If you are currently an RSS subscriber, there’s nothing additional you need to do, as I’ve changed the feed URL from the back-end. You’re good to go!

If you want to reach the new SocentVC.com links to the posts I originally posted on this blog, please click below:

• Welcome!
• The GIIN and the Importance of Ecosystems
• Beyond Profit Magazine
• Understanding New Technologies
• Chrome OS, A Game Changer?
• Hydros Bottle. Clean Water. Anywhere. Anytime.
• Impact Investing: A Call to Action
• A New Shopping Model, Just in Time for Black Friday
• Flashback to Xanga
• VC and Entrepreneur Demographic Disparities

Even though I’ve only been more closely involved in the VC and startup arena for a short while, another disparity seems to be present as well–that of race. It seems that almost all the bios I run across on VC websites seem to portray partners that are either white or Asian (both East and South), with few other races/ethnicities present.

And even for entrepreneurs, it seems like most of the ones I run across (at least on the East Coast) seem to be similar. Sure, there are plenty of South Asian programming and IT guys, and maybe a few East Asians as well, but it seems as if African-American and Hispanic entrepreneurs are not nearly as well-represented.

Now, before people start calling me names, let me just admit that 1) I know I am new to the space, and 2) I am no sociologist. So my observations are just that of the layman, not an expert or industry veteran. With that said, a blog entry I read recently on the Stanford Social Innovation Review’s website did confirm that I was not only only one to have thoughts about these things. (The SSIR is specifically focused on the area of social entrepreneurship, but I’d guess that the same likely applies for regular entrepreneurs too).  Marcia Stepanek, founding editor-in-chief of Contribute Media, considers the following argument: “Unless you’re a Caucasian and unless you’re an MBA, it’s tougher to get support for your good work trying to start a social enterprise.”

Furthermore, one of the arguments in the social entrepreneurship world is that those who actually “understand” the developing world are being left out of the startup picture. They’re not being included in the process of social change. In other words, it seems as if companies, organizations, and individuals aren’t “willing to really get their hands truly dirty side-by-side with us (those people at the bottom of the pyramid)… It’s always the so-called academics and ‘successful’ business persons who dictate terms and conditions. Too few of us will ever be helped by the continued exclusion, but who else knows the conditions [at the bottom of the pyramid] better than the people who live there?”

And if it is true in the social VC world (as it is in the traditional VC world) that many venture capitalists got into the game originally as entrepreneurs themselves, can we expect diversity at the VC level if it is arguably lacking at the entrepreneur level? What are your thoughts? Please comment!

Anyways, this friend wrote about the “6 Weird Things About Me” post she had made in February 2007 and has tagged me to do the same, so here goes! My latent inner high-schooler reveals itself.

I hate brake dust with a passion. You know, that coating of black gunk that builds up on the wheels of your car after a while? Yeah, that stuff drives me NUTS. There’s something I love about a car with nice shiny wheels and glossy black tires, even if we ain’t talkin’ ’bout SS’s on 26s. (Name that song).

People say I dress like an old man. While my standard fare is jeans/chinos with a polo, my penchant for seersucker,  tweed, bowties, etc. strikes some as a bit quaint. However, I counter by citing the example of Indiana Jones. Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp also support my case: “Yet there is a growing trend for all things grandfatherly that has been embraced by clothes-purchasing twenty- and thirtysomethings, not to mention style gurus such as Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp.”

But now that you’ve gotten used to comparison shopping online, the reality of how clueless you are price-wise when shopping at brick-and-mortar stores really sets in. Many times, it’s difficult to obtain prices, and even when you can, you still have to fumble through multiple catalogs or call the store directly for the latest price. Calling 20 stores just to do some price-checking is a complete waste of time, right?

Jack Abraham, a 2008 graduate of Penn’s Wharton undergraduate program, thought so too, leading him to create Milo.com. “Abraham said he started the site out of frustration. ‘I do the majority of my shopping locally, and it’s hard to figure out what’s available without driving to the stores or calling them.’”

