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

221–230 of 265 posts

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

#221

Post by tttp »

songzme wrote: post #98

2016 - While working as an engineer at Google, I decided to start a free coding bootcamp on the side. I believed I could teach anyone how to become a software engineer so I made a public post asking if anyone is interested in learning how to code and about 30 people showed up at my house. While I was at work in Mountain View, 30 people strangers used my house as a coding bootcamp. 2017 - 30 students were hard to mana…

Really nice!

"After completing our curriculum, you will gain access to our internal code repository that powers c0d3.com"

Out of curiosity, why aren't you opensourcing the code? That would make it easier for your students to showcase their contributions and how they communicate.

My personal experience when I was a gsoc admin was that it was hard to get the students stick around after the end of the summer, do you manage and have some tips to share?

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

#224

Post by pkphilip »

searchableguy wrote: post #213
pkphilip wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We work with farmers in India. There is data on what is being grown in various areas but not fine grained enough or updated often enough for our purposes. If you are in the US the reality of farming is very different there vs-a-vie the situation in India.

I live in India. > There is data on what is being grown in various areas but not fine grained enough or updated often enough for our purposes. Right? Do you think farmers would self report that data in exchange of getting real time data from other farms? Would they care about recommendation on what to grow and pricing? There are lot of groups for techies online and self reporting channels but I haven't found any good…

It would be very difficult to get farmers to self-report anything unless what they get in return is quite tangible. I am not familiar with any network/system that does this effectively in India and at scale.

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

#226

Post by gyvastis »

alexpetralia wrote: post #176
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…

I would love to read more about this.

I second this!

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

#227

Post by jwally »

croissants wrote: post #198
jwally wrote: post #124

I built a site (addictionlocker.com) which is a password manager that makes you donate to charity to get your passwords back. I built it because everytime I try to lock myself out of twitter, et al, I just unlock whatever I set up because I know the password. Originally, I was going to take a percentage of the profit; but now want to see all of it go to charity. What sucks is I think its a really solid idea; benefits…

I like this idea, but both credit card info and password is a big trust ask for what looks like a fairly random website.

Do you think it would help if it was open sourced?

Credit card info is handled by square who Iframes all user inputs so I can’t see it.

Password to unlock the pw you need a key, nonce, encrypted message. My server only ever sees the nonce and message. The user only ever has all 3. Even the bookmarks you create use hash-bangs which don’t go over the wire.

The hard part for me is conveying all of that without a wall o’text.

Maybe I can reach out to givewell, and get their thoughts. They’d bless it maybe?

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

#228

Post by gmenegatti »

aprdm wrote: post #218
gmenegatti wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. This is true. There are some people with strong opinions about what we do, but the interesting part is that none of these people were part of our group before, they just criticize what they think we do, as they cannot criticize what we really do. Anyway, we respect different opinions, but we are really focused on hearing the opinions of the people we already have inside our group, because they are the ones that…

The github issue I posted has comments from employee reviews on glassdoor. That said I wish you the best! It is really cool that you think of your business the way you do. I just find it very important to show to the HN community how other people feel about your business as well.

Unfortunately Glassdoor is a place where any random person can comment things, not necessarily real ex-members.

Only a few of the reviews we have at Glassdoor are real, the rest comes from internet haters. Even so, if you look a the numbers, you will see that even people that criticize us, 74% recommend the company to a friend.

It’s obvious that we have challenges, as any company, but apparently the benefits are higher than them.

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

#229

Post by john4534243 »

gamerDude wrote: post #14

I'm working on a company to create a universal basic income utilizing technology instead of financial instruments. Doing that through building homes that run on renewable energy, grow their own food and are cheap to make. The first prototype house should be done this year!

> "..to create a universal basic income utilizing technology instead of financial instruments."

Wow. Just mind blowing. So much power in those few words. The best quote i have come across in probably a decade.

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

#230

Post by peter_d_sherman »

glaive123 wrote: post #211
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…

> I've set up a community computer lab entirely based on e-waste collected for free that has a print-shop, network, big screens, projectors, electronics lab, etc and organized a few hackathons to see what services we can offer to the community. This is brilliant, why don't community organizations spring up all over to do this?

I concur entirely, and I second this! This is brilliant!

Hey, if you don't mind my asking, where is this community computer lab located?

I wouldn't mind stopping by someday if I was in the area -- and I'm sure other HN readers who are local to you wouldn't mind stopping by either!

Post reply on HN