It is time for a reboot of Escape Velocity. We have been at this show for more than a year and the team decide to change the direction and the content of the show.  Ben and Hrishi have created highly sophisticated and technically complex products, but found out rather late that there was no market for them. Guys reflect back on their mistakes and talk about valuable lessons that have been learnt from them.

In addition to the interviews, every second episode Ben and Hrishi will talk about some crucial aspects of the successful startup, such as customer acquisition, discovery and validation. By listening to the show, we hope that you guys will get great insight into the customer centric product development. We will also discuss tools and techniques that assist us in our everyday endeavours.

We mention some guests that talk about similar issues. Take for example Rafael Smith from Uber Shelter, Paul Gollash from Voxy or Rob Wailing. All these guests had very distinct and educational experiences, which they share with us in the interviews. We highly encourage you listen to these shows if you haven’t already.

From now on we are going to pay more attention to the community around Escape Velocity Podcast. Our goal is to build an active and engaging community of people who are interested in the topics covered or related to the podcast. We are highly flexible and are open to any suggestions you guys may have about the show, or anything else for that matter . Please feel free to drop us an email to feedback@reachev.com or contact/follow us on Twitter (@EVpodcast), Facebook or Google+. You can also get in touch with us directly. More information on our about page.

Exciting changes are coming to the Escape Velocity Podcast and we would like you to be part of it!

Nina Dudnik returns to the show to talk about her progress since the last time we spoke in February 2011. Since then Seeding Labs’ team has grown and identified another need that they are trying to address now. They have started a new program that will give scientists the chance to meet, wherever they are to exchange ideas.

Through partnerships with manufacturers, Seeding Labs provides universities with a second-hand lab equipment that are no longer used. The equipment is constantly being updated, and old models can last for a whole lot longer if you are ingenious and innovative. The universities that apply for this initiative should have institutional support, and a good record to make the best out of their resources.

As an entrepreneur, Nina is always moving to the next level. The equipment program is a huge logistics endeavour. At the moment, Seeding Labs is looking for people that have experience and knowledge about setting up and maintaining lab equipment.

The balance between being a sustainable business and being mindful of the community that you are trying to serve is something you have to keep in mind. As your business evolves, challenges just keep changing.

@Seedinglabs

A free app that allows users to learn languages in context. Paul Gollash founded Voxy a  year and a half ago. When Paul decided to start his own business, he thought of the ingredients that make successful entrepreneurs: A huge market, a passion for the problem you are trying to solve, and the ability to be mutable in your approach. A former management consultant and venture investor, Paul spent a lot of time in countries where he was not a native speaker. He wanted to create a product that would reinvent the way languages are learnt.

His first step was to talk to second language acquisition experts. He decided to use authentic content from the news by extracting and converting it to a language learning product. In the digital age, content can be created really quickly, and it is very easy to add new updated topics to the curriculum. In the beginning, Paul was focusing only on reading comprehension. He soon realised that it wasn’t enough. As a result product has been expanded to accommodate listening and speaking exercises.

Before Paul started developing the actual product, he carried out market research, talking to people outside the schools, in parks, in Spanish speaking communities, to find out how they approached language learning. It is very important to listen to the users and be able to adapt to their  needs. In order to achieve that flexibility and to stay true to what learners want, Paul created Voxy Academy, where he brings in students who learn in a classroom environment. Twice a week they meet in the office  to test new features, prototypes and mockups.

Voxy has over 2.5 million free users. Free users have access to a limited but fresh and amount of content. Premium subscribers have access to additional content in other areas of interest. The conversion rate varies from country to country, but it is quite high.

Voxy is now available for Portuguese and Spanish native speakers. The next markets will be China, Japan and Korea.

Rob Walling is a solo entrepreneur based in Fresno, California. He also has a podcast, Startups for the Rest of Us. In this episode, he will tell us about how, over the years, he has built companies to solve problems for real people, with minimum investment.

