A Number for Reflection
Stories are usually comprised solely of words, but often numbers have their own wonderful tales embedded within. In this case, the number is 25,000 and the story is much larger than these five digits would suggest.
Earlier this week we broke the $25,000 mark on funds raised by ventures on our site. I’ll be honest, with our heads down, constantly focusing on how we can improve and keep building our site, we have a tendency to be much more forward-looking than reflective. But when we saw the $25,000 figure, it caused us to take a moment to think about what this means for both our site as well as our ventures. Admittedly, there’s a fondness for nice, round numbers that’s a bit arbitrary, but the figure symbolizes the desire that people have to support amazing social good initiatives. This $25,000 is spread across a number of different cause areas and geographies, and emanate from donations as small as $3 and as large as $2,000. But what they all have in common is their impact in enabling social innovation to take place.
And so with that allow us to thank you for being a part of our first $25,000. It’s a testament to the incredible ventures on our site that are doing such inspiring work and that people like you believe in the visions for social good that they present. We can’t wait to celebrate the next nice, round number with you all — and after all, we’re always looking to the future, and the more numbers there are, the more grand the future stories will be!
Two Huge Leaps
Within 24 hours I made two pretty big leaps: one metaphorical, one quite literal.
On Friday I made the commitment to leave my full-time job to focus all of my energy on StartSomeGood. The next morning, I was 11,000 feet in the air jumping out of a plane, my first time ever skydiving.
On Friday, the door closed on my previous position — as a project manager for non-profits — at an absolutely wonderful organization, PICnet. On Saturday, the door of the plane flung open, and I made my way to the edge.
On Friday, I received well-wishes from my co-workers as I made the transition from working two jobs to one. On Saturday, I gave the thumbs up to the pilot, indicating I was ready to make my jump from the plane.
On Friday, I turned away, leaving my previous office, knowing that from here forward all of my energy, attention and focus would be channeled towards StartSomeGood. On Saturday, I hurled my body through the air, my cheeks flapping in the wind, doing a free-fall for a good number of seconds before the parachute was pulled and we gently glided down to the Earth below.
Making the jump out of the airplane was nothing if not a leap of faith: it meant trusting my life to the combination of a man whom I had just met 15 minutes ago, and a big piece of cloth. Making the jump to full-time work on StartSomeGood is also, in many ways, a leap of faith. But I do so bolstered by a ridiculously talented and passionate team around me, and the belief that we can help social impact initiatives do good in the world.
While the direction for skydiving was readily apparent — straight down until we hit the ground — the path for starting a social enterprise is far less delineated. We will no doubt take a route that has unexpected turns and lots of ups and downs, but the goal is clear as can be: to build a platform to empower people to become social innovators.
The decision to focus on StartSomeGood full-time was one that built throughout the two months that our site has now been live, and was a wonderful feedback loop oscillating among necessity, inspiration and motivation.
It’s become increasingly clear that to really make a difference with StartSomeGood, it is impossible to do so with both of the co-founders balancing other full-time jobs. Both of us are dreamers with no shortage of big ideas generated, but to actually implement them takes time and focus which is nearly impossible while spending 50 hours per week on another gig.
It’s not just necessity though. Back in February I had the honor of attending the StartingBloc social innovation summit in Los Angeles, where I met 90 other people dedicating their lives to improving the world. There, one the speakers, Rafe Furst, gave a passionate talk about “jumping off the ledge” and going 100% into whatever it was we wanted to do in order to make a difference. I like to think that I took Rafe’s advice to heart (and hopefully I get some extra credit for the fact that my ledge was over 2 miles up in the sky)!
Similarly, the motivation to keep pushing and building StartSomeGood comes to me daily as new ventures find success in starting their own good on our site. I remember speaking with Jack McDermott of Balbus Speech back when StartSomeGood was little more than an idea and a few lines of code, and thinking that he is exactly the type of person I want to empower with the site. So to fast-forward 7 weeks and find that he leveraged our platform to successfully raise the capital he needs to launch his social enterprise is wonderfully motivating —especially knowing that there are many more Jacks out there with brilliant ideas waiting to come to life. At the same time, I’ve been equally inspired by the community that is building around StartSomeGood. From our mobilizers who support us from various corners of the world, to the people that have written such supportive blog posts and notes of encouragement, to our team who has forgone a good amount of sleep to make this happen. StartSomeGood is without a doubt one of the most exciting things I’ve ever been a part of in my life, and I’m so thankful to everyone for their role in bringing us to where we are today.
24 hours. Two leaps of faith. Only one of these huge jumps comes with a parachute, but I’m even more excited about the metaphorical jump than the literal one. Both are scary. Both are exhilarating. And I can’t wait for what’s next.
We Launched!
Don’t you wish there were some button you could press when a website is ready to go live? Some big red button you press that says “launch” at which point the html magically scrambles into place and a shiny new site arrives on the world wide web? Well, in real life it’s more like editing some IP settings and DNS configurations, but the feeling of going live to the world, with or without a magic button, is still incredibly exciting. But let’s take a step back to see how StartSomeGood came to be. I met our three engineers while we were undergrads at UCLA. We bonded while camping out for the best seats in the house for UCLA basketball games, braving those harsh, harsh LA winters (hey sometimes, with wind, it got below 50 degrees!), and connecting over games of ultimate frisbee, cards or, most likely, just chatting for hours on end. I then met my co-founder Tom while we were at Ashoka. I, a part-time intern, he a gregarious Australian dude who sat on a big bouncy ball. We connected over our passion for technology to drive social change and when I began laying the initial groundwork for StartSomeGood, I knew Tom was the guy I wanted by my side building it. Like a high school freshman getting up the nerve to ask out a senior girl — or perhaps the college basketball coach trying to convince a star recruit to come to his campus — I approached Tom with the idea, and from the moment we started talking, I knew that we would make it happen. That was October, 2010. In the few months since, we’ve been hard at work coding, creating, conference calling, and (over) caffeinating. The result is the site that is now home to more than a dozen amazing ventures aimed at improving the world. And I couldn’t be prouder of my teammates for taking an abstract idea and making it a reality. In the days to come we’ll tell you more about what we’re up to with StartSomeGood, but for now I just want to say thank you for being a part of our journey. I know I won’t forget the excitement of our launch . Even if I didn’t get to press that magic red button. -Alex. Co-Founder, StartSomeGood
