Brian Hooks on running Stand Together like a venture investor

Key points

Key takeaways from a Suffiyan Malik interview with Stand Together CEO and Charles Koch Foundation President Brian Hooks (July 2026):

Venture philanthropy as problem solving. Hooks calls Stand Together a problem solving business, not philanthropy: some 1,000 business leaders pool their knowledge and capital, deploying over $1bn a year across hundreds of university programs, tens of thousands of K-12 classrooms, and work in some 1,300 US communities.

Capital-agnostic backing. Stand Together funds problems, not vehicles: entrepreneurs can be backed via donations or equity investments, and for-profit founders solving social gaps count just as much as nonprofit leaders.

The Trust Ventures bet. The community backed Salen Churi, then a University of Chicago law professor: early-stage tech firms in regulated markets were locked out of value by outdated rules, and Stand Together supplied equity plus regulatory expertise; Trust Ventures is now on its fifth fund.

From Tyler Cowen: insatiable curiosity. Hooks spent 14 years at the Mercatus Center, working directly with Tyler Cowen for a decade: he describes Cowen as never satisfied, always pushing one step further, synthesising across pop culture and economics.

Extraordinary talent in unlikely places. Scott Strode, founder of The Phoenix, struggled with addiction for over a decade before founding a small Denver fitness-based recovery group: Stand Together helped him scale from gyms to a digital, replicable platform.

Discarding what works to scale. The Phoenix's gym model worked but did not scale: the pivot to a replicable digital model took it into hundreds of communities, past its millionth person helped, on track toward 10 million people in the coming years.

Humility as the defining founder trait. Hooks looks for humility, an active willingness to seek out people who show you what you missed, and the courage to put the problem ahead of a preferred solution.

Ecosystems of solutions, not single bets. Rather than pour money into one favoured organisation, Stand Together assembles ecosystems of dozens or hundreds of organisations, each doing what it does best, applying division of labour and gains from trade to education reform and other big problems.

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