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

Re:Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social... by tommaitland on Saturday August 15, 2020 @10:29AM (#24169120)

I co-founded Raisely, we’re a social enterprise. Impact is baked into our constitution, we report on it before profit, we restrict who can use our SaaS and we’re a bcorp. I wouldn’t call it “riding a wave” or just “talk” - it’s just genuine global citizenship.

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Re:Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social... by peridotoak on Saturday August 15, 2020 @10:41AM (#24169210)

I've just checked your site out, I really like that you offer core services for free and then up-sell on marginal services!

I'm curious -- who do you report the impact to, and how?

Is there a framework in how you went about pricing to balance the profit-motive and the impact-motive?

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Re:Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social... by tommaitland on Saturday August 15, 2020 @10:46AM (#24169245)

There isn’t much around to govern social enterprises, so we don’t have much of a framework.

We report impact regularly internally (it’s in dashboards the whole team has access to) and through the B-Corp certification we get assessed in detail every few years. Our staff hold us to account, more than our customers or the law.

For us we found a mechanism where benefit and profit are aligned, and I think most good social enterprises have done the same. That’s to say that the more impact we have, the healthier we are on classic business metrics.

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Re:Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social... by _oliverking on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @04:28PM (#24215946)

Can you tell me a little more about the mechanism you found? I'm understanding it as your staff holding to you account -- how do these conversations typically go?

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Re:Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social... by elliekelly on Saturday August 15, 2020 @10:39AM (#24169191)

Have you taken any investors? If so was the bcorp an issue?

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Re:Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social... by tommaitland on Saturday August 15, 2020 @10:47AM (#24169254)

No haven’t raised yet (haven’t needed to), but have spoken to VCs. Being a bcorp hasn’t ever been mentioned as an issue.

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