In the beginning, being a software developer, Rob was building constantly, thinking that writing code is what really matters. Over the years he has realised that in order to launch a successful business more time needed to be spent on marketing and other aspects of the business. Slowly, he stopped building as many new projects from the ground up and started acquiring products that were already on the market in order to improve them. He chose a niche, got a flow of customers, and started having small success.

Rob is not too fond of hiring and managing full-time employees, so he outsources as much work as he can. He hires freelancers, pays them an hourly rate, and builds a long-term professional relationship with them. His contractors are managed online through oDesk. In order to find the right fit for every project, he tries to make it personal, getting to know his collaborators – if they can communicate well in writing and are truly interested in what he’s working on.

As an entrepreneur, he believes it is important to persevere, to be willing to fail, and to view failure as a lesson. Rob believes that it is important to get feedback on your product. If development cycle overpasses 600 hour mark, there is little chance of success. If your project requires skills outside of your area of expertise, try to find a co-founder whose skills would be in that area.

Rob joins Mastermind groups to find support and exchange ideas with others. When thinking of launching a new product, he tries to find a market that is easily accessible, where he can solve real problems for real people. He used to think that the only way to have a business was to raise funding and have a multimillion dollar company, but there are other ways of doing things. You can have a focus on a niche market and have a successful business that requires only a couple of hours a week of your time. For that, you don’t need a huge investment. Think big, but keep it small.

Jeevan was one of our first guests in Season 1 at Escape Velocity. We catch up with him, to see how he and his company are doing. Sifteo has grown a lot since our last interview.

Sifteo makes fun little cubes, combining the best of human interaction technology with a classic game approach. It is a very creative product that allows users come up with incredibly innovative design ideas.

As the company was growing, Jeevan has learned a few interesting things. While you know your product inside out, you can’t do everything. Look for advisors from day 1. They will help you make and weigh your decisions.

When forming your team, hire talented people who enjoy what they do. Make sure they can demonstrate their passion. If you are hiring a developer, he should have cool stuff he can show you, something he is doing just for fun. Look for signs of genuine passion.

Finding talent outside your field of expertise can be hard. Start by identifying someone who is excited about a role. Do not underestimate the value of a business person. As your company gets bigger, you will slowly become more of a business guy yourself. You will spend more and more time trying to clearly communicate ideas than coding.

Things will get very busy as your company grows. Prioritize. In the morning, make a list of tasks you need to get done. Listen to your customers, always keep improving.  Find the talented people out there. Sharing your success is just great.

Daniela Schiffer is the co-founder of Changers, based in Berlin. Changers have created a solar charger that allows you to generate and produce your own renewable energy. It can be used with any device chargeable through USB. The idea behind it is to motivate people to act against climate change within an online community.

Entirely manufactured in Germany, the solar charger keeps track of your carbon dioxide savings. These savings are rewarded by credits. The playful, gamified approach makes this device special. The community  built around it shows that smalls efforts, put together and connected, generate meaningful changes that help protect the environment.

Changers launched in sunny California in Autumm 2011. Daniela Schiffer takes us through the development phases of the product, and talks about lessons learned: try not to compromise beyond what you can do, and communicate your message clearly. Together we can make a change.

Shownotes:

Ordr.in makes the food ordering experience easy, linking buyers and sellers. Ordr.in is a set of APIs that turn any app or website into a way to order food. A flexible, customizable solution that gives clients control, building trust and fostering creativity.

David Bloom

David Bloom tells us how he makes customers and strategic partners understand and be part of his vision. Customers look for concrete examples, whereas co-founders want to find out about the opportunity. Achieving the balance between specific and conceptual ideas can be challenging.

David talks about the difficulties of finding a tech co-founder. Being part of the startup community helps him build an engaged team that shares the same values and feels emotionally rewarded. He believes that domain expertise, deep knowledge of the industry and hard work are crucial to make a difference. Listen and learn how to build a team and business and capitalizing on a market opportunity that you see.

Shownotes

Between is a social network for two people. For you and the one you love. A private space to share data safely. Between had launched in Korea three months ago. The number of users just keeps growing. Download the App at:  www,appbetween.us

Edward Lee

Edward Lee, Jaeuk Park  and his team, a group of students at Seoul National University, started working on Between thinking of couples and how can they share their secrets without worrying about privacy issues. In Between, you can share photos with your partner, chat, and keep all your memories in one place. If for some reason the relationship does not work out… There is always a 30 day “grace period” to get back together and recover your data.

