GoodCompany Ventures Office Hours
Posted on 02. Feb, 2011 by Garrett in 2010 Incubator, Blog, GoodCompany Founders, Noteworthy
With credit for the concept to First Round Capital, GoodCompany Ventures is excited to announce its own Office Hours program. We know that we can be hard to track down during the winter months when the incubator is not in session and we’d like to remedy that by announcing some dates, times and locations when the our founders will be available to meet with any and all who are interested in GCV, the incubator or social enterprise in general.
We’ll be announcing hours in additional cities as our travel schedule permits (New York, Austin and Mumbai are on the calendar), but home base for our Philadelphia Office hours will be at the site of the incubator on the University of the Arts campus. We’ll be camped out in Room 900 of Terra Hall at 211 S. Broad.
For the next couple months, we are scheduling the Office Hours from 5:00 to 7:30 on Thursday evenings, immediately prior to the workshops for creative entrepreneurs that GCV is producing with the Corzo Center. The first of these workshops is tomorrow, Thursday, February 3rd, featuring Alex Hillman of Indy Hall, speaking on “Simple Rules for a Simple Start-Up”. These workshops are open to the public and you can get more information and register to attend at the link at the bottom of this post.
Office Hours will be offered on the following dates:
Feb 3
Feb 17
Feb 24
March 10
March 24
March 31
If you’d like to come and meet with us, drop me a line at garrett@goodcompanyventures.org. We’ll book meetings in 20 minute increments, first come, first served and save the last half hour of each session for group discussion. If we are oversubscribed, I’ll be happy to stay and chat with folks after the workshop.
We’re looking forward to meeting you!
Register to attend the first Clinic for Creatives. Its free and our speaker is Dangerously Awesome.
GOOD COMPANY VENTURES ANNOUNCES DEADINE FOR APPLICATIONS
Posted on 07. May, 2010 by Garrett in 2010 Incubator
PRESS RELEASE: Philadelphia, PA – May 7, 2010 – GoodCompany Ventures is pleased to announce that they have selected three more companies to participate in the 2010 Social Impact Incubator. Five of the ten participants have now been confirmed and GoodCompany Ventures will close the application process as of Monday, May 10th.
The Social Impact Incubator selects entrepreneurs with innovative ideas for social impact and provides them intensive training and resources to develop a commercial model to implement and obtain funding to maximize their impact. For details on the Incubator and how to apply, visit www.goodcompanyventures.org.
The first two companies announced today represent the application of peer-to-peer transaction models to match individuals to social and science projects that engage their interests and resources.
Wish Upon A Hero (www.wishuponahero.com) is the world’s largest social helping website. It is designed to allow everyone the unique opportunity to post a wish as well as the extraordinary ability for anyone to be a hero by granting a wish. Members consist of individuals and businesses who are passionate about helping. Since it’s launch in late 2007, heroes have granted more than 54,000 wishes. Wishes range from baby bottles to refrigerators, from prosthetic eyes to kidney donations. No wish is too big; no hero is too small.
ScienceForCitizens (www.ScienceForCitizens.net) is a new website whose mission is to further the general public’s interest in and understanding of science by enabling lay people to participate in both science-related recreational activities and formal research projects. Part match-maker, part portal, part social network, ScienceForCitizens will encourage non-experts to find out about, discuss, and contribute to science by actually doing it. It will bring together the millions of amateur scientists in the world; the thousands of potential projects offered by researchers, organizations, and companies; and the resources, products, and services that enable people to pursue these activities.
Our third selection this week is adapting innovations in alternative energy to deliver healthcare and education services to populations who, due to geography, poverty or natural disaster have no access to power.
One Degree Solar (http://www.onedegreesolar.com/) is a supplier of solar energy and lighting products created specifically for resource-poor areas and developing countries. Responding to the widespread need for reliable, affordable and practical products, we have created easy-to-use, low-maintenance solutions for individuals, small businesses, and nonprofit organizations in developing countries and disaster relief zones. Founded by individuals with years of international development experience, One Degree Solar seeks to partner with governments and aid institutions, primarily to expand access to basic health and education services, thus improving quality of life in developing countries.
