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Your Customers Aren’t Data Points: How Social Enterprises Can Avoid Three Impact Investor Red Flags
Villgro President PR Ganapathy has met with hundreds of early-stage social entrepreneurs – and he's noticed that they keep making the same mistakes when seeking impact investing. As part of NextBillion's “Survival Guide for Raising Capital” series, Ganapathy shares three essential tips to help entrepreneurs avoid some common red flags when pitching impact investors.
- Categories
- Investing, Social Enterprise
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Established Social Enterprises: Have You Outgrown Business Accelerators?
Before joining established social enterprise TaroWorks as its CEO, Brent Chism spent two years earning an MBA degree and worked at three tech startups. So when a friend suggested he enroll in a business accelerator, Chism scoffed: "Did I really need to go back to school to learn how to raise the investment capital needed to fuel growth? Hadn’t I checked that box already?" Chism admits it was partly his ego talking; with some new research on their benefits, he advises business leaders not to overlook the benefits of accelerators.
- Categories
- Impact Assessment, Social Enterprise
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The Secret to Social Business Scale? An Overlooked Need in Moving Past the Startup Phase
How can social entrepreneurs move from the startup phase into the growth phase? Whatever the focus of their business, entrepreneurs have to build capacity to benefit and employ more people as they scale – and this requires a unique set of skills. Carola Schwank at Siemens Stiftung Foundation discusses the crucial but often overlooked need of organizational development in social business, and describes how the foundation is helping entrepreneurs address it.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
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Five Series in Social Business: Announcing NextBillion’s 2018 Editorial Calendar
In 2017, NextBillion organized our content around 12 monthly themes - in 2018, we’re taking a slightly different approach. We’ll still publish special series around topics of interest to our readers, but these series will be more tightly focused, and they'll continue throughout the year. Check out the five themes we'll be exploring alongside our broader social business coverage – and learn how you can contribute.
- Categories
- NextBillion Originals, Social Enterprise, Technology
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There’s No App to Fix Farming – A Lifelong Smallholder Shares What Social Business is Getting Wrong
When it comes to farming, the social business world is getting it all wrong, says Gaita Kariuki, a lifelong smallholder and CEO of Selina Wamucii, a Kenya-based fresh produce startup. From overselling the impact of off-grid solar and access to loans, to underestimating the importance of middlemen, he says much of the social business sector's approach to agriculture makes little sense to smallholders.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Social Enterprise
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On Camera at SOCAP17: Eight Video Interviews with Leaders in Social Business and Impact Investing
We interviewed eight thought leaders at SOCAP17, including investors, entrepreneurs and other influencers, on Facebook Live. The discussions covered a broad range of issues important to the social business and investing space. If you missed the conference, or if you have an interest in these sectors, these Q&As are essential viewing.
- Categories
- Investing, NextBillion Originals, Social Enterprise
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‘Ready, Steady, Scale!’: A Practical Tool to Assess Your Social Business
To scale in base-of-the-pyramid markets, social ventures need to learn to operate and grow in complex, uncertain and resource-limited markets, and become highly adaptive to market and social context. That's why the MIT Practical Impact Alliance developed "Ready, Steady, Scale!" It's a guide to help inclusive business practitioners better understand their organization’s readiness for scale and to clearly identify opportunities for improvement.
- Categories
- Social Enterprise
- Tags
- academia, scale, social enterprise
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Three Social Business Lessons from Detroit’s ‘Grassroots Entrepreneurs’
The self-determination that characterizes many Detroit entrepreneurs is a powerful paradigm for emerging markets, say authors Amy Gillett and Nathan Rauh-Bieri, and would-be providers of social entrepreneurship interventions should note a lesson learned: Make sure what you are offering is requested by the community, customized for the community and implemented with the community.
- Categories
- Education, Social Enterprise
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