Could Y Combinator Save The World?

(Y Combinator founder Paul Graham. Source.)

Expertise. Connections. Money. Time. All of the things any startup needs to succeed. And exactly the things that Y Combinator offers highly promising tech startups through their incubation programs. But as Y Combinator begins to experiment with a new funding model in which they issue a "Request For Startups" that are attempting to solve a particular problem, it seems to me they have a chance to extend their impact far beyond financial success.

For a while, I've been interested in the intersection between the web tech world and social entrepreneurship. There is an obvious financial relationship; the Skoll Foundation which has done as much as anyone to put this field on the map in the last few years is all money from Jeff Skoll's success at eBay, for example.

But there's more to it than that. There is a certain similarity (although often unrecognized by those who haven't been through both) in the experience of scraping together resources, identifying and cultivating supporters, and trying to create either software or programs that solve some specific problem in a way more impacting than previous solutions.

And if the experiences of starting an innovative nonprofit or an innovative web startup have similarities, there is also a fertile and growing conversation about how web startups have created or could create the infrastructure for more effective, citizen-driven social change. Jon Gosier is incubating talented web developers in Uganda. Gadget gurus from around the world are using collaboration tools to organize and host Maker Faire Africa's. Silicon Valley is soon to host it's second BarCamp Africa. Ushahidi, a crisis reporting platform that takes advantage of SMS, is being built by programmers literally around the world. And Twitter continues to astound with it's power to amplify common voices of the politically repressed around the world.

For all of these reasons, I think Y Combinator has an immensely exciting opportunity to use it's new "Request For Startups" (as reported by TechCrunch here) form of investment to call for companies that have a specific eye towards solving social problems.

So what type of themes might work well? Certainly digital education is both an immensely socially important and potentially financially lucrative field. Platforms and portals better equipped to help shift consumer behaviors towards more sustainable alternatives could become the new wave of e-commerce destinations. Sustainable outsourcing, well there are incredible possibilities. With ten minutes, a group of good people and a white board, I'm sure a dozen more ideas would come pouring out.

So will it happen? There's some evidence that it wouldn't be a totally foreign notion, at least not to Y Combinator founder Paul Graham. In his essay "Be Good," he wrote about how there is something valuable for a young about having a social or moral compass. In fact, he pointed out how many great startups - Craigslist, for example - began behaving more like a nonprofit dedicated to best serving their stakeholders than a company dedicated to extracting the most money from their users.

This matters now because web companies and social entrepreneurs aren't just starting interesting new ventures. They are, in some ways, reinventing capitalism for the 21st century. At least that's what they could be doing. Will we continue to view financial success as separable from social and environmental impact? Will we continue to separate value from meaning from money? Or will we assert a new vision?

One thing's for sure. If they're going to give it a shot, they're going to need help to develop the diverse array of supporters that can help their portfolio companies succeed. I can't offer much, but I can offer this written platform as a way to help evolve the conversation, and our community of readers as experts who can provide vital social expertise to compliment the business and technical acumen to which Y-Combinator already has access.

Whatdya say Paul?