Sky.Garden is a SaaS e-commerce platform built for retailers in Africa. Note: Between now and the end of the year, we’re counting down the top twelve popular podcast interviews of 2018. It is a people’s choice award, determined by the number of downloads. This interview originally aired on March 12, 2018. People who work in the informal economy make up half to three-quarters of the non-agricultural labor force in many countries. In Kenya, the informal sector represents 82.7% of all employment. Many of the people involved in the informal economy also have a job in the formal economy. Isaac Hunja, the Chief Marketing Officer at Sky.Garden, comments, “Every Kenyan has a side-hustle.” One example of the informal economy is street vendors. They may have a kiosk in a marketplace or they may be selling goods from the back seat of their car. According to  Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO):  Most street vendors provide the main source of income for their households. Over half of street vendors surveyed said they source the goods they sell from formal enterprises. Street vendors create jobs, not only for themselves but also for porters, security guards, transport operators, storage providers, and others. Many generate revenue for cities through payments for licenses and permits, fees and fines, and certain kinds of taxes  Street vendors have a particular set of challenges. They may place a classified ad, offering their merchandise for sale. Customers call their mobile phone, with perhaps one in ten calls converting to a sale. Then the merchant must figure out how to deliver their merchandise and get paid. They may use a carrier. The carrier must deliver the merchandise, collect the payment and return the money to the merchant. The entire chain of events is fraught with problems. Sky.Garden offers an alternative to this problematic process. Merchants can download the app and set up their online store in five minutes. They can take pictures with their phone and upload their inventory in less than 30 minutes. Each item in their shop has a unique URL. And their webshop has a unique URL. This allows the vendor to share links via WhatsApp, text message, or social media. When a sale is made, Sky.Garden takes the transaction from there. They call the vendor to confirm the item is still available. They call the customer to confirm delivery details and dispatch a courier to deliver the item. Once the item is delivered, payment is made via mobile money, mPESA. Sky.Garden manages customer care using a machine learning framework. The process protects all parties involved and builds trust in the platform. Sky.Garden has over 3,000 unique web shops on their platform, featuring over 10,000 products. Sky.Garden employs field agents to acquire new merchants, help them upload their first inventory, and teach the merchants to use e-commerce. While they are working with the vendors, the field agents are also vetting the vendors to ensure that they are not selling knock-off items. There is also a daily clean-up process on the platform to ensure all merchandise meets Sky.Garden’s requirements. Social Entrepreneurship Quotes from Isaac Hunja “We’ve been able to handle it by getting our hands dirty.” @itshunja @wwwskygarden “Make the world your business.” @itshunja @wwwskygarden “Every Kenyan has a side-hustle.” @itshunja @wwwskygarden “They had a lot of money falling through their fingers.” @itshunja @wwwskygarden “We’re trying to make e-commerce accessible to the market.” @itshunja @wwwskygarden “We have a big city expansion plan.” @itshunja @wwwskygarden “We only charge per transaction.” @itshunja @wwwskygarden “We give the merchant the freedom to choose.” @itshunja @wwwskygarden “I guess the startup blood is in me.” @itshunja @wwwskygarden “They wanted to give e-commerce back to the hands of the people.” @itshunja @wwwskygarden “We mapped 6,000 to 7,000 merchants and...