“These three companies exemplify GoodCompany Ventures support for entrepreneurs who are developing new models and new markets for social innovation,” said Garrett Melby, CEO of GoodCompany Ventures. “All three companies have demonstrated proof of concept as social projects and have realized that they have an opportunity to dramatically expand their reach and social impact by pursuing a commercially sustainable growth model. We look forward to helping them develop and fund such a model to maximize their potential for service. ”
Press Inquiries Contact:
Julianne Kornacki
Communications Director
GoodCompany Ventures
Julianne@goodcompanyventures.org
215.951.7200 x3002
About GoodCompany Ventures
A GoodCompany pursues both purpose and profit. GoodCompany Ventures is a nonprofit defined by the needs of the emerging social enterprise sector. The GCV Social Impact Incubator identifies entrepreneurs with innovative ideas for social impact and helps them implement these ideas with the strategies and resources of the venture capital community.
GOOD COMPANY VENTURES ANNOUNCES SELECTIONS FOR 2010 SOCIAL IMPACT INCUBATOR
Posted on 27. Apr, 2010 by Garrett in 2010 Incubator
PRESS RELEASE: Philadelphia, PA – April 21, 2010 – GoodCompany Ventures is pleased to announce the first two companies, one local and one from the U.K., selected to participate in the 2010 Social Impact Incubator.
The Social Impact Incubator selects entrepreneurs with innovative ideas for social impact and provides them intensive training and resources to develop a commercial model to implement and obtain funding to maximize their impact. GoodCompany Ventures is continuing to accept applications through May 10th and will announce participants on a rolling basis. For details on the Incubator and how to apply, visit www.goodcompanyventures.org.
The Urban Collective™ (http://urbancollectiveproject.org/) project is a youth music social enterprise that empowers young people aspiring to a career in the music industry to write, record and promote original music for independent release under expert professional mentoring. In addition, Urban Collective builds a recording studio in each partner community center to facilitate ongoing recordings and audio production training. Since its launch in London in 2004, more than 500 young artists across the UK have collaborated to produce several released albums, an award winning feature film, documentaries, music videos and dozens of live shows and music industry showcases. Urban Collective is now looking to launch an American Urban Collective in 2010 / 2011.
GoodCompany ventures is excited to help bring this proven social project for at-risk youth to Philadelphia and to work with the founders to develop a commercial framework to accelerate the development of Urban Collective sites in cities across the country.
GreenKonnect (http://greenkonnect.com/) is a community-powered search engine for the green building industry, connecting green builders with building products and materials. GreenKonnect allows industry professionals to save time and conserve resources by streamlining their building product research and acquisition processes.
GreenKonnect’s founder, Jameson Detweiller, is also the membership director of Philly StartUp Leaders and his well known for his service to Philadelphia’s entrepreneur community. GoodCompany Ventures is proud to have the opportunity to serve him and to provide a launch platform for his latest venture.
Both of these projects exemplify scalable strategies for delivering social impact through a potentially profitable business model. GoodCompany Ventures is excited about the quality of ideas and entrepreneurs that are applying to the second year of the incubator and looks forward to announcing additional selections in the coming weeks.
Press Inquiries Contact:
Julianne Kornacki
Communications Director
GoodCompany Ventures
Julianne@goodcompanyventures.org
215.951.7200 x3002
About GoodCompany Ventures
A GoodCompany pursues both purpose and profit. GoodCompany Ventures is a nonprofit defined by the needs of the emerging social enterprise sector. The GCV Social Impact Incubator identifies entrepreneurs with innovative ideas for social impact and helps them implement these ideas with the strategies and resources of the venture capital community.