Now, you can check prices at some 42,000 stores across the United States, and also get descriptions, reviews, and information about whether or not a certain item is currently in stock. Just in time for Black Friday!

For more info, go to the New York Times article, which covered Milo.com’s fundraising announcement from Tuesday. Milo.com raised $4 million in Series A funding from True Ventures, as well as notable angels such as Ron Conway. And of course, start checking out Milo.com to make your shopping easier.

Click for a two-page snapshot, 16-page executive summary, or the full 86-page report.

Phases of Industry Evolution
I’ll let the links above do the additional explaining, but I do want to mention at least one of the main points made in the Monitor report, which is related to what I wrote about in terms of the necessity of an “ecosystem” for impact investing. The Monitor graphic below (click to enlarge)  summarizes perfectly the road ahead for impact investing, and as you can see, we are just beginning the “Marketplace Building” stage, or “Ecosystem Building stage,” if you will. The “centers of activity” and “infrastructure” shown below are a perfect parallel to Jeff Bussgang’s ingredients for vibrant venture capital ecosystems.
The next 10 years may very well be a “make or break” period for impact investing. “Will the promise of this moment be realized, making this new domain a major complementary force for providing the capital, talent and creativity needed to address pressing social and environmental challenges? Or will it remain a small, disorganized, underleveraged niche for years or even decades to come?”

Get Involved!
If you do believe, as I do, that impact investing can indeed become a major complementary force for change, then get involved! Email Rockefeller Foundation or the GIIN, or one of the scores of other related organizations mentioned in the Monitor Institute report, and see if you can do something! Contribute however you can towards the following five Priority Initiatives:

• Create industry-defining funds that can serve as beacons for how to address specific social or environmental issues
• Place substantial, risk-taking capital in catalytic finance structures
• Set industry standards for social measurement
• Lobby for specific policy/regulatory change
• Develop an impact investing network

“Concrete action will be required to build the marketplace that can address today’s challenges and tomorrow’s risks.”

All graphics are the work of Monitor Institute, used under Creative Commons license.

Hydros Bottle  started off as an effort to “sustainably provide purified water to increasingly mobile, urban people in the developing world.” But as they discovered in the process of their initial research, the issue of low-quality water was one not limited to just developing countries. Hydros explains, “Many areas of the United States are afflicted with poor quality public tap water that is often laced with dangerous levels of heavy metals and toxins (Find out what is in your water). As a result, we decided first to focus on releasing Hydros Bottle right here at home.”

Many of you may have used filters such as Brita before, but the Hydros Bottle does the pitcher filters one better. No, wait… two better. In addition to using activated carbon filtration like Brita, Hydros Bottle also features a proprietary Inn-Lay technology to remove chemicals from your water. Furthermore, the Hydros Bottle is portable. Essentially, what you get is a bottle with a built-in filter, making it unnecessary to have a big clunky pitcher with you if you’re looking for filtered water. In the Philadelphia airport but don’t want to pay airport prices for bottled water nor drink Philly tap water? Just pull out your Hydros Bottle and fill ‘er up. The water simply flows through the built-in filter, and mere seconds later, you have clean filtered water to drink.

Worried about nasty odor-causing bacteria building up inside your Hydros Bottle? Not to worry. These bottles feature IonArmour microbial protection, which inhibits the growth of bacteria, mold, and other microbes.

To purchase one of these bottles, click here to get started. You’ll be buying a product that provides you safer and better-tasting water, helps the environment by avoiding wasteful consumption of plastic disposable bottles, and promotes a social mission of increasing global access to potable water. Also, enter the code “OperationHydros” to get free shipping and free filters for one year with your order.

If you’d like to read more about Hydros Bottle, check out Springwise’s recent feature from last Wednesday or visit Hydros Bottle’s FAQ page.

