Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social impact above profit?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 265 posts

Re: Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social impact above profit?

#161

Post by searchableguy »

minerjoe wrote: post #150

I gave up using Federal Reserve Notes, on principal, and have dedicated my life to improving a small ranching community. By limiting my use of money to less than $100 a month (hopefully soon $0), I've had to build connections with human beings that would have not been possible otherwise. It was really eye opening to realize that the universe wants to play and it will help me in the strangest ways. I've set up a commu…

Please record this and write about in a wiki unless you have done that already.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social impact above profit?

#162

Post by yboris »

Very related: Founders Pledge

Founders Pledge is a charitable initiative, where entrepreneurs make a commitment to donate at least 2% of their personal proceeds to charity when they sell their business. Inspired by effective altruism, the mission of Founders Pledge is to "empower entrepreneurs to do immense good"

https://founderspledge.com/

Re: Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social impact above profit?

#163

Post by octodog »

O_H_E wrote: post #149
User23 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know a fully for-profit company who claims they are a social enterprise just because their main client base is registered charities. Cynical me thinks that for-profit companies primarily work to benefit their executives and shareholders. Non-profit companies primary work to benefit their executives alone. How is this better? My source is overhead conversations in bars in Seattle where I heard Gates Foundation exe…

> where I heard Gates Foundation... Oh, come on, that was one of the few places I semi-idealize as ethical and "clean". Humans will be humans I guess...

If the source is a comment on HN from someone who says they overheard it in a bar then I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social impact above profit?

#164

Post by searchableguy »

gmenegatti wrote: post #91
thestepafter wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like this approach. I am in the middle of building a process like this in another country. Would you be willing to discuss your process in more detail with me? My email is in my profile. Thank you for doing good in this world.

Absolutely. I will e-mail you.

I would like to hear about this too.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social impact above profit?

#165

Post by yoaviram »

I've worked in technology my whole professional life, founded startup companies and most recently run a London based digital agency. About 3 years ago I started asking myself if this whole Internet project that I've been a part of for so long is a net positive or a net negative in terms of our quality of life. I didn't like the answers I was giving myself and so decided to devote my time to digital activism.

In 2018 I co-founded https://YourDigitalRights.org, a free and open source service which helps you regain control of your online privacy by instructing organizations to send you a copy of, or delete the personal information that they have on you. The service automates the process of filing data access and deletion (right to be forgotten) requests.

We have a few other projects in the pipeline. We're now in the process of registering as a charitable organization in the UK, although that has proven far more difficult then we expected (our initial application was rejected on the grounds that privacy is not a right and therefore if that's what we're promoting it is a political cause, which is not permitted for a charity).

I also moved with my family to the countryside in Italy where together with my wife and some friends we're starting an alternative school: https://shadesofgreen.school/

Here's a recent interview I gave if you'd like to read more: https://thriveglobal.com/stories/yoav-aviram/

Feel free to email me through the address at https://YourDigitalRights.org if you'd like to chat.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social impact above profit?

#166

Post by dftt »

jrmg wrote: post #72
jungletime wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry if this hurt your feelings. You're one of the good people, doing great work. From reading "How to Win Friends..." I learned the importance to make people feel important. Sorry if I didn't do that in this case. My acumen is smaller. I apologize for any triggering. I was just poking fun at tech companies, funding not so well thought out positions. To answer your question, its currently one of the stated goals of…

“Dismantle the nuclear family” ... “currently one of the stated goals of BLM” This is patent nonsense. Why would you ever believe that’s the goal of any widely supported organization? What happened to Occam’s razor? The absurdity of this claim inspired me to “do my own research” on the matter. The notion that this is a “goal” seems to stem from this portion of the “what we believe” page here: https://blacklivesmatter…

...please don't feed the trolls. Flag, downvote, and move on.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social impact above profit?

#167

Post by searchableguy »

jefflombardjr wrote: post #85

Plug for [name redacted]! My buddy [name redacted] is killing it! He's now on a mission to transform the landscape of the city and turn often neglected patches of grass into thriving microecosystems. [link redacted] Been an incredibly positive response so far, if anyone is interested in starting something similar we've discussed open sourcing it so others can do in their own city.

I have always thought of a service like this one but it wouldn't be sustainable where I live due to lack of access to water if it grows. Centralized farming is arguably better suited given existing micro farms and outdated tooling.

But, this is a neat idea. I hope this grows big.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social impact above profit?

#168

Post by joe-collins »

talkingtab wrote: post #95

Nanocents. Although not complete, it is an attempt to allow micro payments on the internet. It allows you to pay one cent on the internet fairly efficiently - most of the money ends up with the payee. This is not a single site payment thing, you can pay one cent (or more) at any site accepting nanocents. While this may not seem especially important, it provides a way for responsible sites and services to avoid using…

The second coming of Project Xanadu.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social impact above profit?

#169

Post by searchableguy »

mawise wrote: post #134

I'm trying to help people host their own websites instead of trusting their social data to big tech. It started as an open source blogging system, but I think it takes a hosted option to be sufficiently accessible. Still a very new project: https://simpleblogs.org/

Major problem is support and management. Hosting can be automated to a degree and has been by many projects. Some open source software charge one time setup fee for their automated DO/scaleway/cloud install button.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social impact above profit?

#170

Post by dvt »

gwenzek wrote: post #148
dvt wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just wondering, how do you vet the people that apply? I can imagine a lot of people would love to "earn" a free 2k a month and would happily play along doing the bare minimum amount of work required. I think people that never worked in the public sector, particularly in something like social services, overestimate the goodness (for the lack of a better word) of average people. People that do this usually come from…

I think your wrong about the "all time high social mobility" my understanding is that the peak was reach 40 years ago. I'm currently reading Thomas Piketty on the subject

40 years ago, most of Eastern Europe was under North Korea-like Communism, China was still enforcing the one-child policy, and South Africa was still under Apartheid. Not to mention the looming fear of nuclear annihilation. I’m not sure how 40 years ago, we were better off.

But I’ll look into Thomas Piketty.

Post reply on HN