Social Enterprise at Seedcamp?

by Nathaniel Whittemore · 2009-09-11 16:19:00 UTC
Topics:

Tis the season for venture incubators, pitch days, and business plan competitions of all shapes and sizes. Seedcamp, a funding incubator for young startups in Europe has just announced it's 21 finalists. In the mix are a number of organizations that have, if not explicitly social missions, implications for the social sector. These write-ups come from VentureBeat.

"Patients Know Best (Cambridge, UK) — An online platform for patients to send secure messages to their doctors and nurses, receive information about their health, and get advice on preventative and followup care." It's pretty obvious how this one could improve the way that people accessed health care. I'd be interested to see how this aligns or doesn't with something like FrontlineSMS:Medic.

"Teachable (London) — A library of teacher-made resources in any academic subject that are easily adapted to curricula." Again, the social value here is pretty clear. The potential of the internet to democratize access to education is immense and as yet relatively untapped. I love the idea of teachers being able to contribute to a communal database.

"VouChaCha (London) — Platform that delivers coupons and discount vouchers straight to your smart phone." This may not seem profound, but with the economy as it is, people care more about collected small discounts than ever before. Being able to deliver offers direct to the phone could be wonderful.

I think these companies are good examples of a new ecosystem of web-driven platforms that, while not "social enterprises" in the way we define it in this sector, are still building infrastructure to help address people's problems in simpler, easier ways. It's important for us in the social entrepreneurship space to be connecting our conversations to the consumer web world and looking for ways to leverage the relationship.

(Photo: Leafar)

Nathaniel Whittemore is the founder of Assetmap. Previously he was the founding director of the Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement.
PREVIOUS STORY:
Remembering 9/11 and Fostering a New Era of Citizen Leadership
NEXT STORY:
Facing Forward: The End of the Social Entrepreneurship Blog on Change.org

COMMENTS (3)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.