The thing about Chrome OS is that essentially, you essentially don’t have desktop apps anymore. The Chrome OS will operate essentially like a browser; specifically, Google’s Chrome browser. To boil it down:

In Chrome OS every application is a web application. There are no native applications. That gives us simplicity. It’s just a browser with a few modifications. And all data is Chrome OS is in the cloud. This is key, we want all of personal computing to work this way. If you lose your machine, you just get a new one, and it works.

Sounds pretty groundbreaking, if you ask me! Although… as of this point in time, I don’t feel like this model is going to be applicable to full-performance laptops and desktops, or enterprise-level setups, which are rather complex and require compatibility with existing hardware and software. What does sound like a huge opportunity, however, is in the netbook market, which I’ve been reading a lot about lately since I’ve been searching for one myself.

The Netbook Factor
Why might Chrome OS be a game changer for netbooks? First of all, because netbooks are by nature lower-performance machines, a super-light operating system like Chrome OS won’t suffer in the way that Windows Vista or Windows 7 might. When you’re only working with an Intel Atom N270 or N280, having an operating system that runs perfectly on low performance specs is a godsend.

But wait, there’s more! Here’s the part that I find very interesting–TechCrunch claims that Chrome OS will drive netbook prices below the $199 mark. Nuts!! Netbook prices these days are already super-affordable, but have you ever wondered why netbook prices aren’t even lower? It’s because of the Microsoft tax! The what??? The Microsoft tax, alternatively known as the Windows tax, is the “small cost manufacturers pay for OEM licenses,” and the argument is that it may very will disappear basically disappear now that Chrome OS is available.

For manufacturers of netbooks, the fastest growing segment of the laptop market, this is a a double bonus. In one operating system, they get two boosts:

1. An OS that doesn’t move at the pace of a snail on slower netbook hardware, and
2. Emancipation from the Microsoft tax

PCMag says that nearly 38 million netbooks will be sold by the end of 2009. For 2010, an estimated 35 million netbooks will be sold. Now, Chrome OS won’t actually be shipped for maybe another year, so by that time, we might be talking about a market of 40 million. This is a not-insignificant amount of sales, so it should be interesting how everything shakes out. Has Google planted a ticking time bomb at Microsoft headquarters? We’ll see!

For those interested, here’s a super-simple video, one that even grandma can understand (My apologies if you are a tech-savvy grandma):

For those who want a preview of the actual Chrome OS user interface, go here:

Essentially, it addresses the issue of how we, as the “developed world,” should help the “developing world.” Now, many may take it as a given that we should indeed help those less fortunate than we are, but as Chris and others have cautioned before, we must be careful when we apply our own “developed world” thinking to others’ “developing world” situations. Are we really helping those we intend to help, or could we possibly be hurting them?

The Issue of Dependence
Case in point: The founder of Hope International, Jeff Rutt, took it as a given that helping the less fortunate was a good thing, and he expressed his compassion by making donations of food, clothing, and medical supplies to the city of Zaporozhye, Ukraine. However, a local Ukrainian pastor pulled him aside and told Jeff that his good-hearted efforts actually weren’t really helping because they were creating a culture of dependence instead of fostering autonomy and initiative, leading him into microfinance, where empowerment of those being helped is more likely to occur.

The Question of Need vs. Want
Another example of this interplay at work: Included in the investment thesis of many social venture funds (whether implicitly or explicitly) is the idea that the social entrepreneurs they are investing in should produce goods or services that actually help the developing world and are not ones simply targeted at base of the pyramid consumers that don’t really help the consumers. In other words, these funds keep in mind that the intent of investing in these entrepreneurs is not to create retailers for the purpose of developing a consumer culture like we have in the West, but rather partnering with entrepreneurs to effect social change. One company that exemplifies this is D.Light, whose mission is to “enable households without reliable electricity to attain the same quality of life as those with electricity. We will begin by replacing every kerosene lantern with clean, safe and bright light.” Their lights, which are solar-powered LEDs, provide sustainable power for those off the electricity grid by eliminating kerosene costs, and also increase safety by reducing the risks of devastating kerosene fires. Essentially, this would fall more into the “need” category rather than the “want” category.

