The Tuebor honor pledge

Together with my friend Chris Thomas, we have put forward an initiative which is called Tuebor and if you’re from Michigan and love the state, I think you are going to like this project a lot. Simply put, it is an honor-pledge commitment to invest in a Michigan business, every year. This could be investing in a new startup or simply buying 1 share of a large public company stock based in Michigan.

The pledge is open to the most generous interpretation possible. An individual making an investment of $10 is the ‘same’ as someone investing $1,000,000 each year. This adheres to one of my favorite Irish proverbs: wide is the door of the little cottage.

Chris and I published an op-ed in The Detroit News recently which spells out the philosophy of the project. If you’re interested in learning more and taking the pledge yourself, visit the Tuebor site.

I have taken the Tuebor pledge to make a Michigan investment every year for the rest of my life. My friend Paul Pfanner said to me once that ‘life works with commitment and it doesn’t work without it.’ Since taking the pledge in 2021 and following up on it each year, I have been surprised how the commitment itself creates its own set of value, sometimes on par with the profit motive of individual investments.