Edward talks about the challenges the app is facing: user experience, monetization, retention, life cycle and target markets.

Jaeuk Park

Shownotes

Wello is a company with a bold mission to deliver clean water where it is needed the most. From their website:

The WaterWheel is an innovative leapfrog technology that will replace piped water infrastructure in the same way that cellular phones have replaced landlines. In the process, Wello creates jobs, improves health and increases access to education; it’s the girl effect in action!

We have been trying to talk to Cynthia for a while and finally had a chance to catch up with her. Listen and learn about building a business in India, the field and operational challenges and the vision for the future. The simplicity and elegance of the product and its potential impact is what caught our imagination.

This week, Ben and Hrishi talk to Dr. Cory Kidd who joins in from Hong Kong in a very interesting episode about building and releasing a brand new product. Listen and learn about market research, finding a niche, developing a team and a company.

Intuitive Automata builds Autom: “a weight loss coach that has been proven to help you successfully lose weight and keep it off over time.” We explore the space of personal robotics and the future of robots as helpers enhancing the human experience.

Shownotes

What I learned in 2011?

1. It’s all about the team – Make your start-up an exclusive club, where only the best of the best can get in!  At the same time, connect with other individuals, businesses, and start-ups who care about your goal/the vision of your start-up.  All too often we associate with people and organisation who may be interested, but don’t really care if your start-up takes off.
2. Solidarity is a strategy - Strategically work with other relevant start-ups.  They understand your pain and as they grow they will take you along.
3. Mind your IP – It is crucial to protect your idea, even when looking for advice or brainstorming with others.  Get your idea and your IP protected legally.  At MoWoza, we thought an NDA would be sufficient.  It is not.  Get contracts in place before you ask for development, designs or advice from industry specialists/innovators.
4. Patience is a virtue – Be patient and prepared for the model to take shape.  Everyone says this, because it is true.
5. The cashflow story - Have a cash flow strategy and an ‘emergency/fire’ network for when the bank overdraft is flashing amber.
6. VCs want to help! – Contrary to popular opinion, if you are on to something with your enterprise, venture capitalists will help.  They will ask for updates, follow you, put you in contact with Angel Investors, tell you which grants to chase, introduce you to strategic partners and inform you about competitions you can enter until they are ready to step in.
7. Angels want to make money too – While Angel investors may seem more patient and kinder than VCs, they still want to make more money than they would earn parking it in the bank.  Choose an Angel with ‘skin in the game’, someone from a similar background, who has experience of start-ups, rather than someone who inherited a pot of money or acquired his wealth through a large corporate performance bonus.
8. Determination - this needs to be ENDLESS.  The drive must be ENDLESS, the vision must be ALL encompassing.
9. Dream HUGE - Need I say more And keep at it.

I have signed up to Dittit to help with my Escape Velocity tasks.  I’ll let you know how I get on with it.  Ben was particularly keen on the punishment side of things, so that tells you everything you need to know about Ben.

Dittit caters to goals of every scale, from climbing Mount Everest to going running once a week.

As Steven said, ‘most people experience moments of motivation.’  The great idea behind Dittit is helping people expand their motivation.

In a departure from our usual format, the guys had an informal round-up of some of the highlights from this season’s podcasts, revisiting what they learned from the guests, what worked and what didn’t work so well, and reflecting on our future goals for Escape Velocity.

Enjoy the podcast, happy holidays and thanks for your feedback and support.  As always, you can drop us an email at feedback @ reachev.com.  We won’t respond, because we’re going on a group skiing trip until the new year.  See you in 2012.

We’re big fans of TED, here at Escape Velocity, but I’m particularly excited that this year’s TED Prize has been awarded not to an individual, but to the concept of the City 2.0.  Cities are already hubs of innovation and creativity, but how can we reconfigure them to be more creative, innovative and sustainable, socially, economically and environmentally?  TED wants to harness your thoughts.  Let’s go!

