After attending the ‘START SMART: Social Enterprise-Profit
with a Purpose’ talk on the legalities around social enterprises held by
the Swartz Foundation, the difference between non-profits and benefit
corporations was made clearer to me. One of my main takeaways from the talk was
that having a non-profit can be very risky because you do not have ownership.
This means that any profits are not yours and future success of the business
will not translate to your own. Further, there is the possibility that the
board can remove you from the organisation all together. I had not previously
heard of a B-Corp certification, but similar to LEED, it gives the business
credibility in the field and encourages commitment to all aspects of positive
social impact. There are some B-Corps in Kenya, where my social innovation is
based, though I am not sure how well known this certification is or how much
weight it holds.
Sustainability weekend was held at CMU the previous few
days, and I was able to attend a panel on entrepreneurship and start-ups.
Jesse Thornburg the CEO and co-founder of Kopo Water Purification and a PhD
student at CMU was on this panel and spoke about his venture which uses passive
solar technology to treat water in eastern Africa: http://www.kopocan.com/. He
spoke about the local habits and how in low income areas people re-use most
items in lieu of recycling them. His observation that people choose to walk to
water sources and collect possibly polluted water even when provided with
treated water, because they were used to doing this and enjoyed spending this
time together, made me rethink how I am hoping to change people’s habits. I
think that encouraging people to properly dispose of and segregate waste will
be extremely difficult to overcome, and needs incentives rather than
punishments.
I was able to ask Jesse how he navigates between starting a
company in the US where the funding, grants and incubators are, and needing to
be in the local environment for customer discovery, competition analysis and
growing one’s network and connections. This is an issue I am having with my
project, as information is not as easy to get online as it would be to ask
locals. Jesse explained that it is very difficult to manage this, and the
bureaucracy and corruption in eastern Africa is a huge barrier. It would be
ideal to be in the local area to help with connections as knowing people in
power in this area is very important. I have seen this being the case in Kenya.
However, due to the lack of funding in eastern Africa, Jesse explained that it
would not be possible to start his venture there. I am contacting Jesse about
whether Kopo plans to eventually manufacture in eastern Africa as I believe
that building local capacity and the economy is the best way to improve the
economy in impoverished areas, which would help address the root of the problem
that Kopo is trying to solve.
I am still trying to figure out whether it would be best to
start a venture which impacts eastern Africa in the US or if being in the local
area is more important. I think in my case, as infrastructure and a waste
processing plant would need to be built, it would be necessary to be located
locally though this would mean funding is more difficult to come by. For anyone
that is planning a venture in a different location to where possible funding or
technology knowledge is, how are you obtaining information for the business
canvas and where would it be best for you to start your venture?
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