<![CDATA[Good Business, Better World]]>https://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.comhttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!3_f9!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fgoodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com%2Fimg%2Fsubstack.pngGood Business, Better Worldhttps://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.comSubstackSun, 07 Jun 2026 02:17:53 GMT<![CDATA[🛍️ Good Business #16 • Too Good To Go]]>https://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/good-business-16-too-good-to-gohttps://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/good-business-16-too-good-to-goFri, 29 May 2026 13:24:38 GMTSo, this week I saw an interesting website that lists open-source alternatives to well-known products. I thought: why not create a high-impact one?

So, I’m planning to list one high-impact alternative for a well-known product in each edition. So, here’s the first one:

High-impact alternative
Humanitix > Ticketmaster
100% of service fees donated to good causes

Now, onto today’s edition.

How Too Good To Go built a $162M marketplace from what restaurants throw away

The problem

  • One-third of all food produced globally is wasted, generating 8-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions

  • Restaurants, bakeries, and cafes discard unsold food daily: a built-in operational loss with no recovery mechanism

  • Closing-time discounts on specific items cannibalise full-price sales; food bank donation requires logistics and scheduling most operators cannot sustain

  • Buyers willing to pay for surplus food had no way to find it

The company

Too Good To Go

Founded in 2015 by Thomas Bjørn Momsen, Klaus Bagge Pedersen, Adam Sigbrand, and Brian Christensen. Denmark.

The app launched in Copenhagen in early 2016 and signed hundreds of partner businesses within weeks. In September 2016, Mette Lykke, a serial entrepreneur who had co-founded the fitness app Endomondo and sold it to Under Armour, heard about the app from a woman on a bus. She invested in October 2016 and became CEO in 2017.

What they do:

  • Mobile marketplace connecting consumers with surplus food from restaurants, bakeries, cafes, and supermarkets

  • Consumers buy a “Magic Bag” of food at a 50% or more discount

  • Businesses list their daily surplus, earn revenue from what would otherwise be discarded

  • TGTG earns a commission per bag sold plus an annual subscription fee from business partners

  • Available in 21 countries, including Japan, the first Asian market, launched 2025

The impact model

  • 500M+ meals saved from waste

  • Each meal saved avoids 2.7 kg CO2e. At 500M meals: roughly 1,350,000 tonnes of CO2e avoided

  • No logistics layer: businesses prepare the bags, users collect them. TGTG provides only the matching and payment layer

  • Businesses convert a disposal cost into incremental revenue without changing daily operations

  • SDGs: SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption), SDG 13 (Climate Action)

Why this business works economically

1. Zero-cost supply-side inventory

Restaurants are already discarding this food. Any revenue the platform generates for them is net new. Retention is near-automatic: partners have zero cost to listing and clear upside. The platform converts a disposal cost into margin.

2. Mystery model prevents cannibalisation

Standard end-of-day discounts on specific items train consumers to wait for lower prices, eroding full-price sales. The Magic Bag is a different product: mystery contents, no predictable selection. Restaurants protect their regular menu pricing while still capturing last-hour revenue.

3. Supply density drives consumer network effects

More partner stores per city means more daily options, more downloads, more retention. More users means partners see enough order volume to keep listing. The flywheel requires critical mass by city, but once established, it is hard to displace.

4. Marketplace economics without operations

TGTG does not touch the food: no logistics, no fulfilment, no cold chain. Revenue scales with transaction volume; costs stay largely fixed. 2024 revenue: $162M, EBITDA positive, 32% year-over-year growth.

5. B2B subscription compounds the base

Annual subscription fees from 175,000+ active partner stores create a recurring revenue layer on top of per-transaction commission. As partner count grows, this base compounds independently of bag volume.

The numbers

Key insight

Too Good To Go solved an incentive problem, not a logistics problem. Food was wasted because restaurants had no efficient mechanism to sell it in the final hour before close. The platform did not require a behaviour change: it made the financially rational action and the environmentally responsible action the same action. Every bag sold is both revenue for the restaurant and a meal diverted from the bin.

Why incumbents missed this

  • Supermarkets and restaurants ran closing-time discounts on specific items, which cannibalised full-price sales and trained customers to wait

  • Food donation programs required daily logistics and cold chain management most operators could not sustain

  • Operators tracked waste as an internal cost to reduce, not as external inventory to sell

  • No one had built “restaurant surplus” as a distinct product category with its own consumer appeal

What it took to see the gap:

  • The mystery bag insight: a surprise selection can’t be anticipated, so it doesn’t compete with full-price menu items. That single structural choice makes the whole model viable

  • Marketplace-first thinking: TGTG adds no logistics, only information, meaning near-zero marginal cost per additional store

  • Willingness to build supply before demand, city by city, before the flywheel turns

Similar companies

  • FoodToSave: The Brazilian version of Too Good To Go

  • Flashfood: Same surplus model applied to grocery near-expiry items in North America

  • Olio: Peer-to-peer food and household item sharing; community-scale surplus redistribution, no commercial take rate