Finally, EV Recommends two documents to stimulate your brains, via Matthew Alberto’s excellent blog, one by Gregory Dees, entitled The Meaning of Social Entrepreneurship, and a short but inspiring essay by the redoubtable Jeff Skoll.

Years ago, 3D printing sounded like a fantastical Sci-Fi concept.  You load up a design for a table or engine components into my computer, hit print and it reproduces it for me.  Sounds like the replicator from Star Trek: The Next Generation, but while I cannot yet commission my computer to make me tea, 3D printing is now accessible to consumers.

Okay, say you’re not a Trekkie, why is this big news?  Well, it means that designers can prototype a design or show proof of concept without going through an expensive and lengthy manufacturing process.  And while 3D printing is not quite in our homes yet, remember that 40 years ago the idea of owning your own computer seemed equally fanciful.

Iteration is an important concept in 3D printing.  So it is in design and entrepreneurship.  Sounds like a marriage made in heaven.  Or possibly New Zealand.

Shownotes

EV Recommends the Aravind Eye Care System, whose amazing work in Tamilnadu, in Southern India, was documented on NPR this week.  Aravind’s surgeons not only treats severe sight-loss, with state-of-the-art surgery, with efficiency that dwarfs the performance of their Western counterparts, but Aravind set up its own manufacturing division to meet the huge demand for lenses.

If you listened to Suzana Moreira’s interview on this weeks podcast, you probably have some idea about how ubiquitous and how important mobile phones are throughout Africa.  This BBC article shows that it is absolutely exploding.

Bianca Bartz reported on the work of a health clinic which caters to low-income women in Nairobi.  Check out the video above, which explains some of the challenges they face.  Penda Health opted for a for-profit model in order to be free from the demands of donors and to be more sustainable.  Amazing!  EV Recommends!

Migrant workers are particularly vulnerable, as they are often unregistered and so cannot use traditional banking services.  moWoza serves as an agent for these workers to send remittances back home, in the form of food and even electronics.

Remittances are clearly vital to these migrant workers and their families, but the pipelines between A and B is leaky at best, with lots of places where goods can be lost or stolen.  So rather than reinvent the wheel, moWoza tackles the problem with 21st century tactics, bringing together the ubiquity of the mobile phone and the existing cross-border commerce.

One of the other interesting points about this enterprise is that it is capturing data about a market about which very little is known.  If moWoza takes of there is a lot of potential for addressing the needs of this vulnerable group.

Shownotes

Melissa Steffan of the Washington Post wrote a great feature about the future of philanthropy.  Guess what, it’s business.  Heartening to see the idea of for-profit social enterprise gathering momentum.

And finally, EV Recommends a really interesting report from Stanford Social Innovation Review about Design Thinking for Social Innovation and also an article by Tim Brown about Why Social Innovators Need Design Thinking.  Very thought-provoking.

‘We need banking but we don’t need banks,’ says Prosper’s CEO, Chris Larsen, in an article by Chikodi Chima, on Venturebeat.  Prosper is a US peer-to-peer lending and investment startup.  Given the popularity of banking at the moment, this may be good news.  And the ire is hardly limited to Greeks or #OccupyWallStreet protesters.  Lots of small businesses are having trouble securing loans to keep themselves going in tough times.  Maybe it’s time to rethink the whole deal.

Alex Goldmark had a good article on public radio’s Marketplace program about the number of MBA’s now going into for-profit social enterprise.  Let’s hope a bubble is not forming.  Kill that buzz!

Finally, EV Recommends McKinsey’s shout out for social innovators to post short videos – 60 seconds – that show smart solutions to chronic social issues.  Fantastic idea!

Rafael joins us from San Francisco and talks about his company Uber Shelter. Listen to this episode and learn about pivoting, understanding your market and going back to the drawing board. We had a great time with this.

