After years working as a research analyst for Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch and then as the founder and CEO of investment platform Global Silicon Valley, Michael Moe says he’s developed a “skill set” around putting on conferences. Now he’s bringing that knack to Dallas, where 500 people are expected to attend the inaugural SMU+GSV Mission Summit later this month at Southern Methodist University.
The SMU conference will be modeled on the annual ASU+GSV Summit, which focuses on digital learning and workforce skills. Co-founded by Moe in 2010, that collaboration with Arizona State University has been called “the Davos of Education,” attracting 7,000 attendees as well as speakers including Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Gates, Howard Schultz, Condoleezza Rice, and Sandra Day O’Connor.
The Dallas summit, scheduled for May 22-24, has a different purpose: accelerating Moe’s corporate Mission Movement, which contends that there’s a “growing tidal wave” of businesses combining “the ambition of a for-profit with the heart of a nonprofit.”
Moe wrote a book about the trend, titled “The Mission Corporation,” in 2021.
Today’s entrepreneurs, especially younger ones, want to “feel like what they’re doing is actually helping the world evolve,” he says. “So, having a purpose to what they’re doing is critical. But profit is also important, because that’s how you sustain it, and that’s how you scale and make an impact.”
Moe’s inaugural Mission Summit will build on strategies from the successful ASU+GSV Summit (above). The SMU event will bring together 500 leaders from business, finance, government, philanthropy, and entrepreneurship to advance innovation for the mission movement.
Recruiting the best entrepreneurs
Moe’s partner in the upcoming conference is serial entrepreneur Mike Hoque, CEO of Dallas-based investment firm Hoque Global.
Mike Hoque
Says Moe: “We’re brothers from a different mother.”
The two met before Moe relocated to Dallas from Silicon Valley in 2021. (California had changed, Moe says, and Dallas felt like where “the future” will be.)
Further bolstering their relationship, GSV recently moved its headquarters from Northern California to Dallas and took a space in downtown’s historic Adolphus Tower, which Hoque acquired in 2015 and then renovated.
Moe and Hoque are collaborating on a ‘major innovation district’ in Dallas’ Cedars neighborhood
During an interview at Hoque Global’s office in Comerica Tower, Moe and Hoque explained how they’ve begun working together on Hoque’s SoGood mixed-use development in the Cedars neighborhood, south of Interstate 30. One of several complex real estate projects Hoque has undertaken, the development will become a “major innovation district,” Hoque says, with a first-phase building anchored by the GSV Innovation Center for innovators and entrepreneurs.
“We’re going to recruit the best entrepreneurs and bring them to the district,” Moe says, adding that the Mission Summit is a “fundamental component of how we’re going to get people to understand what we’re doing.”
SoGood Innovation Center
SMU+GSV Mission Summit: Speaker lineup, pitch competition
The Dallas conference, to be held at SMU’s Hughes-Trigg Student Center, with a reception at the George W. Bush Presidential Library, will present a wide range of speakers. They include Clark Hunt, chairman and CEO of the Kansas City Chiefs; former Dallas Fed president and CEO Rob Kaplan; Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt; Paul Quinn College President Michael Sorrell; Jennifer Chandler, managing director, Bank of America; and Stimuli Founder and CEO Taylor Shead.
The Mission Summit will also feature a dozen finalists in the Texas Cup, a pitch competition for college-age entrepreneurs presented by GSV.
With a career that’s “been about connecting the dots,” Moe is convinced the Dallas conference can catalyze the Mission Movement, just as he says the ASU summit jump-started the ed-tech sector.
“I believe Dallas is really the perfect place to be the hub of this mission movement, which is a global movement,” he says.
Get on the list.
Dallas Innovates, every day.
Sign up to keep your eye on what’s new and next in Dallas-Fort Worth, every day.
R E A D N E X T
-
Dallas' Hoque Global plans to build a $50 million mixed-use development in downtown Mansfield, the DFW suburb south of Arlington, with 249 residences, nearly 12,000 square feet of retail, office, and restaurant space, and a nearly 8,000-square-foot civic plaza, the DBJ reports. In a conversation with Moore and Todd Tonore, Mansfield's Mayor Pro Tem and Chairman of the Historic Downtown Mansfield Revitalization Subcommittee, the DBJ explores how "one of the oldest historic downtowns" in North Texas is about to get rebuilt.
-
The Dallas City Council recently approved up to $31.4 million in tax increment financing for the first phase of the Dallas-based developer's planned mixed-use development near the UNT Dallas campus. University Hills could ultimately include 1,500 multi-family units, hundreds of single-family homes, 1.5 million square feet of commercial properties, and more than 50 acres of green space.
-
SMU has announced two new appointments to its ranks. Robin Poston and Jason P. Nance will serve as the Dean of the Moody School of Graduate and Advanced Studies and Dedman School of Law, respectively. Jason P. Nance, an education policy and law scholar who studies inequalities in public education, will join SMU’s Dedman School of Law as the Judge James Noel Dean in August. He comes to SMU from the University of Florida Levin College of Law, where he is associate dean for research and faculty development and a professor of law. “The Dedman School of Law aspires both…
-
Collectively, the 100 privately held companies contributed $9 billion to the Dallas-Fort Worth economy from 2019 to 2021—creating over 12,000 jobs with average sales growth of 141%. Irving-based ShiftKey, which connects healthcare professionals with healthcare facilities that have immediate shift vacancies, took the top spot in the annual rankings. Here's the complete list.
-
After a rigorous process, the top six applications to the Tech Transfer Office Showcase at BioNTX's iC3 life science summit were invited to pitch live at BioNTX's life science summit. Industry experts rated, graded, and discussed the technologies prior to the pitches "We want to cultivate technologies that are coming out of the university ecosystem here—and we want them to stay here," said Chad Ronholdt, managing director at NVB Ventures.