Top Twelve Popular Podcasts 2018, Isaac Hunja, Sky.Garden

Matt Scott asks if there is an easier way to tell your story and build your brand. Note: Between now and the end of the year, we’re counting down the top twelve popular podcast interviews of 2018. It is a people’s choice award, determined by the number of downloads. This interview originally aired on August 27, 2018. You have a message to share – a message that is as unique as you are. You want to tell the world, “This is who I am, and this is what I’m building.” You recognize the power of storytelling, but these things take a lot of time, right? And, there are so many options! Write a blog. Share a live video. Podcast. The choices of how and where to tell your story are limitless. Maybe you’re like Matt Scott. He wants to know if there is a way to easily and efficiently share your story. Matt is the Manager of Storytelling and Engagement at SecondMuse, a certified B Corporation. He is also the founder of 180° of Impact, a project to celebrate 180 people dramatically improving our world through their work. Matt recently sent a question through my “Ask Me Anything” page, where you can ask about business, productivity, personal growth, or anything else. Here’s the question Matt asked: Knowing how limited the time is for social entrepreneurs, what is one tip for a lower-effort way for someone to build their brand and tell their story; to build a community and build their audience? In this episode of Social Entrepreneur, Matt and I go over five steps to easily tell your story and build your brand. Here they are:  Know why you want to tell your story. Know what story you want to tell. Know your strengths. Know your audience. Know that you’re going to be OK.  Let’s look at these one at a time. Know Why You Want to Tell Your Story Know the Impact Are You Trying to Achieve Let’s face it. When it comes to sharing your story and building your brand, there are so many choices. Knowing what impact you are trying to achieve will inform your decision of how and where to share your story. Are you going to use social media such as Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn? Are you going to share your story through a third-party website, such as Medium, YouTube, Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Soundcloud, or Spotify? Do you need to build your home base – your domain name and website? There are also a lot of choices to be made when it comes to media. Are you going to share your story in text? Will you microblog, write in short form, or write a long form story? Will you share an audio file? Should the audio be a podcast or just a simple recording on your website? Or, do you want to share using video? Should you post a pre-recorded video, or stream your video live? With all these choices, knowing the outcome that you’re trying to get to will inform your decision. Want to change people’s minds? Sending a single tweet probably isn’t going to accomplish this goal. Want to build excitement and engagement? You must decide if a long-form blog post is going to do that. Know why you’re sharing what you are sharing. Why Will Sustain You When you know why you do what you do, it will sustain you over a long period of time. When it comes to brand-building, it takes time. Even Oprah wasn’t the Oprah we know today when she first started. It took years for her to perfect her craft and build her brand. This work is a long slough. If you’re going to stick to it, you’re going to need a big ‘why.’” Know What Story You Want to Tell First, Edit You are a complex person. You don’t easily fit into one label or even a handful of labels. So, part of telling your story and building your brand is deciding what part of your story to include and what to leave out. You may be a daughter, sister, mother, and aunt. You might be a dog-owner, marathon runner, guitarist, and puzzle master. So, one of the first choices you’re going to have to make is, what part of my story am I going to leave out? Editing is a...