Here are the show notes: Shownotes

Also, EV Recommends an article on Fast Company called ‘Five Social Enterprise Myths, Dispelled.‘ While it is aimed towards the investor’s perspective, it’s author, Kristen Ace Burns, of the Roberts Enterprise Development Fund, makes a lot of points that are relevant to anyone involved in social enterprise and hits the nail on the head with her no-nonsense description of its realities.

Determining whether a social-enterprise business is succeeding is rarely a simple analysis. Ongoing tracking is key and requires a level of complexity that can rival (and in some cases exceed) that of a regular business. A robust accounting system is critical – one that can separate the enterprise’s activities from those of the agency as a whole and monitor such things as inventory and cost of goods sold, which are often not part of traditional nonprofit accounting.

Jeff Skoll at The Tech Awards in San Jose | Photo by Charlotte Fiorito

A fantastic (and free!) online toolkit for developing an enterprise in terms of understanding its impacts, is Proving and Improving, which is a product of the UK’s New Economics Forum.  It walks users through a number of steps, to help them understand their enterprise and choose relevant tools to measure the success of their actions.  It certainly stimulates the brain.

Ah, it seems like the world is catching on to EV’s ‘make profit, but make a difference’ message!  The New York Times featured an article on Sunday about the work of the Unreasonable Institute, a hothouse for (would-be) enterprises with impact.

And finally, Escape Velocity recommends The Tech Awards, which took place last week, in San Jose, California.  The Awards are run by The Tech Museum, and as well as envying its excellent motto - ’technology benefiting humanity’ – we applaud the Awards’ global span, recognising the work of companies in areas such as Health, Equality, Education and the Environment, and garnering the support of Intel, Nokia and Microsoft.  Check out the list of current laureates and get busy before next year’s awards.

This was a really fascinating interview and the whole EV team was inspired by it.

The great thing about this interview is that while Robert is a really humble, modest person, his idea is anything but.  We were all blown away by the huge potential of what is essentially clean, mobile energy-generation.  Imagine a farm in rural India or Africa, being able to power its farming equipment, water pumps or vehicles; or mobile hospitals in disaster zones.  The applications are unlimited.  After all there is wind everywhere.

Robert was very candid about his struggle to attract investors to Windlift, despite the obvious appeal. It speaks a lot to the conservatism of venture capitalists.   But more importantly, it speaks to Robert’s determination, that Windlift is off the ground.

Shownotes

I have just discovered Give to Get Jobs, whose tagline is “for profit jobs that give back.”  It offers a twist on the jobs/career website, connecting professionals with social enterprises.  Nice work if you can get it.

Finally, EV Recommends Managing the Double Bottom Line, an interesting resource posted by the Social Enterprise Toolbelt.  It’s a manual to help social entrepreneurs plan their market-led social enterprises, but it has a lot of relevance for for-profit enterprises aiming at a significant social impact.

Ben and Hrishi interviewed the MIT graduate and co-founder of Global Cycle Solutions, an innovative company which helps small farmers in rural Tanzania harness pedal-power to make big savings on some of their more time- and labour-intensive tasks.

This week’s Shownotes: Shownotes

Lots right?  Okay, I’d better keep it short.

I’m thinking about attention; what it is; why it’s important; how to get it.

Like a lot of people I have an ever-shortening attention span.  I consume a lot of media (in a wide variety), but I am brutally intolerant of anything I feel is not enriching me, or worse, is wasting my time.

If this happens more than once, for example with a TV show, I give it up.

And this is ironic, because at the same time I am frequently distracted by twitter, facebook, incoming email, my daily routine and my to-do list.

And so I’m really thinking about our interview with Project Noah’s Yasser Ansari.  Yasser said several things that have given me a lot to think about, especially in regard to attention.

I mean I knew that attention is the real currency of business.  In fact, you could say that the best brands are simply those that people trust with their attention.  And people trust those brands to add value when they do give over their attention.

But the innovation of a product like Project Noah is not just to grab attention for itself, but to leverage the user’s attention, to make use of that attention.  Project Noah allows users to observe and document the wildlife they directly encounter.  Users can also take part in ‘missions’ which utilise the data they gather for research projects.

Not only can I observe, catalogue and learn about wildlife – and maybe contribute to a scientific understanding of it – but I become more aware of my environment, my attention is activated.

