Crystal Wise
Fort Worth-native John Cornelsen has had a full life as an entrepreneur.
He launched Evolving Texas, a civil engineering and consulting firm, in 2009. In 2015, he became a partner in Indigo yoga.
He is also the co-founder of the Fort Worth chapter of Entrepreneurs’ Organization.
Today, however, he is building what he believes is the most important and consequential enterprise of his life: Juggle.
Juggle is a social platform designed to mitigate personal isolation, a growing social ill that can manifest in life-threatening health issues, by advancing interconnectedness with the “relationships that matter most to us.”
Like, say, connecting with people who have similar interests, such as going to the gym or cycling or playing poker.
“Whatever it is, creating ways to connect with each other and grow those networks to identify common ground between people,” says Cornelsen, 54.
He says he is in the midst of raising $4 million. He says he has raised $2 million for the project. The goal is a global launch on Jan. 1. Visit www.juggletribe.com/ to learn more.
“The company is around the idea of intentional connection,” he says. “About telling people they matter, about connecting for real, about not getting out and only interacting on social media ‘because we're so busy, let's just keep up with our relationships through Facebook.’
“We're shifting away from that and creating memories and connections for people all over the world and knowing that doing so is saving lives.”
What in your background fostered that recognition, that relationships and personal contact and human contact are important in people's lives?
“I knew somebody at one point who took their own life. Almost everyone knows somebody unfortunately. And I think one of the things that I learned through that experience is that we often reflect, and we look back and say, ‘Gosh, I had no idea. If I had only known, I would have called, I would have reached out.’
“Reach out and tell them, talk to them, tell someone they matter. I know how important it is to me when I go through hard days and someone will reach out and say, ‘Man, you've made a difference to me. I know that, that gives me strength.
“I want to create as many conversations like that with people as possible, not directed at me but directed to each other. It's important to me. I’ve got like, 10,000 people on LinkedIn, 1,500 on Facebook. I've got all these connections and yet we've never been more alone. We work from our cubicles, we sit in our bedrooms with our phones, we lie in bed and we're both on our devices.
"It's something I'm super passionate about. I'm working hard on it. I want to make a mark.”
How many do you have working on the project?
“We have 14 people working full time in Romania developing our code. I have a product manager in Puerto Rico. And then I have a team here in Texas for marketing development. That's about 10 more people. So, we have 25 people or so working on this.”
Why did you go out on your own in civil engineering?
“One of the reasons why we named our company Evolving is because I always wanted to create something that would change with the times, that would be flexible, that would use new technologies and think in new ways. It’s easier to push that agenda on a two-person boat instead of a big one.”