Top Twelve Popular Podcasts 2018, Matt Scott, Let’s Care

Coral Vita is growing climate-change resilient coral in order to restore dying coral reefs. Note: Between now and the end of the year, we’re counting down the top twelve popular podcast interviews of 2018. It is a people’s choice award, determined by the number of downloads. This interview originally aired on January 22, 2018. Coral reefs make up less than 1% of the surface area of the oceans, and yet, they provide a home for 25% of all marine fish species. Globally, coral reefs contain between 6,000 and 8,000 species of fish. As a point of comparison, across North America, there are 914 species of birds. Humans depend on coral reefs for everything from livelihoods, food, and medicines. According to Sam Teicher, co-founder of Coral Vita, “There are up to one billion people around the world who depend on reefs for their livelihoods. Reefs conservatively generate $30 billion per year through tourism, fisheries, and costal protection.” Sam’s cofounder at Coral Vita, Gator Halpern adds, “The ocean provides us, not only most of the oxygen that we breathe, but also food for billions of people around the world.” However, coral reefs are threatened worldwide. It took between 5,000 and 10,000 for the Great Barrier Reef to be created by nature. And yet, because of overfishing, poor coastal development, pollution and climate change, we expect to lose 75% of all of the world’s coral by 2050, unless we do something about it. Sam continues, “This is obviously an ecological tragedy, losing such incredible ecosystems, but what we’re also considering is that this is a socio-economic catastrophe.” Gator added, “These issues of ocean degradation are essential for everyone, everywhere. All lifeforms depend on having healthy coral reefs to survive.” Coral Vita brings dying reefs back to life by growing climate change resilient corals and transplanting them into degraded reefs. They are establishing a network of land-based coral farms. Sam explains, “We sell coral restoration as a service to customers who depend on healthy reefs, like hotels, governments, the coastal insurance industry.” Coral Vita works with cutting edge researchers to grow coral through a process called “assisted evolution.” Assisted evolution allows Coral Vita to boost the climate resilience of coral. Gator and Sam work closely with Dr. Ruth Gates at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, and Dr. David Vaughan of the Mote Marine Lab to commercialize their work. Sam experienced a coral reef restoration project in Mauritius in 2012 and 2013. The project was funded by a grant from the UN. “I saw fishermen returning to this lagoon,” Sam says. “It was amazing to see, we can bring a reef back to life. But, there is only so much grant funding. Given the scope of the problem…that grant funding model wasn’t going to cut it.” Sam and Gator both grew up on the ocean. They met while studying at the Yale School of Forestry &amp; Environmental Studies. “We both wanted to make the big changes in the world we think are necessary in order to have our society thrive in the future.” Gator explains. When Sam explained his experience with a coral farm in Mauritius to Gator, Gator says “My eyes lit up. I thought this was an incredible thing. My entrepreneurial mind starting thinking, ‘Hey, this could be a company!’” Sam and Gator wrote their business plan in their last semester at Yale. Since then, their work has been recognized and supported by organizations such as Echoing Green, Halcyon Incubator, J.M Kaplan Fund, and more. So far, Coral Vita has raised $1 million to launch and run their pilot coral farm. They are taking pre-orders for an “adopt a coral” campaign. Social Entrepreneurship Quotes from Gator Halpern and Sam Teicher “Since the 1970’s, we’ve lost around 30% of the world’s reefs.” @SamTeicher, @CoralVitaReefs “We’re projected to lose 75% of reefs by 2050.” @SamTeicher, @CoralVitaReefs “Over the last few...

Top Twelve Popular Podcasts 2018, Gator Halpern and Sam Teicher, Coral Vita

The Venn Foundation uses Program-Related Investments in surprising new ways. Note: Between now and the end of the year, we’re counting down the top twelve popular podcast interviews of 2018. It is a people’s choice award, determined by the number of downloads. This interview originally aired on February 19, 2018. This week, we’re kicking off a two-part mini-series how to fund a business that does social good. We did something like this in April 2016. Next week, Cathy Clark is going to be here to talk about CASE Smart Impact Capital, an online resource to help social entrepreneurs figure out how to find the right capital at the right time. This week, we’re talking to Jeff Ochs of the Venn Foundation. Jeff is an experienced entrepreneur and investor. He invented and commercialized an educational party game that was licensed by Hasbro. He started a successful nonprofit, Breakthrough Twin Cities. And he was the Executive Director of an angel investing network. In each of these instances, Jeff saw the difficulty of getting the right investments to the right startups at the right time. Jeff explains that today there are two types of capital:  Charitable donations, which support causes we care about with no expectation whatsoever for financial return. For-profit investments, which are designed to make as much money as possible for investors on a risk-adjusted basis.  “In this current capitalist system, it is obvious why there is no investment capital available that is willing to accept ‘below-market’ financial terms,” Jeff explains. To meet this challenge, Jeff partnered with Rob Scarlett and Jeanne Voight to launch the Venn Foundation. Jeff says, “At the highest level, Venn Foundation has a method for using charitable donations, which today we just give away, to make investments. This allows us to create the below-market investment capital that we badly need. Charitable investments have all the same tax advantages of donations, are anchored against -100% financial returns of donations, and allow the precious charitable donation to be recycled over and over again. Venn Foundation is where charity and investing meet.” Venn is creating a marketplace for charitable investing. They are removing the obstacles that donors face in making charitable investments directly. By opening a special donor-advised fund called a Venn Account, any individual or organization can recommend that their charitable dollars be used by Venn to make Program-Related Investments or PRIs. Venn can syndicate any PRI among any number of Venn Accounts. Financial returns from these PRIs go back to participating funds for the donors to redeploy into new PRIs or to grant out as desired. Venn recently made a program-related investment to Binary Bridge. BinaryBridge creates software that helps humanitarians do their work effectively and efficiently. You may recall  our conversation with BinaryBridge founder Lori Most. Who should seek program-related investing? Jeff suggests that business and nonprofit leaders ask themselves, “Is that I’m doing helping advance a charitable cause as defined by the IRS? And if the answer is yes, or maybe yes, the program-related investment tool is something that could apply to you and your goals.” Social Entrepreneurship Quotes from Jeff Ochs “If that kind of capital existed, what could we do?” Jeff Ochs, Venn Foundation “It’s where charity and investing meet.” Jeff Ochs, Venn Foundation “Today, there is not a market for charitable investing.” Jeff Ochs, Venn Foundation “If capital behaved differently, what would be possible?” Jeff Ochs, Venn Foundation “Capital is the lifeblood of our economy.” Jeff Ochs, Venn Foundation “If we can change the nature of capital, we can change the way our economy works.” Jeff Ochs, Venn Foundation Social Entrepreneurship Resources:  Venn Foundation: https://www.vennfoundation.org BackpackEMR:https://www.backpackemr.com Book: Crazy Good Advice: 10 Lessons...