2010 Incubator Application Process Update
Posted on 16. Apr, 2010 by Garrett in 2010 Incubator
Good news for applicants, we’ve decided to drop our requirement that applicants pay a processing fee. Our ambition is to keep the program free for participants because it is fundamental to our goals of attracting to the best ideas and building a community and culture of service that we have no financial interest in our entrepreneurs. We thought that imposing a fee on the application process would make a contribution toward the cost of serving the participants but, more importantly, would spare our scarce organizational resources from following up on applications from entrepreneurs who had not thought through their commitment to the program.
The unintended consequence is that we have created a financial incentive for applicants to contact us directly to explore their prospects for selection before applying. We try to be pretty accessible and this has led to a lot of wasted time and mutual frustration as we can’t offer much guidance without a reasonably complete application and an evaluation by our selection committee. The most undesirable consequence is the case is when we have some concerns about the viability of a potential applicant, but have to request that they submit an application. We are uncomfortable extracting fees from applicants who don’t have a realistic prospect of acceptance but yet we don’t want to tell them not to apply based on a brief conversation. Our goal is not to evaluate applicants on the floor of an event or over the phone, but to have them considered by the subject matter experts that have volunteered for our selection committee and compared to other applicants in their sector.
We’ve concluded that we are going to abandon the fee requirement as an idea that caused more harm than good. Of course, we will refund the fees of those that have already applied.
GoodCompany Ventures is taking its show on the road to the South by Southwest (SXSW) Festival
Posted on 12. Mar, 2010 by Garrett in Noteworthy
Next Monday, March 15th, GoodCompany Ventures is proud to join Social Capital Markets, the Acumen Fund, Social Edge, Ashoka’s Changemakers and other thought leaders for the global social entrepreneurship community in sponsoring the GoodCapitalist Party.
The GoodCapitalist Party is taking place right in the middle of the SWSX Interactive Fetival, which brings together the world’s most creative web developers, designers, bloggers, wireless innovators, content producers, programmers, widget inventors and new media entrepreneurs. Over 1200 people have registered to attend the party, which is now oversubscribed.
We are looking forward to meeting new members of the growing social entrepreneurship community, whether committed or merely curious. This map below shows the distribution of attendees from all around the country. We are pleased to see such strong representation from the Northeast and we look forward to chance to celebrate this community with our friends and supporters and to greet some new ones.
Ignite Philly Re-Cap
Posted on 03. Mar, 2010 by Garrett in Noteworthy
Thanks to Ignite Philly for giving GoodCompany Ventures a chance to present all the ways in which Philadelphia is becoming a national hub for social enterprise. Philly was one of more than 50 cities around the globe participating in Global Ignite Week.http://ignite.oreilly.com/. GCV was one of about 16 presenters in the sold out event at local hipster hangout, Johnny Brenda’s.
GCV’s mission of building a community of service for social entrepreneurs must have some resonance. Even though our region’s tech blog ,Technically Philly, observed that I was neither young enough or hip enough to be there, their headline for the event was “Ignite Philly 5 Marks Age of Social Entrepreneurs . . . “ I’ll take it. http://bit.ly/bdeURy
The thrust of the presentation was to call out for the crowd many of the people and organizations that are working to build a comprehensive ecosystem of support for social entrepreneurs in Philly.
I promised we’d post links to these local organizations. I hope you’ll find a group that suits your interests and get involved.
Sustainable Business Network: http://www.sbnphiladelphia.org/
BCorp: http://www.bcorporation.net/
Murex: http://www.murexinvests.com/
Investors’ Circle: http://www.investorscircle.net/
Philadelphia Social Innovations Journal: http://www.philasocialinnovations.org/site/
Mission Mob: http://www.blakejennelle.com/category/missioneurs/
GoodCompany Ventures Announces Mission Mobs
Posted on 27. Feb, 2010 by Garrett in Noteworthy
We are looking forward to the first Mission Mob, a happy hour with a mission for people on a mission. Startups meet social entrepreneurs on Tuesday, March 16th at 6:30 at Ladder 15. Reserve your free tickets herehttp://bit.ly/bUUpQi
Mission Mob is being launched by Blake Jennelle in partnership with GoodCompany Ventures. Blake, the founder of Philly StartUp Leaders, has joined our Advisory Board and we are working together to create a sense of community for social entrepreneurs in the same way PSL has done for the technology community. We know there are significant overlaps in these two communities and we hope that members of the tech community will welcome new avenues to add meaning to their innovations.