This is a rare gift in a busy world.   And it is hidden the bonus of Project Noah.  You get some of your attention back.

If you found this post worthy of your attention, please share it.

References: 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonoberholtzer/2011/08/30/how-to-focus-in-the-age-of-distraction/

Listen to Yasser Ansari discuss his Citizen Science tool, Project Noah, with Hrishi and Ben.

In show number two of our new season Yasser Ansari explains Project Noah and Citizen Science.

Yasser’s resume combines molecular biology and product development in wireless technology, so Project Noah engages many of his passions.  Project Noah is a website and mobile app for documenting the natural world.

Project Noah combines an educational tool that children (and adults) can enjoy, which also provides hard data to biologists looking at biodiversity in different environments.

Yasser is a really interesting entrepreneur and we hope you enjoy our interview with him.   If you have any feedback, please email us or leave a comment here on the site.

Check out the Shownotes

Website: http://www.projectnoah.org/

Twitter: @projectnoah

As our conversation with Bill Liao underlined, social entrepreneurs look for ways not just to contribute, but to steer the direction of contribution, they want to address old problems in new ways. In a sense it is the reframing of discussions about how to help.

It is becoming clear that the work of many NGOs could be more effective, just as it is clear that government models for managing their own problems, let alone those of the rest of the world, are hopelessly out of date.

In many cases we are stubbornly refusing to accept the old proverb ‘Give a man a fish and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish he will feed himself for a lifetime.’ Indeed, in these straitened Economic times, Western governments and charities may go short of a few fish suppers themselves.

The concept of Microfinance came to public awareness when Grameen Bank and its founder, Muhammad Yunus, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, for its work in empowering small enterprise in Bangladesh. There are now microfinance institutions all over the world, emulating Grameen’s model.

One reason why we love Kiva so much, is that it supercharges the microfinance concept, by giving more involvement to the investors. Harnessing the power of the crowd, via the Internet, Kiva directly connects micro-investors with microfinance institutions and entrepreneurs.

The exciting thing about Kiva is to make a micro investment, see it bear fruit, and then receive that loan back and reinvest it in another enterprise. Speaking for Escape Velocity, it’s incredibly rewarding to see money that we have helped to collect go out into the world, supporting entrepreneurship and making a real difference to people’s lives.

Kiva is a project that everybody at Escape Velocity really believes in. At the start of this season, we set our goal to raise €1000 by the end of 2011. Our generous contributors have already helped us reach €850 with a few months to spare!
The bar has been raised!

We want to try to raise €10,000 for Kiva projects over the next year. You can help us. Contribute to our Kiva Team and help us live up to our mission statement!

Here’s a follow up to the interview we conducted with Bill Liao, plus some of Bill’s Huffington Post articles.

We cannot save the Environment.

There I said it.

What a relief. We’ve all been thinking it, right?

Climate change and the challenges posed by human impact on the environment seem to be both overwhelming and urgent. My recycling, consumption or water conservation are almost meaningless to the scale of the problems at hand.

Our responses to huge challenges like the environment can result in despair, feelings of bitterness or futility or of action that assuages these feelings without really addressing the issue.  Basically, we stick our heads in the sand and either ignore the problem or hope that some miracle innovation will save the day, rage publicly or privately against government actions or policies. Likely the actual effect will be negligible.

In Tuesday’s podcast Ben and Hrishi spoke with Bill Liao, an entrepreneur who has thought deeply about a specific environmental problem and how to take action on it. Bill’s WeForest project combines the reforestation of degraded environments with an education program, so that locals can make use of them.

Before you accuse me of being a treehugger, as Jared Diamond points out in his marvelous and sobering Collapse, degraded local environments provide the conditions for regional conflict. Or to put it another way, if you could solve local environmental problems and you would go a long way towards creating social and economic stability and markets for investment.

Sustainability is the name of the game here.

With his reforestation project, Bill has struck on a simple and direct action which addresses multiple problems. Trees help seed clouds and stabilise local climates, they enrich soil and protect against erosion, they offer shelter to more fragile plants and they provide habitats for species, promoting biodiversity.

