Invest in Waste Posthaste!

A big highlight of this September for Substance was the SOCAP Conference. At SOCAP there were social entrepreneurs pitching for funding to scale their ideas and investors looking for the next best business to fund that would provide not only financial returns, but meaningful social impact as well. The event’s tagline, money + meaning, is a concept that has been around for a long time but is now starting to reach a critical mass—even notoriety in the Economist.

I love this. The idea that businesses might actually provide what we need—clean water, air, or energy—and investors would deploy capital to said businesses, that is a novel concept. For anyone that has ever put together a portfolio for fun or played in a fantasy league, this post is for you. I have often dreamed of having the money to invest in my favorite social enterprises and here it is; The Substance I (Fantasy) Fund focused on waste. Why waste? Waste is abundant, it’s everywhere and the cost of goods sold – $0 (sometimes). The market for waste to energy is also projected to grow significantly in coming years.

Here are some prospects I would draft to the Substance I (Fantasy) Fund:

• AdaptiveARC – Great Scott! Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads… Yep AdaptiveARC is turning garbage (organic waste) into power through “Cool Plasma” Gasification. They don’t claim to be the first to attempt gasification, but according to a deck from the end of 2009, they projected $8M in revenue and 33% operating income margins (seems to good to be true).
• Eco Scraps – according to the Eco Scraps web site, Americans toss 30 million tons of food waste a year. These scrappy young gents from Utah participated in the SF program Sparkseed and, according to Inc Magazine, will hit $1.5M in sales in 2011.
• Husk Power Systems – I’ve been reading a little bit on this ambitious project that translates discarded rice husks into electricity for rural Indians. They seem to be getting a lot of (well deserved attention). From their web site:

Husk Power Systems (“HPS”) lighted the first village from its first 100% biomass based power plant that uses discarded rice husks to generate electricity in August 2007 and today it has installed 60 mini-power plants that power ~ 25,000 households in more than 250 villages and hamlets and impact lives of approximately 150,000 people in rural India.

• Back to the Roots – these dudes sell mushroom kits that grow gourmet oyster mushrooms out of Pete’s Coffee grounds and sell them in Whole Foods. They have cool branding and a great creation myth story involving school at UC Berkeley and food guru Alice Waters of Chez Panisse. They put on their site that they are aiming to help people grow 250,000 lbs of shrooms in 2011. At 1.5 lbs per package and $20 a pop, that would be over $3M in revenue. I would have to taste them first before drafting to the waste dream team though—I find oysters kind of slimy and prefer the portobello.
• Sanergy – not a ton of info on these guys, but a crew of MIT brains aiming to bring sanitation to Kenyan slums. The human waste would be collected and turned into energy that can be supplied to the grid. If anyone can bring home the waste to energy hardware in Kenya, this team probably could.

Just a sample for now… Who’s on your social enterprise fantasy squad?

Shaq, IDEO, and Bone Marrow

What do these three things have in common? Well, normally not much except right now they are coming together around an important topic – bone marrow donation. In one of the the most interesting developments to come out of the social impact space in 2010, design firm IDEO launched OpenIDEO a program that essentially crowd sources the process for innovation and coming up with game changing, world-bettering ideas.

The OpenIDEO project kicked off with celebrity chef and TED Prize winner Jamie Oliver’s challenge of “How might we help kids realize the importance of fresh food.” Now, one a current OpenIDEO challenges is around raising the profile of bone marrow donation, and getting people signed up for the bone marrow registry.

Why is this important? Well, good question – often a bone marrow match can save the life of someone suffering from leukemia. Word is the registry is lacking bone marrow matches from people of South Asian descent in particular.

Sign up for the registry here, but don’t take it from me, listen to Shaq “slam it down big man” as Bill Walton would say…

Will QR Codes Start Enhancing Print?

I’ve heard from time to time over the last year or so about how prevalent QR codes are in Japan. Only recently though have I seen these things turn up in the US. Yesterday I was reading the Economist and noticed one in an ad for SAS Business Analytics Software.

Wanna start playing around with these more? Here’s an article that rates the top QR scanners for the iPhone.

As more and more marketers move away from print in droves and opt for the more measurable ROI that comes with online advertising, it will be interesting to see if this technology gains any momentum. It certainly seems like there is potential to give life to the printed page. We’ll see if advertisers and editors make creative use of this opportunity.

