Brent Beshore’s portfolio of companies may seem diverse–and it is–but the twin themes of information and connection bind it together. Beshore’s adventur.es, a hybrid VC-incubator, includes The Agency Post (all the advertising/pr/marketing news you need in under five minutes), Brook (a daily email digest of the five best tweets from the people you select), and Influence & Co– a content creation shop that helps experts sound that way. Providing just the information you need in just the right-sized package? It’s the Beshore solution to the information pandemic. And it’s why AdVentures was ranked 28th on the 2011 Inc. 500 list. When not helping startups, the value-hunting Beshore writes clickable content for Forbes: articles like “How We Try To Prove Katy Perry Wrong At Work” and “Confessions of a Bad Boss in Recovery,” where he admits to playing favorites.
You might guess Beshore is based in New York or Silicon Valley, but no: he runs “the fort” (a 16,000 square feet co-working space complete with indoor park, putting green, and “beds and sheds”) in Columbia, Missouri. (Both he and his wife were well educated in Missouri; he earned a BA in politics and JD/MBA; she a PhD in molecular microbiology and immunology from Mizzou). The couple is also known for local volunteerism; he was nominated for a 2011 VH1 Do Something Award for his efforts helping his hometown of Joplin, MO recover from the devastating tornadoes. Employing his entrepreneurial spirit and media savvy (the Facebook page he started for the tornado recovery attracted 170,000 followers), Beshore raised $1.7 million for Joplin tornado relief. Hey, he says right in his bio: “The mission for my life is to positively transform the world.” Thing is, he seems to mean it.
