Episode 225 - Marks on the Market: Celebrating America 250 & Entrepreneurial Spirit in the AI Era | Donna Harris

In this America 250 special edition of Marks on the Market, Richard Cunningham and Luke Roush sit down with Donna Harris — founder and CEO of Builders and Backers, venture investor, and co-author of the redemptive investing playbook at Praxis — for a wide-ranging conversation on the state of American entrepreneurship, the limits and promise of venture capital, and how the AI revolution is democratizing who gets to build.

As the country approaches its 250th birthday, Donna brings a decade of venture investing experience and a conviction that America's greatest competitive advantage isn't its capital markets — it's its people. Builders and Backers has helped launch nearly 800 companies, backing nurses, bartenders, dog breeders, and disability attorneys who are using AI to bring ideas to life that would have required $35,000 MVPs just a year ago.

Key Topics:

• Why venture capital is a "solid tool for a specific use case" — and why it's the single most expensive capital a startup can take
• The real entrepreneurship data: startups are creating a third fewer jobs per company than 15 years ago, and 62% of Americans have an entrepreneurial dream but less than 2% act on it
• How AI is democratizing startup formation — from a $35K MVP to a $20 Claude Pro subscription
• Donna's investment thesis for the AI era: stop asking which AI model wins and start asking which people are uniquely positioned to create value with it
• The concept of "re-risking" from a faith perspective — and why prosperity itself can become the greatest obstacle to obedience
• Scripture at the close: Donna on God's broken heroes, and Luke on the woman with the alabaster jar and the boy with five loaves

Notable Quotes:

"There has never ever in history been a greater moment to become an entrepreneur." — Donna Harris

"The best investors aren't just investing in AI companies. They're investing in smart people who will use the tool well and solve meaningful problems in sustainable ways." — Donna Harris

"We need to aggressively re-risk, otherwise we get lulled into this stupor of prosperity and comfort and building bigger barns." — Luke Roush