April 14, 2008 at 14:23“Social startups” will be grown in incubators
Among modern web startups, a new trend has emerged. Instead of pure monetization and specific business models, they are trying to embody a certain social mission. Influenced by such financially super-successful, but formally non-profit organizations such as Mozilla and TechSoup, entrepreneurs of the new wave also want to create some socially significant projects that will be in demand by society and bring real benefits to people. And money, they say, will themselves come as a by-product of life. The NY Times writes about this new phenomenon .
This phenomenon is particularly evident in the technology industry. It is here that formally non-profit organizations of a new type appear, which at the same time are not dependent on charitable donations and successfully earn money themselves. The Mozilla Foundation and TechSoup are two of the prime examples. Each of them earns more than $ 50 million a year and pays the salary of more than a hundred employees. In appearance, these are typical commercial corporations.
In addition to the two above, there are hundreds of smaller non-profit structures that occupy a certain market share and have a stable income from the sale of services. This is the Internet Archive (indexing of information), and legal groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (legal services), and many others.
In the spirit of the new era, the first ones appeared in Silicon Valley.incubators for the so-called "social startups". True, they are unlikely to rely on venture capital investments, because in principle they do not set the goal of earning billions of dollars. They limit themselves to a minimum profit sufficient to support the project and feed its founders.
This phenomenon is particularly evident in the technology industry. It is here that formally non-profit organizations of a new type appear, which at the same time are not dependent on charitable donations and successfully earn money themselves. The Mozilla Foundation and TechSoup are two of the prime examples. Each of them earns more than $ 50 million a year and pays the salary of more than a hundred employees. In appearance, these are typical commercial corporations.
In addition to the two above, there are hundreds of smaller non-profit structures that occupy a certain market share and have a stable income from the sale of services. This is the Internet Archive (indexing of information), and legal groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (legal services), and many others.
In the spirit of the new era, the first ones appeared in Silicon Valley.incubators for the so-called "social startups". True, they are unlikely to rely on venture capital investments, because in principle they do not set the goal of earning billions of dollars. They limit themselves to a minimum profit sufficient to support the project and feed its founders.