 Hi everybody this is Dave Vellante of Wikibon and this is the cube where we extract the signal from the noise, bring you the brightest minds that we can find. We like to drop into events and today we are at the sixth annual Tug Wine event and Tug stands for Technology Underwriting for Greater Good and it was founded by a number of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists and what they do is each year they gather, they raise a bunch of money and this is a happening place for big data, for tech, for entrepreneurialism and for venture capital in Boston and as you know we at the cube we've been covering that like a blanket for the last several years and we're here with David Brown who is the executive director of Tug. David thanks very much for spending some time with us. Oh thank you David I appreciate it, it's great to be here. So Dave tell us a little bit about Tug and what the mission is. Yep so Tug was started six years ago this is actually our seventh wine party now and very simple mission when we started. If you looked at kind of the venture capital community there was a really interesting intersection where the venture capitalists were all centering out on the 128 interchange kind of far out and all the entrepreneurs were going out kind of into the city and so Tug started as a two-fold kind of event system. One to bring the entrepreneurs the venture capitalists together but second to really focus on how do we use the innovation the entrepreneurship and the understanding of high-risk entrepreneurship to support social ventures so we bring those two communities the venture capitalists the entrepreneurs as well as the service provider communities together to really support entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship in that manner in the way it should be supported. So you mentioned sort of the migration from Waltham you know to sort of Boston Cambridge you're really seeing that now especially with all the big data action all the you know sort of renewed interest in kids coming out of MIT talk about that a little bit. Yeah certainly you know and again this is something that we've been able to inherit and kind of been very fortunate to see but as you kind of watch the venture capitalists come back downtown you watch the community here in Boston really grow Tug's been on a wave kind of a momentum wave of bringing those two groups really together and for us it's fantastic because it's a really lively really energetic community to watch and to engage with. Now talk about the greater good piece of tug what are some of the charities that you guys support and and how does that all work. Yeah certainly so all the money that we raise at our events go to support early-stage nonprofits with the mission of supporting entrepreneurship educational life experiences for you. Today we've supported over 18 organizations throughout the greater Boston area. Tonight we actually have six showcasing organizations three of which are brand new three of which are returning and we'll give them grants anywhere from twenty five hundred to twenty five thousand dollars based on audience vote. So part of the fun part of the greater good that we speak of is that we look at crowdsourced kind of community oriented giving. So we bring that entire community together to say who would you want to vote for how should we support them and what is our overall mission. And so that's how Tug really funds its its companies and where it's starting to head from now. What kind of organizations do you fund. So groups focus on education entrepreneurship and life experiences for you. Typically in very nascent stages so two hundred fifty thousand dollars or less in capital. More risky propositions but with really high growth opportunities. So if you look at a typical venture capital model you're looking for a good team and you're looking for a good market opportunity. We say let's look at the same exact things but support that for social innovation. So these are essentially nonprofit startups around social innovation that can help the greater good. Exactly. I mean who better to support nonprofit entrepreneurs than for profit entrepreneurs. We have people who can act as mentors who can make act as funders and who can really understand what these nonprofits are going through. And that's what we love to see our community do. What's your background. How did you end up at Tug. You know it's it's always a small world. But most recently I'm coming from an MBA program over at Bapson. Before that was a manager for an industrial supplies company ran a clean tech company and actually helped grow an AIDS organization in South Africa. So this is kind of a combination of a wide range of very business centric but social centric opportunities. Young guys start that in high school or what. Since I was born you have a parent who's a doctor parent who's a social worker you find yourself in this world very quickly. A lot of people find more information about Tug if they're interested in getting involved. Certainly. I mean so two very simple ways. Our website www.tug.org or you can even email me directly. I was happy to upgrade and bring people into the community which is just David at Tug.org. So very simple. Awesome. So we're expecting a 900 a thousand people here tonight. The place is gonna be rocking and we're excited to be here. Thank you David. Pleasure to have you here. Thanks for coming on.