"social entrepreneurs" session linklist: barcamp vienna 01/08

this is the linklist for the barcamp track "social entrepreneurs" of valerie hackl and hannes a. schwetz.
the presentation will be online soon.

General
Wikipedia-Social entrepreneurship
The next step for microcredit, Interview with Muhammad Yununs

Podcasts
Inbusiness-BBC-Peter Day, Not just for profit
Social Enterprise Coalition

Examples
Kiva-Small change, Big Payoff
Social money lending service Techcrunch Artikle
Mondragon Cooperative: Wikipedia, Brandeins

Income distribution
Longterm Trends Income Distribution in Austria - Update - Wifo

Blogs
Social return on investment
Social Entrepreneur
Guy Kawasaki
Private Sector Development Blog
Social Edge Blog

Social Entrepreneurship Platforms

Schwab Foundation
Ashoka
Ashoka Germany
Social Edge (von Skoll Foundation)
Skoll Foundation

Conferences
Skoll World Forum
"Doing good doing well" by IESE Business School Barcelona
Social Enterprise Conference by Harvard Business School
Annual General Assembly and Conference by European Foundation Centre (EFC) on 29-31 May

Social Venture Funds
Bonventure

Books
"Finanzierung von Sozialunternehmen" von Ann-Kristin Achleitner, Reinhard Pöllath, und Erwin Stahl von Schäffer-Poeschel
"Ökonomie für den Menschen" von Amartya Sen
"Globalization and Its Discontents" von Joseph E. Stiglitz
[UPDATE 29.01.2008]
"Die Welt verändern" von David Bornstein
" Social Entrepreneurship" von Johanna Mair et al.
" Social Entrepreneurship" von Alex Nicholls

barcamp vienna 26.01.08 coming

i am looking forward to the upcoming barcamp vienna 01/08. together with valerie hackl i will propose to discuss "social entrepreneurship". located again at the wergzeugH i do expect a creative open atmosphere.

ray ozzie´s two start.ups documents

jessica livingstones´ interview of ray ozzie shows how two documents can be essential for start.ups.

the complete interview with ray ozzie is part of the book "founders at work". this highly recommended reading shows what for more or less successful founders worked and what did not.
ray ozzie got famous for his lotus notes history. he had numerous moderately successful start.ups with groove being the last one. after groove got acquired by microsoft he became microsoft´ chief software architect.

so how does ray ozzi starts his companies? he sits down an writes two documents:

founding document 1: outside view
describe the challenges/problems solved for the end user.

founding document 2: inside view
describe on a technical basis how to solve scenarios described in document 1

this approach gives founders a structured way to organize their thoughts. without being afraid of having to write an "executive summary" or even a "business plan".
having done that, he collects the core team of people he already worked together. to do that, the above docs show their first payback. future team members get the main start.up idea and can decide fast, if they are interested to join in or not.
he get’s a big open office and a whiteboard. together with the team he works out the technical details on how to solve the challenges, the toolchain, languages used, architecture. then the coding starts.

p.s.: looks like the business guys are left out for quite a while.

„long tail“ financing? 2/2

second, if tackling the tail from the right end seems to take too long (either because the business opportunity is gone by then or by lack of patience), a 2 phase approach is possible

having a long tail business in mind, start with the sweet spot core business. after gaining grip there, reach out to the tail. amazon did start to sell books with the differentiators of free delivery, consumer reviews and easy search in the beginning. those provided an outstanding new shopping experience. successful growth in the core business brought in investors, closing the first phase. only after that, in phase two, the long tail got explored. (an similar approach can be expected with their web services.)

this requires a business, where competitive advantages already exist in the classical core business – and not only in the long tail. in that case, write your business plan, build your working prototype, bring along customers and core team. then approach venture capital (preferably through introductions).

„long tail“ financing? 1/2

starting a „long tail“ business means challenging financing conditions. micro financing and/or a 2 phase approach could work.

chris andersons´s book “the long tail” points out that sustainable business can be build on large amounts of low turnover items. but how to finance such a business, where investors will see a return only in the long run? two proposed approaches seem applicable.

first, micro finance it. avoid costs (using free open source software for development, a business which hardly requires any own stocks or heavy capital investments, evangelise and build your – working for free and enjoying it - core team, use guerrilla marketing). prepare to keep the day job and drive the idea for as long as it takes to generate cash flows.

institutional investors will, at least in central europe, not be interested to finance this stage. how to still get them aboard, read the second part of the “long tail financing”.

selected business angels or incubators which see further ahead then most of their colleagues could be interested. bringing along limited but sufficient financial resources, like €20.000 per investment, they focus on developing and driving the business model. the downside for founders is, they can be expecting up to 50 percent of the company. therefore real business value has to be found within their business networks (marketing, sales, finance, people).

if giving away shares is not the preferred way, but small initial cash requirements can not be covered buy the founder, convertible loan agreements can be interesting. handing out tranches not lower then €10.000 per investor and putting them all under one trustee agreement keeps administration at a minimum. this micro finance allows to attack the long tail from it´s tail.

start.up finance mindmap update

the mindmap "start.up finanzierung"/start.up financing has been updated with business angels links.
thanks for feeback on the mimpdamp to smime.

start.up company success rates

with a 30% success rate, serial entrepreneurs outperform first-time company founders by 12 percent (18%). founders which failed once before have a slightly higher rate of 20% to make money out of their venture.

this is one of may results of the studies of gompers et al (“skill vs. luck in etrepreneurship and venture capital: evidence from serial entrepreneurs”, 2006).

“soft money” of venture capital investors does not bring real value in terms of higher success rates to serial entrepreneurs.