Top Twelve Popular Podcasts 2018, Jeff Ochs, Venn Foundation

All Square is a craft grilled cheese restaurant and training institute that breaks down barriers for those with a criminal record. Note: Between now and the end of the year, we’re counting down the top twelve popular podcast interviews of 2018. It is a people’s choice award, determined by the number of downloads. This interview originally aired on January 29, 2018. A criminal record can be a barrier to employment, housing, benefits, and voting. With barriers to employment and housing, there is a high rate of recidivism. One study across 30 states found that 67.8% of released prisoners were rearrested within three years of release. Recidivism is a large problem impacting millions of people, including the loved ones of those with criminal records. Nearly one-third of American adults have been arrested by age 23. Arrests fall disproportionately on men of color. One out of every 106 white men is behind bars. Compare that to one in every 36 Hispanic men and one in every 15 African American men. And, it’s not just men who have criminal records. In the ten-year period from 1997 to 2007, the number of women in prison increased by 832%. The volume of cases in the criminal justice system overwhelms the courts. Defendants are pressured to accept a plea deal for probation or early parole. Many who accept these deals do not realize the full consequences of their future employment and housing options. Emily Hunt Turner is doing something about this. Emily is an architect, a civil rights attorney, and more recently the founder of All Square. All Square is a craft grilled cheese restaurant and training institute for those with a criminal record. They plan on opening their restaurant this spring. Their name is a play on words, representing those who have paid their debts to society are "all square" and free to move forward unencumbered. When opened, All Square will be a self-sustaining social enterprise. Profit from the restaurant will fuel the organization. As a non-profit, they will augment their professional institute with grants and individual donations. The Moments that Shaped Emily’s Mission Emily grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota. Things weren’t always easy. Her mother raised her as a single parent. She says that “as a gay woman from rural North Dakota, from a family who has never known financial stability, I have seen and experienced adversity.” Still, she describes her early life as “the most incredibly happy childhood. I was a very happy kid.” Emily describes her mother as “the most inclusive human I've ever known. She was so eccentric in her dress and her manners. She was quite a force and a vision.” When Emily grew up, studied Architecture at Syracuse University. She became interested in issues surrounding housing. She worked on a documentary film, The Atlanta Way that describes gentrification in Atlanta after the 1996 Olympics. “I learned about some of the troubling practices that took place in the name of clearing housing for athletes. I was beyond troubled. It was shocking to me that this sort of thing could actually happen.” “What came out of that was, unexpectedly, a passion for housing discrimination and displacement,” Emily explains. Seeing her passion, a professor encouraged Emily to study law. “Keep in mind, Emily says, “this was my seventh year in college.” Nonetheless, Emily remarks &nbsp;“This led to my law degree and my focus on contemporary housing discrimination through zoning, land-use, lending algorithms, and low-income housing tax credits.” Emily worked as an attorney for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for nearly five years. “I not only ran into widespread housing discrimination in lending, zoning, and land-use, but I also saw it day-in and day-out in tenant selection policies.” Emily witnessed how those with criminal records are excluded from both public and private housing. Eventually, Emily realized that she could not change the outcomes...

