Re:Dawn of the Digital Sweatshop
by rdl on Wednesday August 01, 2012 @06:44PM
(#4326181)
Pretty awesome that YC will fund businesses which both have a commercial goal and a social agenda. IMO that's more useful than pg et al donating a percentage of their carry to charity (although that's great too). Of course, the businesses have to make sense commercially as well, but MobileWorks doesn't seem to have a problem with that.
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Re:Dawn of the Digital Sweatshop
by anandkulkarni on Wednesday August 01, 2012 @07:21PM
(#4326329)
I expect they're used to this. Successful businesses in YC often have hugely positive social outcomes even if it's not part of their initial value proposition: Airbnb has helped folks earn enough to avoid losing their homes, Ridejoy reduces atmospheric pollution, etc.
For us, it was fortunate that the commercial opportunity was directly linked with our social mission -- doing the right thing by workers makes more business sense in crowdsourcing than treating people anonymously and paying them lousy wages.