3rdWhale CEO Boyd Cohen looks back on a diverse path as a green entrepreneur and educator, and into the future, with an amazing announcement at the end!

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Having been a sustainable entrepreneurship professor in Spain, Canada and brief stints in Latin America, I realized about 5 years ago that it was time to do more than talk and research about doing well by doing good (one of Ray Anderson’s favorite expressions). I realized it was time to be a sustainable entrepreneur, someone out to use innovative tools to help make the world a healthier and more sustainable place. 

I went from a green building ecommerce startup with a former student (called GreenBex) to a green hotel company (Natura) both of which failed, to a green building consulting company (Recollective) and a software company which helps companies and cities transparently report their sustainability performance (Visible Strategies).  I am happy to report that the latter two companies are doing well. 

I launched 3rdWhale in April last year, initially as a website focused on building community around sustainability around the world. We start off with a bang when we launched a Greenest Person on the Planet competition.  That gained us substantial media coverage and short-term traffic hits to our new website but I quickly realized we were just one of thousands of green websites and it would be hard to stand out.  In July, I learned of Apple opening up the app store to third party developers and had my own “a-ha” moment….

How cool would it be for someone interested in their health and the health of the planet to have a GPS-enabled mobile app that allowed them to find healthy/green business alternatives near where they are right now, right on their mobile phone.

3rdWhale immediately began the painstaking process of building the North American database of businesses that belonged in such a database and simultaneously began the development of our first iPhone app.  Along the way I was able to meet a gentleman named Ron Williams. 

Ron, a serial alternative media entrepreneur with a few exits in his background, was very interested in hyperlocal green business directories and had started the first one, known as Happy Frog in Vancouver (where we are based).  Ron and I quickly realized that we had similar visions, complementary assets and actually liked each other (an important criteria for startup teams) and decided to merge our two companies.

Fast forward to June 2009…3rdWhale had been highlighted in numerous media outlets including Treehugger, Huffington Post, MNN and was even identified as one of the “Top 10 Ways to Change the World through Social Media”.  Our iPhone app was live for months, with Google Android and Blackberry apps on the way.   Our database had gotten to 25,000 in North America but we were worried about a company based in Colorado, GenGreen that had amassed a database of 40,000 in North America and was reportedly close to launching their own iPhone app.

Charisse, GenGreen’s CEO, and I had the opportunity to size each other up at the Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS) conference in Boulder.  We quickly realized that our counterpart was actually not Darth Vader and that we would make better friends than enemies. 

After a series of conversations we agreed to a partnership, that at the time seemed to make great sense. We would give them our database to integrate into theirs and then we would build a private label version of our iPhone app in a revenue share arrangement with them.  We were so excited about how the 2 former rivals became partners that we had a radical collaboration event with our friends in the green movement in San Francisco in August to launch our partnership and to encourage others in the movement to do the same.

While we both gained plenty from the partnership both companies were left wondering if we could have and should have done more. 

Integrating our web and mobile efforts in a more meaningful way could align our incentives more and have a bigger impact on the growing green economy and position ourselves to be a leader in our space.

I am proud to say that GenGreen and 3rdWhale today announce that these conversations have come to a fruitful place, we have decided to merge our two companies.  This is hardly the end of the road, but rather the beginning of an exciting new adventure for both companies.  The combined GenGreen will have among other things:

•  #1 Green Business Directory in North America (65,000 listings)
• The top cross-platform mobile applications for green business directories (iPhone and Android live and Blackberry on its way)
• A hyperlocal web platform that will allow our users to find really local information on www.gengreenlife.com (more to come)
• A very bright future!

Thank you to everyone who has been a part of the 3rdWhale team the past 1.5 years and to all of you who have visited our website or used one of our mobile apps or has partnered with 3rdWhale.

Please join us now at: www.gengreenlife.com

Sincerely,
BelugaBoyd
(Boyd Cohen, founder/CEO 3rdWhale, President GenGreen)