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Changemakers Forum:
Entry:Entrepreneur Commons: entrepreneurs in developed countries also need help
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The Entrepreneur Commons™ is about bringing the human back into capitalism.
As Muhammad Yunus says:
"Capitalism takes a narrow view of human nature, assuming that people are one-dimensional beings concerned only with the pursuit of maximum profit. The concept of the free market, as generally understood, is based on this one-dimensional human being. Mainstream free-market theory postulates that you are contributing to the society and the world in the best possible manner if you just concentrate on getting the most for yourself. [...] The presence of our multi-dimensional personalities means that not every business should be bound to serve the single objective of profit maximization"
Entrepreneur Commons is a social business offering peer-to-peer loans to social entrepreneurs. It offers funding to early stage social businesses, and the fund is managed by a not-for-profit social network of entrepreneurs - a support platform that can scale, and that also provides a way to screen deals, based on inclusion of every entrepreneur into the process rather than exclusion through a competitive process. It simplifies the investment decision for social investors because success can easily be measured - when the beneficiary businesses are social businesses and loans (with rates that can be benchmarked against market returns) are paid off, then the social investor can be satisfied that he has done his part.
Very interesting.
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Featured Commentator
Ashoka's Changemakers
Thank you for submitting your entry!
We would like to learn more about your financial plan and future goals for piloting this initiative. We are interested in more specifics about your intent: which concepts do you plan to promote? What kind of “change” do you envision? How do you plan to distinguish yourself in the field?
We wish you the best of luck in the inception and promotion of your project!
Since the judges spend more time reading the entry form than the comments, please also update your entry in addition to responding to our questions and other comments. This will provide the panel of expert judges with the most comprehensive explanation.
Thanks so much! We look forward to learning more.
Best wishes,
The Changemakers Team
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Kaylena Bray
Ashoka's Changemakers
Thank you for your interest.
From a financial prospective, it will take approximately 150K to get this project off the ground, which I am hoping to get through grants.
This will allow us to create the social network of entrepreneurs (incorporation and initial infrastructure).
Beyond this, the project will be financed from several sources:
- fees from memberships
- sponsoring (lawyers, accouting firms, etc...)
- 2% management fee from the Fund itself
This will pay for staff to coordinate the various meetings between entrepreneurs, who will be organized in self-help teams.
The idea is to promote collaboration between the entrepreneurs within the social network - within a chapter, and across chapters around the world.
The expected result of the process is less failure, because entrepreneurs will not be maintained in the dream of getting money from angels or VCs, they will be given instant feedback on whether they can get a loan or not, and if not, why. Since the filtering process is made by entrepreneur-peers, it is not like being denied by a banker, but should be received as positive comment on what needs to be done to fix the issues identified.
The big difference with what is being done otherwise is the access to initial funds even for people who do not have "friends and family". And the initial loan should go a long way: according to Inc Magazine, the median capital used to start the companies that made it to their Inc top 5000 list is 25K.
While philanthropists can get a lot done with their money in developing countries, and therefore tend to go there first, there is also a need for entrepreneurs here in the US, specially when it comes to social entrepreneurs because they clearly do not fit the standard for regular investors. The Entrepreneur Commons is the answer to that specific problem.
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McMaster University Almuni