Top Twelve Popular Podcasts 2018, Emily Hunt Turner, All Square

Kathleen Kelly Janus is the author of Social Startup Success: How the Best Nonprofits Launch, Scale Up, and Make a Difference. Note: We have been counting down the top twelve popular podcast interviews of 2018. This interview with Kathleen Kelly Janus was the most downloaded episode of 2018. It like is a people’s choice award. The interview originally aired on January 8, 2018. Kathleen Kelly Janus grew up in a family that cared about social causes. “My family cared about volunteering, and spent our weekends volunteering at soup kitchens,” she explains. “But they also cared about the organizations and supporting the conditions so that nonprofits can not only survive but can thrive.” Kathleen studied the law at UC Berkley. After graduating, she worked as an attorney. In 2004, she co-founded a nonprofit, Spark. Spark makes it easy for young people to give to women's causes. At their first fundraising event, Kathleen and her cofounders watched in amazement as attendees formed a line around the block. That first night, they raised $5,000 for an organization in Rwanda. As word spread about Spark, their revenues doubled every few months. By the third year, they were ready to hire their first Executive Director. But that is where their fundraising plateaued. “Just at the point when we were poised to take the organization to the next level, we hit a wall,” Kathleen says. “We couldn’t get over this hump of $300,000 – $500,000 in revenue.” As a lecturer at Stanford University’s Program on Social Entrepreneurship, Kathleen heard stories of organizations that had overcome the plateau in fundraising. She saw examples of success among her friends. “That is the question I’ve been studying for the past five years,” Kathleen explains. “What does it take for nonprofits to succeed, and particularly in those early stages? What does it take to get over that hump?” Kathleen used what she knew from her own startup experience. She worked with her students to research hundreds of articles on best practices. She surveyed thought leaders and interviewed hundreds of successful social entrepreneurs. Based on what she’s learned, Kathleen has written a new book, Social Startup Success: How the Best Nonprofits Launch, Scale Up, and Make a Difference. She lays out five key strategies of successful nonprofits:  Testing Ideas Measuring Impact Funding Experimentation Leading Collaboratively Telling Compelling Stories  Social Startup Success describes specific methods for executing each of these key strategies. Social Entrepreneurship Quotes from Kathleen Kelly Janus “We were operating month-to-month, trying to make ends meet.” “In Silicon Valley, I saw these organizations that were taking off.” “What were organizations like Kiva doing differently than we were doing at Spark?” “What was allowing them to take their organizations to the next level and to maximize their impact?” “That hump is something a lot of organizations are facing.” “Of the 300,000 nonprofits in the United States, two-thirds of them are $500,000 and below in revenue.” “A lot of them have proven ideas that can work in communities around the world.” “Every organization is going to have a different threshold.” “By sustainable I mean, are you able to operate in such a way that allows you to focus your energy on the impact?” “Every one of these organizations had these very early periods of illumination before they went out to raise money.” “They were very careful about testing it early on.” “The best social entrepreneurs fall in love with the problem, not the solution.” “Organizations that measured their impact from the start tended to scale more quickly.” “Always be thinking about the impact and measuring that.” “The organizations that are most successful are the organizations that have a much more distributed leadership culture.” “Go work for someone who has been successful before you.” “You...