Our main focus day-to-day at GoodCompany Ventures is running the GCV Incubator, but our longer term mission is to build a community of service for social entrepreneurs. To this end, we are fortunate to be working with a passionate advocate like Blake. Just as Guy Kawasaki’s role as Chief Evangelist put Apple on the map, Blake is blazing the trail in the broader community for GCV. With his current series on Missioneurs, his blog has become a must-read for social entrepreneurs. Join the conversation athttp://www.blakejennelle.com/
Come out and meet us at the inaugural Mission Mob, a coming out party for Philly’s social entrepreneurs.
Jaqueline Novogratz & Fred Wilson To Lead Panel on Public Service Potential of Private Capital
Posted on 25. Feb, 2010 by Garrett in 2010 Incubator
GoodCompany Ventures Announces Call for Applicants for Incubator for Social Entrepreneurs
PRESS RELEASE: New York, NY and Philadelphia, PA (February 25, 2010) –
GoodCompany Ventures will announce its 2010 Venture Incubator for Social Entrepreneurs with a launch event March 4th from 6-8 pm in New York City.
The highlight of this event is a panel that brings together the nation’s most prominent advocates for both early stage investment and social enterprise. These panelists reach directly over half a million followers through their social media outlets.
Fred Wilson, founder of Union Square Ventures, is an advocate for early stage investment and the single most read blogger in the venture capital community. Jacqueline Novogratz is the founder of the Acumen Fund, a global nonprofit venture philanthropy fund that hat uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of global poverty.
They are joined by venture investors, Roger Ehrenberg, founder of IA Venture Strategies, one of the most active angel investors in New York, and Jacob Gray, a partner at Murex Investments, a leading double-bottom-line venture fund. The panel will be moderated by Scott Edward Anderson, founder of the thegreenskeptic.com and a frequent commentator on FoxBusiness Network.
“Our mission is to help entrepreneurs and investors reconcile purpose and profit”, said Garrett Melby, CEO of GoodCompany Ventures. “We are excited to have four such influential and innovative investors come together to highlight new models for harnessing private capital to drive lasting social impact”
GCV’s 2009 pilot program in Philadelphia was the first incubator in the country to adopt venture capital strategies to the needs of social enterprises. The 2009 program attracted social entrepreneurs from around the globe, in fields such as CleanTech, Education, Public Health, Social Finance and Community Development, highlights of which will be presented at the launch event. Applications for the 2010 Program will be accepted beginning March 5th.
The launch event is being hosted by GoodCompany Ventures, in partnership with Green Spaces, at their Tribeca co-working facility located at 394 Broadway, New York NY 10013. Green Spaces forwards the sustainability movement globally through widespread local hubs that incubate social and environmental entrepreneurs. The Green Spaces network represents nearly 5,000 people in NYC and thousands more nationwide.
Advance tickets are required for this event and are available at http://gcvpanel.eventbrite.com.
Press Inquiries Contact:
Julianne Kornacki
Communications Director
GoodCompany Ventures
Julianne@goodcompanyventures.org
215.620.6997
About GoodCompany Ventures
A GoodCompany pursues both purpose and profit. GoodCompany Ventures is a nonprofit defined by the needs of the emerging social enterprise sector. The GCV Incubator identifies entrepreneurs with innovative ideas for social impact and helps them implement these ideas with the strategies and resources of the venture capital community.
