Episode 33: The Growth of Main Street Capital with Jason Wiener

Summary: In this episode, Capital Insight co-hosts and securities attorneys Jenny Kassan and Michelle Thimesch talk with attorney Jason Wiener about his work with clients to design and implement values-aligned funding strategies .

Bio: With more than a dozen years of experience as an attorney – including several years in Big Law litigation, and as a labor lawyer – Jason’s range of expertise and experience brings an innovative approach to solving client issues. He has served on executive strategy, human resources, finance and other management level teams and on the board of nonprofits, cooperatives and corporations. Jason has published more than six scholarly law review articles on international, human rights and renewable energy topics and speaks regularly about worker-owned and cooperative business model, non-extractive finance, the future of work, the contemporary and teal practice of law, distributed solar policy and sharing economy legal issues. Jason is an adjunct professor in Colorado State University’s Global Sustainability and Social Enterprise program, where he teaches an MBA course on business law and ethics. He is also a guest lecturer at the University of Colorado Law School’s Entrepreneurial Law Clinic.

Key quotes:

“As I learned more about the adversarial nature of labor law, it grated on me that there wasn’t a third path toward empowering working-class communities and lower-income people to gain economic power through income security and wealth creation.”
“Venture capital is primarily focused on liquidity-based financing…that’s how they make their return, but for co-ops and other community-oriented businesses, they’re looking at providing investor liquidity through some other means.”
“If perpetual growth is not a likely outcome, you’re only setting yourself up for conflict later to leave that option on the table.”

Links/socials:

https://jrwiener.com/

Angels of Main Street:

https://www.angelsofmainstreet.com/