Chris Bliss Answers on Social Entrepreneurship

Thanks, essentially, we will be selling an women shoes toms electronics related product, and giving the cost of manufacturing to a cause. So if it costs $10 to make, sell it for $40 and give away $10 for a net profit of $20. I want to be able to call it something where customers will be able to quickly understand our financial structure, like "1 for 1, Simple, short, straight to the point.

Excellent question – unfortunately, there no clear or obvious answer. It also depends on discount toms who you asking. Investors, academics, entrepeneurs would all (probably) give different answers.

From my perspective, "normal" entrepreneurs are deemed successful by relatively narrow criteria: number of users, amount raised, profit, market share, exit size, etc. Social entrepreneurs face those same metrics, with the added difficulty of measuring their company social impact. A successful toms red shoes social entrepreneur would build a profitable self-sustaining company that also accomplished predefined social goals.

Measuring those goals – and defining whether or not they successfully met – is an imprecise and subjective science. There certainly no standard for measuring them (though B-Corps and other social certifications are trying to change that).

To go a step further, it should also be noted that measuring any kind of social impact is notoriously difficult. Take TOMS shoes for example. They (ostensibly) a social enterprise, but how do we know that donating shoes is creating meaningful change? TOMS points to the number of children it has given footwear to as a meaningful metric, but it really not. Are those children better off than children in those regions who didn receive shoes? Is providing shoes the best use of TOMS money and resources? Are they accomplishing anything? We don know the answers to those questions just by measuring the number of children served – thus we. (more)Loading.

B Corporation: Have there been any B corp startups to receive seed/angel investment?

The following was copied from a FAQ that B Labs sent me when I asked them directly about investment:

Yes. Method, Seventh Generation, ShoreBank, and IceStone). In addition, there are over 20 financial services companies which themselves have become Certified B Corps, including a regulated commercial bank (ShoreBank) and several private equity firms (TBL Capital, Mindful Investors, Good Capital, Agora Partnerships, IGNIA Partners, Partnership Capital Toms Shoes For Men Growth, City Light Capital)

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