WeForest is on a long road to reach its daunting target of a trillion trees restored to the Earth, but it is also an incredibly inspiring one. And this is the key, to make an action that is big enough to inspire, but small enough to achieve.  A trillion is a lot of trees, but the fact that WeForest has managed to plant 1000, 000 in two years shows just what is achievable.

I am a fan of the Japanese business practice of Kaizen, of continuous process improvement, and of Leo Babauta’s Zen Habits blog, of small habit change, and I believe the idea of iteration is critical. Often we look for one big innovation to completely solve a problem, rather than taking one small, maybe simple action that could make an incremental improvement.

Sometimes, as in the case of WeForest, an idea can be innovative and iterative.  That’s when you can begin to feel hopeful.

References:

• http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/deforest/deforest.html
• http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/areas-affected-by-deforestation

Please note that bold links are affiliate links to Amazon.com.

In this first podcast of our shiny new season of Escape Velocity we spoke with Bill Liao about a new and very interesting project, Weforest, which takes an entrepreneurial spin on both environmental activism and aid to developing nations.Bill is an author and serial entrepreneur, probably best known for his involvement in Xing, a German social networking site.  Bill takes a bootstrapper’s approach to what is a traditionally NGO- and government-driven sector.

Bill is all about action, which is clear from this interview and its an inspirational start to what we hope will be our best year yet, at Escape Velocity.  As always, please drop us an email or post a comment here on the site.

Here are the Show notes: Shownotes

Website: http://www.weforest.org/

Twitter: @liaonet

‘I think that of the investors I know, they would prefer to have an investment which both makes money and does something exciting that makes the world a better place. That’s probably why most of us who do investing got into that.’

Tim Rowe was speaking with Ira Glass on US radio show and podcast This American Life.  Rowe made the point that if VCs were only looking to make a return on their investment, they would probably head to Wall Street rather than MIT.

Equally, by definition entrepreneurs are interested in more than simply making a living.  They want to see an idea flourish and to create change.  Every idea is about change and the more radical the idea the greater the change it seeks to create.

Escape Velocity is particularly concerned with social entrepreneurs, those people who have ideas so big they have the potential to positively change millions of lives.  Often these ideas are deceptively simple in their brilliance.

I recently watched The Social Network.  Today Facebook seems like an incredibly complex and sophisticated suite of tools, but watching the movie and getting a glimpse (however fictionalised) I was struck by the very simplicity of its underlying concept: to allow people to connect with each other.

It was clear, in the film that this concept could either be used to exclude people or to include them.  Thankfully the spirit of inclusion won out.  We have barely begun to realise the massive implications, social and political, of social sharing.

On that note, here is a quote for the week.

‘Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.  Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!’

Scottish mountaineer, W.H. Murray, after Goethe

We have also been doing a lot of work on our strategy and branding and have refined our mission to focus more specifically on entrepreneurship with social impact. You can read more about this on our About page. We are pretty excited about the guests we are lining up for the podcast and think that they will have a lot to teach us and you.

As part of our thinking about the direction of Escape Velocity, we have created a Kiva team, which we hope you will consider joining. In case you are not aware of Kiva, it is a non-profit organisation that uses microfinance to help small lenders connect with small businesses in the developing world. Kiva is a wonderful project that really embodies the spirit of contribution and empowerment, which we believe is at the heart of Entrepreneurship. Our goal is to raise $1400/€1000 by the end of 2011. We can do it with your help. Stay tuned for more on this over the coming months.

Hrishi and Ben also recruited two new team members to help Sergey produce the show and to help develop Escape Velocity into the best resource it can be about enterprise with impact. Erik joins as Communications Coordinator, while Niamh is helping us reach out to exciting new guests.

We also want to hear a lot more from you, the listener/visitor. We’re really excited about our new direction and we want to hear your thoughts about it and suggestions about how we can improve everything we’re doing. Drop a comment below or email feedback@reachev.com

This week is the last episode of Escape Velocity for season 2. We believe that this was a great season, with a lot of interesting guests and improvements that have been implemented over the course of the past couple of months. We will be back with the brand new season 3 in the middle of august with a lot of new interesting guests and some improvements that have been in the works for quite some time now.

