Great entrepreneurs by their very nature are programed to want to give back to society, revolutionize, disrupt and institute massive change. As a venture investor, I look for those attributes in the eye and heart of the entrepreneur. I also look for huge, difficult, billion dollar problems to solve and and entrepreneurs that are capable and hell bent on solving them. I see some amazing inventions coming out of Universities that will definitely impact the lives of many. Flexible electronics may make big screen TVs available to many. Microelectronic fuel cells may take you off the grid so you never have to plug your cell phone in again. Self healing computing systems that never crash. Highly parallel cell sorting machines that may enable cell therapy. All incredible endeavors that will make some societies better off. We are also trained as entrepreneurs to focus on one customer at a time and that by doing so, we can transform an industry. Hold that thought.
Reality check. If you are reading this blog right now, you are likely among the luckiest humans in the world. You don't need to worry about the basic necessities of life like food, water, medicine, clothing, and shelter. Instead, we worry about things like portfolio management, gross margins, viral marketing,
AJAX, podcasts, etc. These things don't mean anything to the people that are fighting to survive in places like poverty/famine/AIDS saturated Africa. If you are reading this blog right now you have been given the gift to help do something about it, without even a whole lot of effort. World Vision is a a relief and development organization dedicated to helping children and their communities(regardless of their religion) worldwide reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty. You can sponsor a child for 35 bucks a month which is enough to feed, clothe and shelter that child. Think about how meaningless 35 bucks is to you, but you can literally give hope to the life of a child. 6,000 new kids a day are orphaned by AIDS every day.
I just checked my Linked In network and it told me that 678,600 people are within 3 degrees of separation from me. A huge impact could be made if each very capable person in my network sponsored just one child. Folks, impacting poverty is a ginormous, difficult problems to solve. As entrepreneurs, we should be drooling over the opportunity. Just like in building your business it starts with one life. Like industries, societies are changed one life at a time.
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