Czech Startup Leaders on Clubhouse! On Wednesday 24th of February, Startup Disrupt opened another Clubhouse discussion – this time we’ve talked about social impact startups. Among the speakers were David Stančík, Dita Formáková and Jan Beránek. The session was hosted by Pavlína Louženská, a mentor for Google for Startups.
Social entrepreneurship
The main topic of the Czech Startup Leaders talk was startups with an approach in which they create, develop, or fund solutions to social, environmental, or cultural problems and struggles. What are the best examples of what social entrepreneurship really is?
What would be a discussion about social startups, without the CEO of Daruju krev David Stančík? We heard great insights and experiences of working on a project with a big social impact from him. David founded Daruju krev and saves many lives with the app. Daruju krev is gathering donors of blood and helps them with finding their nearest intake points. Their goal is to find 100 000 donors of blood and share the awareness about donoring. There are about 3000-6000 missing donors of blood yearly in Czechia and Daruju krev is trying to change that. And what are the best things to take away from the Czech Startup Leaders discussion? Read them below!
Another great example, and also one of the speakers is Dita Formánková, who’s a founder of Czechitas. Czechitas are helping with discovering the world of IT and developing needed skills of women and children. In 2020 they’ve had over 9500 absolvents of their courses, they’ve organized 371 events and they’ve helped 81 women with finding their dream job in the IT field.
Jan Beránek is working on a lot of social impact projects and one of the most interesting is the project Moonshot. This forum spotlights solutions by leaders across sectors that tackle educational, racial, and technology-access inequalities. As a CEO of TRNSHM – a platform that helps with solving the 21st century’s challenges. TRNSHM is a match-making and vetting platform for startups using technology to solve the world’s biggest problems and early-stage investors willing to help high-impact founders. The company focuses on areas like health care, justice, privacy, youth education, and many more. “Why would you build something life-changing and innovative and stay with it only in your country, when you can make it world-wide and possibly save many more lives?”, said Jan Beránek on Clubhouse who’s working on international projects.
Impact vs profit
Everyone interprets the concept of social impact in a different way. But what about the dilemma of impact vs profiting from the company?
Stančík said that social impact and saving lives are the most important things for him and his team, but money-making is necessary for pushing the project to the next level. Also, Jan Beránek thinks that the impact-profit balance is the key. Dita Formánková is suggesting setting the KPIs for your projects: “We’ve set having 30 000 graduates of our courses as our goal and based on that we’re thinking about how much money we need for that to happen. By defining your goals and setting your vision and mission, you’ll have a clearer vision about what are the most important things to focus on”.
Jan mentioned that investors in Europe are way less focused on profit and return of the money than in the USA and that in his point of view are American companies way more profit-driven than in Europe.
Motivation
What is the power that pushes founders of social impact startups to continue with their work? David Stančík from Daruj krev is really up to helping people. His company is by structure the same as any other commercial company, but it’s based on social impact. He finds it easy to motivate employees and volunteers by the concept of social impact and thinks that the thought of helping others is something long-lasting.
Pavlína Louženská had a great question – is it any different to build a startup with social impact from building a commercial one? Dita said that it’s similar in some ways – you need to have a business model, you need to know your target market and it’s important to have an awesome company culture.
9 out of 10 Gen-Z individuals would prefer getting employed by a social impact startup rather than by a commercial company. And what about you? Contact us on our social media and share your opinion with us!
Books recommended by the speakers:
Building Social Business – Muhammad Yunus
Bangladeshi economist and banker Muhammad Yunus is narrowing down the existing definition of a social business. He considers the term as a new form of economic organization that links a social, ethical, or environmental objective with a commercial or financial-based one. Easy to read, really inspiring, and recommended by Jan Beránek.
Conscious Capitalism – John Mackey
What are some of the biggest principle-driven companies doing to transform capitalism and how can you inspire from them and follow their lead? This and more is included in this book by John Mackey which was recommended on Clubhouse session Czech Startup Leader: social impact startups. You can read stories of companies like Whole Foods, Starbucks, and many more.
Predictably Irrational – Dan Ariely
David Stančík recommends this book about making decisions based on rational thoughts. Ariely’s goal for the book is to help readers rethink what makes them and the people around them tick. „I hope to lead you there by presenting a wide range of scientific experiments, findings, and anecdotes that are in many cases quite amusing. Once you see how systematic certain mistakes are – how we repeat them again and again – I think you will begin to learn how to avoid some of them.“, says Dan Ariely about the book.
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