About Green Spaces
Green Spaces’ vision is to forward the sustainability movement globally through widespread local hubs that incubate environmental entrepreneurs. As a platform for “social change”, Green Spaces not only thrives as the stomping grounds for the city’s cutting edge entrepreneurs, but it spurs connections among companies who share a passion for sustainable and ethical business and lifestyle. The Green Spaces network represents nearly 5,000 people in NYC and thousands more nationwide. It has become a catalyst to thousands of global conversations and is also partner to more than 100 local and global organizations. Visit www.greenspaceshome.com to learn more.
About the Panelists
As Founder and CEO, Jacqueline Novogratz has led the Acumen Fund to invest $40 million in over 35 companies serving 25 million low-income customers in the developing world.
Prior to Acumen Fund, Jacqueline Novogratz founded and directed The Philanthropy Workshop and The Next Generation Leadership program at the Rockefeller Foundation. She began her career in international banking with Chase Manhattan Bank.
Jacqueline currently serves on the Board of the Aspen Institute as well as the advisory councils of Stanford Graduate School of Business and MIT’s Legatum Center. She is an Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellow, a Synergos Institute Senior Fellow and has received honors including Ernst & Young’s 2008 Entrepreneur of the Year Award, the 2009 CASE Leadership in Social Entrepreneurship Award and AWNY’s 2009 Changing the Game Award.
Jacqueline is a frequent speaker at international conferences, including the World Economic Forum, the Clinton Global Initiative and TED. She is the author of the bestselling memoir, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World, published in early 2009. Jacqueline’s Twitter stream is followed by 315,000 people around the globe.
Fred is a managing partner at Union Square Ventures, which has invested in many of the companies that are responsible for building the social media environment, including Twitter, Tumblr, Disqus, Delicious, Feedburner. Foursquare, Meetup, and Boxee.
Fred Wilson has been a venture capitalist since 1987. In 1996, Wilson co-founded Flatiron Partners with partner Jerry Colonna. Prior to Flatiron, he was at Euclid Partners.
Fred’s has become the most prominent voice for early stage investing. His blog, A VC, is the number one most read blog in the national venture community, with over 100,000 monthly visitors.
Roger is the Founder of IA Venture Strategies, an early-stage investment firm focused on innovative companies in the “big data” arena. Additionally, Roger is an active angel investor whose investments include TheLadders.com, Clickable, Buddy Media, Tweetdeck and bit.ly, among others.
Roger is also the Founder and Managing Director of Kinetic Trading Strategies, a trading firm that applies computational finance techniques to massive amounts of textual data to extract valuable semantic information.
Prior to founding IA Venture Strategies, Roger served as president and chief executive officer of DB Advisors, LLC, Deutsche Bank’s internal hedge fund trading platform. His 130-person team managed $6 billion in capital across multiple strategies. Earlier, Roger was global co-head of Deutsche Bank’s Strategic Equity Transactions Group.
Roger is the author of the financial blog Information Arbitrage, which was recently named one of the “Top 25 Financial Blogs”. He has appeared in numerous media outlets including Bloomberg, CNBC, Financial Times, Reuters, Wall Street Journal and more.
Jacob Gray is co-Founder and Partner of Murex Investments, an early-stage venture capital fund focused on extraordinary entrepreneurs in mobile payments, learning and energy efficiency technologies. Murex Investments III, LP is a $50M fund now in formation. Jacob has ten years of private equity experience and is a partner in the prior Murex funds. Right now, Jacob is particularly excited about investment opportunities in learning technologies that leverage the power of mobile devices, social media and other nimble platforms that can reach learners far more efficiently than traditional institutions can.
His most recent transaction is AnySource Media, LLC, a digital media software and services company that was successfully sold to Divx (Nasdaq: DIVX.) He represents Murex on a number of boards, including Advanced Workstations in Education (AWE), a high-growth early-education technology development and marketing company. Before joining Murex, Jacob provided strategy and marketing services to social entrepreneurs in a variety of industries.
"The GoodCompany Ventures Incubator offers the structure and space to think strategically. The incubator’s expert speaker panels offered new insights and approaches to business planning.” -Emily Landsburg, BlackGold Biofuels
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