A social entrepreneur starts early

Last Friday, as I was driving back from a meeting, I heard just a couple of sentences on the radio before I turned it off to think (I still do that sometimes), but what I heard was something that stuck in my mind.  (If you're interested in the whole thing, I tracked it down to this talk on Forum, here it is: Silicon Valley Culture).  The part that stuck was that Valley entrepreneurs prioritize 'entrepreneurship, family, philanthropy', in that order.

It is definitely one of those statements that evokes a 'hmm...', a statement that would not resonate with everyone, but certainly reflects what we've seen with a lot of entrepreneurs, Gates being a notable example.  But what made me think about this was a meeting with someone who appears to be embodying the exact opposite in terms of focus.

A couple of days ago I had the opportunity to meet Joel Mwale, a young man with a strong entrepreneurial drive.  He's visiting here from South Africa (where he's attending the African Leadership Academy), his visit sponsored by his mentors Terry and Carolyn Gannon (retired, Silicon Valley entrepreneur/execs super-active in various social causes).  The Gannons believe that Joel would get a lot by meeting the many entrepreneurs and academic stars in the Valley and he's definitely making the most of his visit.  When we met, I heard about his journey from poverty in a small village in Kenya through school, where he was well on track to be under, or even 'un', educated, until a chance study tip from a classmate lit a fire in him and catapulted him to the top 10% of students in the country.  And Joel is fired up to be an entrepreneur.

Joel is not thinking of just getting rich himself and helping his family though.  Joel dreams of doing something to improve the education situation in Africa (though he's from Kenya, his scope is for the whole continent).  He's not thinking 'philanthropy' (after entrepreneurship and family, as in the Valley), he's thinking 'social enterprise' - and how he can use his drive, his smarts, his life, to make a difference. 


Joel has started working on his next venture and, as as a fellow edupreneur, had a deep conversation about the learning community platform provided by my startup.  He is one of the 10 winners of the Google Zeitgeist 2012 award for Young Minds for young people showcasing how they are making a positive impact on the world.  Amazingly, Joel's award was for an enterprise that he started a couple of years ago to bring safe, clean water to his village and is now employing over 30 people.  


Joel is not waiting to do well before he does good.  For him entrepreneurship is fully integrated with helping solve some of the basic problems impacting people's survival and growth.  And just to put it in all perspective, Joel hasn't celebrated his nineteenth birthday yet.

Top CEO trait: Stick-with-it-ness

It's been said before: what a startup needs is a CEO who doesn't give up just because the outlook is bleak.  I've covered this in a previous post about Pandora which was one of those companies that everyone expected to fade away but went public and is still going strong.

This applies to large companies too - what helps a shaky enterprise survive and succeed is a CEO that believes in its potential and digs in for the long haul to nurture its growth.  We know all about Jobs and Apple.  The story of Ariba is less well-known.  I was one of those who was surprised that Ariba was still around when I heard it was to be bought by SAP for $4.3 billion.  Today's article on Ariba story and CEO Robert Calderoni in the Merc News reminded me again why persistence is a virtue in CEOs.

Too many entrepreneurs think if you don't make it big fast you might as well get out ('go big, or go home').  That may be true for some companies/industries, but it is certainly not universal.  For sure it could be difficult to stay with a venture that doesn't produce enough revenue to pay the team, but that's why entrepreneurship is not for everyone, regardless of the prevailing hype.  True entrepreneurs stick with it as long as they can see there's potential in their vision - they bootstrap, moonlight, crowdfund, whatever they can do to keep the fire burning.  (For sure, Ariba didn't have to go ask Granny for funds, but they had the same problem - at a different scale - of staying afloat and re-tooling their business.)

The trait of determination is even more critical for social entrepreneurs.  All change is hard, and effecting social change definitely takes a patience, learning and perseverance.  The people who need to change the way they live, work, eat or learn may not be ready to do so just because you have this wonderful idea to make it all better, even if it costs nothing.  Behavioral change takes time, and may require many failed efforts before hitting a successful model, which means the company needs a CEO who's willing to stick with the vision and do what it takes.

In an earlier post I'd quoted Randy Komisar on entrepreneurs matching up to different breeds of dogs at different stages of a company's evolution.  One important breed got missed there - bulldog!

Fresh thinking

Yes, successful entrepreneurs are expected and encouraged to be dedicated, focused, even consumed by their ventures, 24/7. But they're also expected to be sharp, unfettered and creative thinkers capable of coming up with innovative solutions for the marketplace as well as more mundane issues like punching up your presentation.  Are there things we should/could be doing to keep the creative juices flowing? 

In my view, there's one simple directive to help keep the noggin fresh and peppy: get out.  In all possible ways.  Get out of your office (or your garage).  Get out some evenings to do something other than hanging out with your team in a bar over beer and chips.  Get out of reading the same old, same old, and mix up TechCrunch with the Economist or vice versa.  Get out of your chosen field and meet people in others, and if you're very much in the left brain world, make it a point to get to know folks in the arts.  Mostly, get out of your comfort zone and do something different fairly often.

Which brings up the obvious point, not all entrepreneurs think that they need to be creative - they'll leave it to the design guy or the marketing gal.  There are many entrepreneurs who believe they're done being creative as they came up with their business idea and now they should just focus on execution.  But execution draws on outside the box thinking too.

An example is a possible new market niche for us, an idea that came to me when I was sitting at the Startup Conference in Mountain View a few days ago with a friend who wanted to check it out (I attend one of these occasionally as part of my 'getting out').  Funnily enough, the keynote speaker, Dave McClure, started off by pretty much calling all the entrepreneurs there losers for attending a conference instead of being busy building their companies.  It is a totally valid point on how to use your time, or not.  These events may be worth attending if you're just thinking of starting a company, and want to know what others did (no live-streaming video of yourself - Justin Kan already did that.)  But my expectations are pretty much to hear something different and maybe meet someone I wouldn't have otherwise met - an unusual mental break for a few hours.  Best of all, it worked!

There's another hot new book being pitched to entrepreneurs - Jonah Lehrer's 'Imagine: How Creativity Works'. (Side note: seriously, how does one keep up with all the reading and still accomplish something?  Sure, it's part of keeping your brain fresh but your time is limited.  Realistically, the best one can do is to skim blogs to pick and choose the few books that resonate.)  Anyway, there's a listen-worthy interview with Lehrer on video here.  He provides a well-reasoned approach to creativity, offering some hope that creativity can be cultivated and you can keep it going even as you get older - you don't have to lose it. 

Choose to be more creative.  Shaking up the brain is good, but you need to care enough to want to zumba.