Mob mentality
Home » Blog » Kate Taylor & Ray Fort » Mob mentalitySan Francisco is home to a host of new exciting business ideas. We've been following this green-venture explosion from one networking event to the next. Which ones will make it?
The birth of Web 2.0, combined with an exploding ‘green’ industry here in San Francisco, is an amazing (and amusing) combination.
We are bearing witness to this new ‘green boom’, and with Silicon Valley right around the corner, people here know how this game is played. In the late 1990s the dot-com boom gripped the Bay Area, and it remains the home of Google, Yahoo! and myriad other global IT empires.
The players fall into two groups: the 'jumpers' (the newly jobless who see a possible gold rush in the sustainability industry) and the 'gamblers' (those who know what risk taking in a new, hot industry can do for their bank accounts). In a fateful match, start-ups that can’t yet afford to pay employees have a huge selection of willing interns trying to break into the industry.
At one networking function you’ll meet a series of recession victims, those recently-made-redundant types who are wide-eyed about the green job market. At a similar networking function, you’ll meet sustainability enthusiasts who are six to 12 months into touting a new set of products that may or may not last the next six months.
Businesses are springing up in a hurry, with hopes and dreams in the hot flush of adolescence . “All we need is cash,” says a friend who is one such risk-taker.
The entrepreneurs are on the hunt for elusive venture capital, and likewise, investors are out there searching for the next ‘killer-app’ equivalent.
What we’re seeing right now is a whole host of good ideas and some will go on to be winners. Many businesses aren’t shy about how they’re doing and how they aim to stay alive. The most interesting examples can be found under the Virgance umbrella. Virgance describes what it does as 'Activism 2.0', and runs Carrot Mob and Lend Me Some Sugar, among other projects.
Carrot Mob is based on the concept that “corporations will do anything for money”. Competing businesses are told that they’ll be ‘mobbed’ by customers on a certain day if they pledge to green their businesses. The pledges can be viewed and voted on by the public. A winning business is found and then the mob occurs. The incentive to change is $$$.
Videos from a recent competition between local cafes includes footage of the Carrot Mob organisers questioning the voting element of Carrot Mob: “We’ll just have to see how this works,” they admit.
Watch their video to see the Carrot Mob concept in action or this other great video here on Vimeo.
Lend Me Some Sugar is a Virgance concept that is totally new and appears to be going through a critical test phase right now. The website explains the purpose: “Lend is a social networking application that brings users to your brand, instead of the other way around … We run the (online) campaign by taking a large portion of your campaign dollars and letting the users vote for which non-profit or social entrepreneur it is granted to.”
The whole concept is to run a competition like American Idol online, give the client great exposure, and give the bulk of the money to a social cause.
A recent email from Virgance asked me, as a punter, to help build the critical mass of followers of Lend, by becoming their fan on Facebook and then suggesting their Facebook page to my friends. In summary: the big corporates may be interested in the concept, but right now the stats may not be stacking up. Are 2,000 fans on Facebook going to give them the weight they need to bag their first customer?
The examples of businesses sporting new ideas are endless.
There is Viv.com with its stickers on credit cards, that give supporting vendors points each time the sticker is scanned, and at each landmark point total (eg 100 points) the businesses does a new green act, so that purchasing with them is rewarded in green ways. Green & Tonic uses the power of its network of supporters to assist bars in going green, from fundraising to consulting. Matter Network syndicates news from around the globe, to allow for a one-stop shops of green news, and large networks for advertising to those green-inclined. EcoTuesday hosts networking events across the country where green business people meet and exchange ideas. Greenwala is a green online social network. The list goes on…
And the investment? One seriously hip example is HIP Investors. HIP stands for Human Impact + Profit. HIP is doing great things in the socially responsible investment world:
“HIP Investor Inc is the creator of the HIP 100 Index, an investment portfolio of all S&P 100 equities—yet re-weighted to seek both profit and sustainability. The quantitative HIP Scorecard … evaluates how corporate sustainability drives shareholder value. HIP advises investors, consults to corporations and publishes its Scorecard and expert insights in leading journals.”
Some entrepreneurs participating in this green boom already made it in the dot-com boom. Some went bust in the 2001 dot-com crash. While this green boom may have its own victims down the track, the tireless innovation is inspiring and will be impactful to varied degrees. Some ideas will become flourishing businesses. Some entrepreneurs will get rich. And thankfully, some major social change that is less harmful—and is in fact positive to the planet—is bound to happen along the way.