Top Twelve Popular Podcasts 2018, Kathleen Kelly Janus

Lunar Startups creates opportunities and access for underestimated entrepreneurs. The deadline to apply to Cohort 2 is January 13. Danielle Steer, Managing Director of Lunar Startups, describes the events leading to the formation of their organization as a “serendipitous perfect storm.” In 2017, the Knight Foundation became interested in supporting underrepresented, underserved entrepreneurs, such as women, people of color, and LGBTQ entrepreneurs. Around this same period, the late Glen Nelson bequeathed a gift to help American Public Media to invest in the future of journalism. This led to the launch of the Glen Nelson Center. Also, around this same time, Ecolab moved their global headquarters, leaving their former building vacant. Ecolab CEO Doug Baker worked with the building owners to sell the building to a group of entrepreneurs who had a vision for an entrepreneurial center. “So, we had space. We had the funding from the Knight Foundation. We had the organization who was willing to be the home of this startup,” says Danielle. It was from this confluence of events that Lunar Startups was born. Lunar Startups is a year-long incubator dedicated to serving underestimated entrepreneurs such as women, people of color and LGBTQ. Danielle says that she borrowed the term “underestimated” from famed venture capitalist Arlan Hamilton. Amanda Heyman is the Director of Lunar Services at Lunar Startups. Lunar Services provides business and legal technical assistance to those within Lunar Startups cohorts. “The underestimated founders that we work with often don’t have those informal networks to key service providers,” Amanda explains. “For example, they may not have an uncle who is a lawyer, or a neighbor who is a CFO, or a friend who is a software developer. The idea behind Lunar Services is to provide access to that sort of help early in the journey.” Cohort 2, Applications Closing The deadline to apply to Cohort 2 is January 13. If accepted, startup founders will receive the following:  Dedicated office space Access to investors $5,000 travel, technology, and marketing reimbursement fund per startup Access to an expert network of professionals providing pro-bono support Access to state-of-the-art equipment for video conferencing and podcast development Weekly startup-specific programming based on the needs of the cohort A peer network And more.  Applications close January 13. To learn more about the criteria and to apply, go here: https://www.lunarstartups.org/criteria. Social Entrepreneurship Quotes from Amanda Heyman and Danielle Steer “It came out of my background as a lawyer for startups and as a co-founder of a startup myself.” @AmandaHeyman @LunarStartups “Those underestimated founders that we work with don’t always have informal networks to key service providers that startups need.” @AmandaHeyman @LunarStartups “They may not have an uncle who is a lawyer, or a neighbor who is a CFO, or a friend who is a software developer” @AmandaHeyman @LunarStartups “That’s my personal motto: Helping people do good better.” @DaniellejSteer @LunarStartups “I was hungry to get back to my program design roots.” @DaniellejSteer @LunarStartups “We have doubled down on the idea that the strength of someone’s social network is increasingly important.” @DaniellejSteer @LunarStartups “If you don’t come from a community of entrepreneurs, it’s hard to know where to start.” @DaniellejSteer @LunarStartups “I truly believe that entrepreneurs have the best eye for identifying innovation.” @DaniellejSteer @LunarStartups “We work hard to build a trusted, robust peer network.” @DaniellejSteer @LunarStartups “Gender diverse companies are 15% more likely to outperform the national industry median. And ethnically diverse companies are 35% more likely to outperform.” @DaniellejSteer @LunarStartups “We’re leaving money on the table, both from the investor’s perspective and from a...

Cohort Opportunity at Lunar Startups, with Amanda Heyman and Danielle Steer

Tony Loyd is a TEDx speaker, podcast host and the author of "Crazy Good Advice: 10 Lessons Learned from 150 Leading Social Entrepreneurs." He is a former Fortune 500 executive with extensive experience in strategic planning, talent management, and leadership development. Tony is the host of the podcast Social Entrepreneur where you can hear the stories of changemakers who are making an impact on the world.