b-corp
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Junction 37 and the Three-Cent Media Plan
A New York media agency built its reputation by distrusting the obvious channel, following the shelf, and charging toward the strange result. Sometimes the winning ad is six minutes long. Sometimes it costs three cents to watch.
The SEO Agency That Put a Bandicoot on the Balance Sheet
Optimising protects million-page migrations, teaches restaurant chains to win the search for dinner, and gives one percent of revenue to the planet. Its wager is that technical discipline and a conscience can occupy the same spreadsheet.
The Ad Agency That Hands the Marker to the Audience
For forty years, Russell Herder has sold strategy, design and media. Its more interesting product is a way of listening - one that lets the people inside a problem help write the campaign.
The Ad Agency That Put Purpose on the P&L
OBERLAND sells an unfashionably demanding proposition: a brand can take a stand and still make the numbers work. The interesting part is not the promise. It is the receipts.
The Company That Began as a Placeholder
Susan McPherson thought she was building a bridge to her next job. Instead, she built an agency around a deceptively practical idea: before you broadcast a purpose, connect the people who can make it real.
The 39-Year Bet on Saying No
Vanguard Communications built a durable agency by refusing the usual agency premise: that every paying client is a plausible client. Its narrow filter - communication in service of public good - became a surprisingly wide field of work.
Visceral and the expensive art of saying no
The creative agency builds brands and websites for organizations trying to change the world. Its own turning point was deciding which work to turn away.
HelpGood knows a good cause needs a better invitation
A bear, a pair of Nobel laureates, and a campaign with no paid media budget: inside the agency that turns worthy causes into things people actually join.
DG+ knows why your clean energy pitch needs a translator
From grid software to a children’s alphabet book, DG+ makes complicated energy ideas easier to understand. Its client work shows why knowing the audience matters as much as knowing the technology.
Civilian lets the audience into the writers’ room
The agency behind California’s Never a Bother campaign gave young people a say in the message, the design, and the messenger. Its most useful lesson begins before anyone buys an ad.
thinkPARALLAX and the Art of Saying More in 66 Fewer Pages
The California agency helped shrink Snap’s sustainability report from 113 pages to 47. Its bigger project: getting corporate ambition, evidence, and storytelling to agree.
Barretto-Co. puts design to work close to home
An Oakland studio pairs corporate branding with public-school pride and civic reporting. Its most revealing work shows what happens when design has to answer to the people down the street.
Mangrove builds websites that put clients in the driver’s seat
The woman-owned B Corp turns complicated missions into websites people can use and teams can maintain. Its own story includes a Canadian acquisition, a smaller team and a giving target it had to catch up with.
IMPAQTO opened a coworking space. Then it started writing checks.
The Ecuadorian company built a business around the things impact entrepreneurs kept missing: a place to work, practical help and capital that fits. Its most revealing move was becoming a lender itself.
Culture Amp wants your employee survey to have consequences
Thousands of companies use Culture Amp to ask employees what they think. Its next bet is AI that helps managers do something with the answers - while the company faces hard questions about its own workplace.
PALO IT wants to fix the work around the code
The technology consultancy is putting AI to work on the handoffs, habits and legacy systems that slow software down. Its projects with airlines, health insurers and fitness clubs show what that bet looks like in practice.
Atticus wants to be the lawyer you call before you know which lawyer to call
A disability claim can turn illness into a second job. Atticus offers free guidance, finds specialist lawyers, and earns its share when clients win. The business is built around getting that first call right.
Birdie wants the care visit to end when the carer leaves
The homecare software company found its market by giving up on a family sensor product. Now it is taking on the paperwork that follows carers home.
Sparx Learning Has a Homework Assignment for Schools
Millions of pupils use its maths, reading and science systems. Sparx’s bigger bet is that better routines - and teachers who can see what happens at home - make the difference.
FundApps wants to end Wall Street’s duplicated homework
Hundreds of investment firms face the same regulatory puzzles. FundApps built a business around solving them together. Its merger with SteelEye raises a harder question: can the rest of compliance work that way, too?
Purple Sold the Broadband Business. Then It Made the WiFi Login Pay.
The Manchester company stopped selling broadband and began selling what happens after people connect. Its software now turns an ordinary utility into consented customer data, indoor directions and a measurable line on the profit-and-loss statement.
Posit Gave Away the Data Science Workbench - Then Sold Enterprises the Keys
The company behind RStudio spent years making data science software free. Its business appeared when banks, drugmakers and governments needed that freedom packaged with permissions, audit trails and a dependable place to publish.
Redbrick Quit Selling Clicks and Built a $100 Million Software Portfolio
The Victoria company escaped a volatile performance-marketing model by turning its operating playbook into a portfolio. Now the interesting product is not any single app - it is the machinery Redbrick uses to make mature software grow again.
The $50,000 Shake Disaster That Built Orgain’s Protein Empire
A teenage cancer survivor became a doctor, launched an organic shake during residency, and nearly lost the business when the product turned solid on the shelf. The repair became a playbook for building trust in a category full of promises.
The App That Turned Payday Loans Into a Neighborly Favor
SoLo Funds built a lending marketplace with no interest and no mandatory fees, betting that strangers would rather help strangers than let a payday lender do it. Two million users later, the model is either a fix for broken small-dollar credit or a regulatory magnet - and the founders keep insisting it is the first.
The Minnesota Software Company That Bet Nonprofits Would Pay for a Partner, Not a Product
Two guys who met on a governor's campaign built one of the first cloud databases for nonprofits, then rewrote their own corporate charter to prove they meant it. Nearly 30 years later they are betting the same customers on AI.
The Solar Company That Bet on the Buildings Everyone Else Skipped
Isaac Baker and Ben Underwood built a solar company around the customers the industry finds too poor or too complicated. Nearly a decade in, the affordable-housing rooftops are paying them back.
How Do You Work the Dark Web Without Getting Burned? Build a Throwaway Computer Every Single Time.
Grey Market Labs spent a decade turning intelligence tradecraft into a button. Now Fortune 100 banks and the US Army rent disposable, fully isolated workspaces that appear in minutes and leave no trail.
The AI that reads every medical paper so pharma's scientists don't have to
Medical teams at drug companies read maybe 10% of the evidence that matters. Sorcero built AI agents to read the other 90% - and about a third of the top 30 global pharma companies are now paying for it.
The Company That Turned a Kitchen Trash Can Into a Spreadsheet
For 20 years, Leanpath has bet that you cannot fix what you refuse to weigh. The payoff: kitchens that cut food waste in half, one logged banana peel at a time.