Shownotes

Website: http://www.wakemate.com/

Twitter: @WakeMate

Contact e-mail for the queries about API is included in the end of the shownotes.

This week we have something different from our usual guests in IT industry. You might also notice that we have done some, dramatic improvements to our video recording (at least we would like to think so). It’s our producer’s  first experience with video post processing, so don’t be too harsh on him…yet. And as always, we would love to hear what you think. You can e-mail us at feedback@reachev.com or send us a message on Twitter @reachev.

Isabelle-Jasmin is also kind enough to give some reference to the material that will help people from outside India to better understand its culture and how things are done there. Some of you might be happy to hear that Bridge to India is currently actively looking for people with specific skills. For more in this, and much more, listen or watch this episode and check out our Shownotes.

Shownotes

Website: http://bridgetoindia.com/home/index.html

Isabelle-Jasmin’s Blog: http://ijroth.wordpress.com/

Twitter: @BRIDGETOINDIA

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bridgetoindia

P.S. For those of you who prefer YouTube, here is the link. We are not famous enough yet to be able to upload videos of over 15min in length to YouTube, so we had to break it into 3 parts. And again, we would love to hear your feedback on the video, and today’s episode in general. Some video editing tips and tricks are always welcome

Justin kindly shares with us his experience of bootstrapping projects, and also his experience with venture backed projects from which we all can learn very valuable lessons.

Here are the show notes: Shownotes

Websites: Pluggio, Techzing, Startup Guild

Twitter: @justinvincent

Ben is back from Switzerland, so for this episode we are back to our usual routine. If you decide to catch us on video, you’ll see some backstage improvements.

Listen to this episode to learn about the importance of having a clear plan a development methodology. Garry also talks about internet resources that helped him a lot with business and inter-personal skills, links to which we have in our show notes.

Here are the Shownotes

Website: http://www.madmimi.com/

Twitter: @madmimi

In this episode we are for the first time situated in different locations since one of us was travelling. This was a challenge, thus there were some technical difficulties, but that didn’t stop us from having a great chat with our guest.

Wordnik is the next step in the evolution of dictionaries that is supposed to be fun and easy to use. Listen to this episode to learn about the importance of thinking outside the box, and about dictionaries in general.

Unfortunately we were running low on time in this episode, but we hope to have Erin on our show again to talk more about Wordnik.

P.S. We would like to use this opportunity to congratulate Joe Hyrkin, who has been appointed as a CEO of Wordnik. We wish him all the best in the new position.

Here are the show notes: Shownotes

Website: www.wordnik.com

Twitter: @wordnik

We also introduce our new Rewards program:
3000 points for a $5 Starbucks Card
5000 points for a $15 iTunes Card
8000 points for a $20 Amazon Card

We also have experimental show notes available at: http://bit.ly/kyVw02

Fernanda Parente

Website: This Way up Productions

Film Fatale Facebook Page: Film Fatale on Facebook

Jeevan Kalanithi

Twitter: @Sifteo

Website: Sifteo

Here is the live video:

Twitter: @rschilperoort

Website: Ecowell

Here is the live video.

Video streaming by Ustream

Website: Movirtu

Twitter: @n_w

Here is the UStream Recording:

It is such a rush to work with intelligent, driven people who are execution focused. I am loving this journey with Ben. You must listen to this, it is your giri.

Website: Vocalytics

Twitter: @bcurdy

Twitter: @ppolsinelli

Website: Licoirze
Website: Gamamoto

Here is a map of Michigan in the US (courtsey Wikipedia):

Website: Paperfeet
Twitter: @Paperfeet

UStream video Recorded Live is below:

Twitter: @InventureFund

Website: Inventure Fund

Here is the UStream Video:

Website: Echolibre
Twitter: @EamonLeonard

Website: www.moraveji.org
Website: Calming Technology.

We also recorded this on UStream as well. Any feedback is always welcome: