From Fox News to the New York Times to Google News and Aljazeera, the news media are the main channel through which our interpretation of reality and our future are created. We look to expose hypocrisy, innovation, integrity and possibility.
We just found out that our social venture LoudSauce, a social way to buy ad space for your favorite causes, was selected as a finalist for Ashoka's WeMedia Changemakers Pitchit competition, which means I will be pitching on March 9-11th in Miami for a chance at $25,000 to start the social enterprise.
A little less than a year ago, during another yearly beginning of reflection, I engaged in an excercise to find a new name for the social venture I had been discussing over the past few years. In 48 hours, a group of professionals and amateurs alike suggested names for a "crowdfunded media buying service for social enterprises," and the name that emerged as the winner based on NameThis.com's algorithms, was LoudSauce (suggested by non other than a previous Nokia client and hip hop karaoke master Dan Goodall.
The excitement of the interest from friends and supporters was contagious, and we ended up applying to a few venture competitions including TechStars and Ycombinator, and found a developer in the Bay Area who was interested in joining as a co-founder. We were happily surprised to be invited by Paul Graham and the friendly Ycombinator team for a final round interview in April, which perfectly coincided with a trip back to the US from London for my 10 year Duke reunion.
After one of the most efficient 10 minutes of communication I've ever experienced, they handed us a check to cover our travel expenses, and later that night we eagerly awaited their decision. While the discussion during the interview had focused on the model - we showed an early prototype and were asked what kinds of causes would attract the most funding - the email from Paul gave us the main reason they chose not to invest.
He said they liked us and they liked our idea, but they felt that LoudSauce would be "open to criticism on the grounds that you were encouraging people to spend money on advertising instead of giving it directly to charities." He wrote that advertising is criticized heavily anyway, and that as a for profit, we could be accused of channeling dollars away from solving problems and into advertising for our own profit.
While we understood his point, we were frustrated because we hadn't discussed that during the conversation. The appropriate causes that will benefit from LoudSauce are not causes like disaster relief in Haiti, which are well publicized and well served (at least initially) by current funding channels. The right causes for LoudSauce will be those that groups of friends or networks think are under-exposed for certain target audiences (like the Atheist bus campaign in London). We're essentially developing the tool to automate what groups like MoveOn and Repower American have been using with their users already, so that the rest of us active citizens can fund ad campaigns that we think are worth focusing attention and investment towards.
For too long, many conscious people have understandably criticized advertising as largely trying to get us to buy more plastic stuff that we don't need. In many cities, some graffiti and murals seem to do a better job at providing a positive vision for communities than billboards and television. However, now it's time to leverage some of the talented designers and culture jammers of our generation, and put our money where are vision is.
Over the coming few weeks, I'll be working on my 10 minute pitch for the WeMedia PitchIt session in Miami. If you have ideas about how you think it can be the strongest, please do let me know. Thanks so much for your attention and your support.
Note: I've also posted this on the LoudSauce blog.
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Check out the Finalists.
Positive Vision:
Targeted at Republicans:
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This is turning out to be a perfect year for my long term partner Christie George to be attending Said Business School at Oxford. She worked in the documentary film world in NYC for many years, and then was selected to receive a Skoll Scholarship to attend the school.
Now, the week that classes are starting, it turns out that the Sundance Institute and the Skoll Foundation announced $3
million, three-year partnership dedicated to exploring film's role in
advancing knowledge about social entrepreneurship. Good timing.
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I'm sure this video came out a while ago, but I just saw it for the first time, and it makes me feel good about where we're moving as a culture. Common and Al Gore and General Electric are all moving the culture in a more healthy direction. Now we gotta speed up the momentum.
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This video pretty much makes it clear why a certain percentage of the younger generation would prefer a country with Barack Obama as the president instead of Hillary Clinton (or John McCain and the others for that matter.) The 2008 election will clearly see the next phase in the evolution of visionary (and incendiary) citizen produced political media. Let's hope it serves more to carve out a positive vision for the future than to play into the horse race of which person will represent us as president.
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