Our Notions Regarding Standard of Living
Finally, one last example that references Chris from Hope International again. In his post, he talks about a trip he took with Hope to the Dominican Republic:

“I specifically remember a joyful little boy from my last trip to the Dominican Republic who was running around wearing nothing but a ratty, tattered t-shirt. His face was dirty, he had few possessions, but, in the midst, he was content.”

In other words, this example contradicts our “developed world” notion of increasing prosperity inevitably leading to decreased suffering, and that that poor living standards unequivocally result in terrible despair. Some may say that “they don’t know how good X or Y is because they’ve never experienced it,” but if there are those who are happy as they are, then should we still continue trying to “help” them? Or are we just leading them into a consumerist, planned obsolescence culture? Whatever the case is (and I don’t think anyone can really give a definite answer), I think that ultimately we should be careful of the implications of our actions, even though intentions may be good.

Final Thoughts
Sounds almost crazy, right? That helping may be detrimental? But I think it is important to remind ourselves not to fall into an imperialistic mentality or to delude ourselves with a “savior” complex. From the three examples I’ve mentioned above, I think we can draw three general principles in terms of guiding market-based approaches to alleviating poverty and other social problems. (I think some of these also apply outside of the market-based realm).

1. When we strive to help others through microfinance and social entrepreneurship, we should not create a culture or attitude of dependence.
2. When promoting goods and services to the developing world, we must strive not to force these products and services and those who do not need them. And furthermore, these products and services should ideally be ones that are either a) help generate income, b) help create cost savings (D.Light) or c) decrease risk of injury or disease (D.Light).  I have not included “increase standard of living” in this list, because of the importance of the next and last point.
3. At the end of the day, we need to understand the limitations of our developed-world notions of standard of living, prosperity, and happiness. While it is understood that starvation and disease and similar hardships are problems we want to eliminate, there comes a point at which defining the appropriate “standard of living” becomes a fruitless exercise, and trying to incessantly “raise the standard of living” may also be questionable. We should try and be careful not to create more problems while trying to solve existing ones.

Questions or comments? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Some of the services out there such as RSS readers seem to be ones that many people don’t take full advantage of or are even aware of, even though they’re extremely useful and user-friendly.  What RSS readers can do for you is to help you keep track of a large volume of blogs and postings in one easy-to-use interface. The one that I use, for example, is Google Reader, and assuming that you already have an account with Gmail or another Google app, signing up for Google Reader should take just a matter of seconds.

To assist people in understanding some of these new technologies, the folks at CommonCraft have put together videos that explain in “Simple English” how these technologies work and benefit you. Have you never used an RSS reader before to help simplify your blog-reading life? Watch the CommonCraft video below to get started! (If you do sign up for a reader, feel free to click on the big on the right hand side of this page to subscribe to my blog.)

Want to find easy-to-understand explanations about other tech subjects? CommonCraft has videos explaining Twitter, cloud computing, and much more.

It seems like they’ve been doing a pretty good job so far, and I’d like to point out an article that was of great interest to me. If you flip to page 16 of the online magazine, you’ll find an article titled “Impact Investing: Harnessing Capital Markets to Drive Development at Scale.” It was written by Mr. Antony Bugg-Levine, who current leads the Impact Investing Initiative at Rockefeller Foundation and was kind enough to send me an email about my post on GIIN, which was led by his Rockefeller team. Antony discusses various aspects of impact investing, including its roots and what it will take to ensure that impact investing does succeed as an industry. It also mentions some organizations that are at the intersection of venture capital and social entrepreneurship, like Gray Ghost Ventures. A special thanks to Steve Hardgrave at GGV for introducing me to social venture funds during my senior year of college.

Much of my initial learning in this area was due to articles like these, and I’d venture to say that this one is one of the most informative (yet easy-to-read) analyses of impact investing. So if you’d like to find out more about impact investing but are not sure where to begin, flip to page 16 of Beyond Profit’s inaugural issue and get started!