Weekend Entrepreneur Links: Swinging For the Fences

by Nathaniel Whittemore · 2010-04-11 21:18:00 UTC
Topics:

This week I'm headed to Oxford, UK for the annual Skoll World Forum - a mecca for social entrepreneurship. Because of that, a lot of my posts this week will be very field-centric. In anticipation, this weekend's entrepreneur links are actually mostly about startups, venture capital, and issues related to, but, strictly speaking, outside of the pure social enterprise space.

Building to flip vs. building to last: As the founder of AOL, Steve Case was one of the most important entrepreneurs of the first generation of the consumer internet. In this clip from a talk at Stanford, he rightly questions whether young entrepreneurs today are hungry for big, game-changing, industry-disrupting wins, or just looking to sell to Google. I've written about this before, and glad to see Steve pushing the conversation.

Venture Capital Creating Systemic Risk??? - Union Square Ventures partner Fred Wilson writes a post expressing his (right-headed) frustration with the notion of adding legal entanglements to small venture funds of $30m or more. I think that, to sustain innovation in the US, the government regulatory apparatuses have to be very, very careful to disentangle asset classes that are supposed to be appropriately risky from those that are supposed to be appropriately prudent.

Race and Technology: Are there Renowned Internet Startups with Black Founders?: For any one interested in the questions of access, race, and who does and doesn't (or can and can't) become an entrepreneur, this post -- and moreover, its comments -- are a must read. I think the state of things is just about as dismal as the author identifies, although I do think there are positive indications towards a more diverse entrepreneurial playing field.

Design For The First World: One of the most interesting things I've run across lately, this is a competition that flips the normal "social good design" contest model on its head. Basically, the idea is to have individuals or teams from the developing world submit ideas for solving the problems of the developed world -- obesity, aging populations, etc. If it started tongue-in-cheek, it isn't any longer, and actually has judges, prizes and a real conversation surrounding it.

Photo credit: SD Dirk

Nathaniel Whittemore is the founder of Assetmap. Previously he was the founding director of the Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement.
PREVIOUS STORY:
iCensored: Apple, Porn and the Magic of CSR
NEXT STORY:
Facing Forward: The End of the Social Entrepreneurship Blog on Change.org

COMMENTS (5)

    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.