculous because failure and decay were the worlds natural state. What was astonishing was anything that worked as intended, for any duration whatsoever. Laughing mordantly as the apocalypse approaches, Shriver has a gimlet eye for the foibles of todays secure (or so it thinks) upper middle class, from Washingtons Cleveland Park to Brooklyn. About the gentrification of the latter, she observes:

Oh, you could get a facelift nearby, put your dog in therapy, or spend $500 at Ottawa on a bafflingly trendy dinner of Canadian cuisine (the citys elite was running out of new ethnicities whose food could become fashionable). But you couldnt buy a screwdriver, pick up a gallon of paint, take in your dry cleaning, get new tips on your high heels, copy a key, or buy a slice of pizza. Wealthy residents might own bicycles worth $5K, but no shop within miles would repair the brakes. ... High rents had priced out the very service sector whose presence at ready hand once helped to justify urban living.

The (only) good news from Shrivers squint into the future is that when Americans are put through a wringer, they emerge tougher, with less talk about ADHD, gluten intolerance and emotional support animals.

Speaking to Reason, Shriver said: I think that the bullet we dodged in 2008 is still whizzing around the planet and is going to hit us in the head. If so, this story has already been written.

View post:

GEORGE F. WILL: Dystopian tale offers wry squint into a grim future - The Mercury

WASHINGTON Although Americas political system seems unable to stimulate robust, sustained economic growth, it at least is stimulating consumption of a small but important segment of literature. Dystopian novels are selling briskly Aldous Huxleys Brave New World (1932), Sinclair Lewis It Cant Happen Here (1935), George Orwells Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949), Ray Bradburys Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and Margaret Atwoods The Handmaids Tale (1985), all warning about nasty regimes displacing democracy.

There is, however, a more recent and pertinent presentation of a grim future. Last year, in her 13th novel, The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047, Lionel Shriver imagined America slouching into dystopia merely by continuing current practices.

Shriver, who is fascinated by the susceptibility of complex systems to catastrophic collapses, begins her story after the 2029 economic crash and the Great Renunciation, whereby the nation, like a dissolute Atlas, shrugged off its national debt, saying to creditors: Its nothing personal. The world is not amused, and Americans subsequent downward social mobility is not pretty.

Florence Darkly, a millennial, is a single mother but such mothers now outnumber married ones. Newspapers have almost disappeared, so print journalism had given way to a rabble of amateurs hawking unverified stories and always to an ideological purpose. Mexico has paid for an electronic border fence to keep out American refugees. Her Americans are living, on average, to 92, the economy is powered by the whims of the retired, and, desperate to qualify for entitlements, these days everyone couldnt wait to be old. People who have never been told no are apoplectic if they cant retire at 52. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are ubiquitous, so shaking hands is imprudent.

Soldiers in combat fatigues, wielding metal detectors, search houses for gold illegally still in private hands. The government monitors every movement and the IRS, renamed the Bureau for Social Contribution Assistance, siphons up everything, on the you-didnt-build-that principle: Morally, your money does belong to everybody. The creation of capital requires the whole apparatus of the state to protect property rights, including intellectual property.

Social order collapses when hyperinflation follows the promiscuous printing of money after the Renunciation. This punishes those who had a conscientious, caretaking relationship to the future. Government salaries and Medicare reimbursements are linked to an inflation algorithm that didnt require further action from Congress. Even if a Snickers bar eventually cost $5 billion, they were safe.

In a Reason magazine interview, Shriver says, I think it is in the nature of government to infinitely expand until it eats its young. In her novel, she writes:

The state starts moving money around. A little fairness here, little more fairness there. ... Eventually social democracies all arrive at the same tipping point: where half the country depends on the other half. ... Government becomes a pricey, clumsy, inefficient mechanism for transferring wealth from people who do something to people who dont, and from the young to the old which is the wrong direction. All that effort, and youve only managed a new unfairness.

Florence learns to appreciate the miracle of civilization. It is miraculous because failure and decay were the worlds natural state. What was astonishing was anything that worked as intended, for any duration whatsoever. Laughing mordantly as the apocalypse approaches, Shriver has a gimlet eye for the foibles of todays secure (or so it thinks) upper middle class, from Washingtons Cleveland Park to Brooklyn. About the gentrification of the latter, she observes:

Oh, you could get a facelift nearby, put your dog in therapy, or spend $500 at Ottawa on a bafflingly trendy dinner of Canadian cuisine (the citys elite was running out of new ethnicities whose food could become fashionable). But you couldnt buy a screwdriver, pick up a gallon of paint, take in your dry cleaning, get new tips on your high heels, copy a key, or buy a slice of pizza. Wealthy residents might own bicycles worth $5K, but no shop within miles would repair the brakes. ... High rents had priced out the very service sector whose presence at ready hand once helped to justify urban living.

The (only) good news from Shrivers squint into the future is that when Americans are put through a wringer, they emerge tougher, with less talk about ADHD, gluten intolerance and emotional support animals.

Speaking to Reason, Shriver said: I think that the bullet we dodged in 2008 is still whizzing around the planet and is going to hit us in the head. If so, this story has already been written.

Read more here:

George Will: A wry squint into our grim future - Winston-Salem Journal