The Art of the Win-Win

These days it is a daunting task for a business to succeed. The economy aside, it seems that almost every business I speak with or get approached by exists in a space with a multitude of different competitors. A simple Google search rings up a plethora of identical hungry suitors vying for the sale.

But what does it take to close the deal now? It takes a Win-Win mentality. I am not going to dwell too much on this because, like too many business books, you can boil the concept down to a principle: be scrappy. What can you do that differentiates yourself from your competitor, is a benefit to the customer, but may not cost you much time or resources to execute? How can you inspire someone to care about what you do? Chances are, the answer may be right in front of your face. Maybe it isn’t more—it could be less—for example less waste or less packaging.

I feel like we see opportunities for win-wins everyday. Yet everyone is surprised when they actually get executed. Recently we held the first annual Substance Summit in San Sebastian, Spain (Justin & I took a vacation for a friend’s wedding). While there we took a bike ride through the world’s longest bicycle commuter tunnel.

Courtesy: Copenhagenize

According to the pro bike blog Copehagenize the San Sebastian Mayor, Odon Elorza, called the tunnel “a symbol of progress, sustainability and personal health.”

While this win-win was an obvious large investment – not all need to be. Sometimes I wonder what holds organizations back from executing on ideas that seem to reap enormous benefits on multiple fronts….

Online Marketing on a Shoestring2

Good to see some of the same faces out for another fun session at the Hub Berkeley. As promised, here is a PDF of the presentation.

Thanks everyone for sharing. It was nice to see such an interesting group of people committed to social change. Best of luck to Santiago as he launches Senda-Athletics. Keep in touch!

Half Off Online Marketing Audits

Why get an Audit?

Our Online Marketing Audit service is a deep dive into your business’s customer acquisition and retention strategies. We start by taking “a look under the hood,” interviewing your business’s key marketing executive(s), analyzing web analytics (if available), and the results to date from marketing activity. We’ll provide recommendations in all of the following areas:

• Pay Per Click (PPC) Marketing or Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
• Email Marketing
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Branding
• Web Site Optimization
• Social Media Marketing
• And More…

The result of our audit is an in depth PDF report laying out where your business is at – and where there are opportunities to grow. Our recommendations will be:

• Tangible
• Cost effective – minimizing cost per acquisition.
• Acutely aware of existing resources.

Why Substance?

We are uniquely suited to help your Green business grow. We honed our marketing “chops” at businesses like Clif Bar, Google and Better World Books and we know what it takes to build lasting relationships with customers. In addition, we are socially responsible to the core and committed to helping green businesses succeed.

Give us an email today – we’d like to meet you.

*This offer is limited to the first 5 businesses, and expires April 30, 2010 and come with a $100 coupon for Google Adwords.

Help for Haiti

As I imagine everybody else must be, I find myself absorbed with the sheer chaos and destruction stemming from the 7.0 in Port-au-Prince.

For the month of January, Substance will be directing 15% of revenue towards Partners in Health (PIH). The reason is simple, we work not only for the opportunity to advance ourselves and our clients, but we also work for the privilege of getting to help out the people we care about as well.

Our own Justin Brandon spent time in Haiti creating the documentary film, “The Road to Fondwa” And we hope you’ll join us to donate or take part. Give what you can to groups like PIH or contact Justin direct if you’d like to host a screening of the film as a fundraiser.

From PIH:

“Since Tuesday evening, PIH staff has been working around the clock to bring relief to the people of Haiti who are suffering immensely in the aftermath of the catastrophic earthquake. You have seen the images on the news, read the updates on the web, and responded in a profoundly generous way to our calls for help – we are indebted to you for your quick mobilization and generous contributions.

Read the rest of this entry »

Online Marketing 101 or Online Marketing on a Shoestring

Good times today at the Hub chatting about “Online Marketing 101 or Online Marketing on a Shoestring.”

It was great to meet fellow Hubsters and learn how they want to affect change in the world. The Hub exudes positive energy—I can’t wait see what social innovations emerge from its down to earth members.

For anybody who wants the presentation, you can download it here.

So really, does the world need another marketing agency?

In short no, it really doesn’t. ($h%t there goes our shot at venture capital). What the world really needs is clean water, solutions to climate change, poverty, education, and cures for pandemics.

But now that we’ve cleared the air and set the tone of honesty, here’s another question: how do we sell ideas that mean like the aforementioned?