  • Karma: Swedish food waste marketplace with a similar surprise-bag model; direct competitor in Nordics and UK

  • Winnow: AI food waste tracking for commercial kitchens; upstream prevention vs. TGTG’s downstream monetisation

  • Oddbox: UK subscription for cosmetically imperfect produce; monetises a different food “waste” category

Final thought

Too Good To Go’s core innovation is not the app. It is the insight that food waste is a market failure, not a moral failure. Restaurants discard food because the market for last-hour surplus never existed. TGTG built that market. The environmental outcome, 135M meals saved in a single year, is not the mission: it is the consequence of every transaction working as designed. The model has scaled to $162M in revenue and EBITDA profitability. Companies that make the sustainable behaviour and the profitable behaviour identical do not need to convince anyone of anything.

]]><![CDATA[📲 Good Business #15 • Wave Mobile Money]]>https://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/good-business-15-wave-mobile-moneyhttps://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/good-business-15-wave-mobile-moneyTue, 26 May 2026 13:16:36 GMTSo, here’s what the Good Business team (ai agents and a human: me) is doing:

- researching new companies to write about (ai agents)
- repurposing content from newsletter editions (ai agents)
- reviewing everything being done by ai agents: Leo
- picking the company to be featured in the next edition (Leo)
- writing the edition (ai agents)

So, ai agents are now doing the heavy-lifting while the human counterpart is reviewing everything and publishing.

Two Americans cut mobile money fees by 87% and became Francophone Africa’s first unicorn

The problem

  • Mobile money fees in West Africa ran 6-10% per transfer: on every bill payment, every family transfer, every small transaction

  • Orange Money and MTN held market dominance through carrier agreements and agent network moats

  • No competitor had the cost structure to profitably operate below 5%

  • Users paid because there was no other option

The company

Wave Mobile Money

Founded in 2018 by Drew Durbin and Lincoln Quirk, Dakar, Senegal.

Durbin and Quirk met as freshmen at Brown University. They built Sendwave in 2014, a remittances app that became the largest remitter to Kenya in the world within six months. They sold Sendwave to WorldRemit for $500M in 2021 and immediately launched Wave. Same problem, domestic market: the fee was too high and nobody was fixing it.

What Wave does:

  • Mobile money app operating in 8 West African countries

  • Flat 1% fee on every transfer: competitors were at 6-10% before Wave entered

  • Free deposits and withdrawals: no cost to get money in

  • 150,000+ agent network as cash-in/cash-out infrastructure

  • QR code payments: no internet required for basic transactions

The impact model

Areas of impact: Financial Inclusion, Poverty Reduction
SDGs: SDG 1, SDG 8, SDG 10

Subscribe now

Why this business works economically

1. Lower fee, more transactions

Sending 10,000 CFA (~$17) cost 600-1,000 CFA with Orange. With Wave: 100 CFA. That difference determines whether the transfer happens at all. At 1%, Wave earns less per transaction and executes far more of them. The account becomes a daily tool instead of an occasional service.

2. Legacy cost structure vs. clean slate

Orange immediately cut its rate to 0.8% after Wave launched. Its market share still fell 8.7% in two months despite subscriber growth. Orange’s Africa head called it “the Amazon model: we burn cash, hoping to kill the competition.” Wave built at 1% from day one. Competitors cut from 8% under duress, carrying infrastructure costs Wave was never built with.

3. Agent network as self-expanding distribution

150,000+ agents are independent businesses earning per-transaction commissions. Wave pays out, agents recruit users, network expands without a fixed headcount cost to Wave. No marketing spend needed when every agent is a sales rep with their own P&L.

4. 1% of an economy is not a thin business

Wave is the only African company on YC’s top 50 highest-earning startups for both 2023 and 2024 alongside Airbnb, Coinbase, Reddit. Wave’s own public policy head: “One percent of all payments flowing through an entire economy is not an unprofitable business.”

5. Debt financing signals proven cash flows

The €117M ($137M) debt round in 2025 led by Rand Merchant Bank, BII, Finnfund, Norfund is cheaper capital than equity. Development finance institutions don’t lend to experiments. Debt at this scale means recurring, predictable cash flows.

The numbers

Key insight

Mobile money incumbents priced fees as a percentage of transaction value, optimising revenue per transfer. That made large transfers profitable and small daily transfers uneconomical. Wave’s flat 1% inverts the logic: the model is built for high-frequency small transactions, which is exactly how low-income populations use money. When the fee becomes affordable, the account becomes essential. When the account is essential, 1% of all economic activity flows through it.

Why competitors missed this

  • Optimising revenue per transaction, not transaction volume

  • Legacy telecom infrastructure made sub-2% pricing structurally loss-making for them

  • No incentive to self-disrupt: 6-10% was profitable and uncontested

  • Building products for smartphone-owning urban users, not the full population

What it took to see it:

  • Two founders who had already proven fee compression works at scale (Sendwave, $500M exit)

  • A clean-slate cost structure designed for 1% from day one

  • Willingness to force a price war that competitors can’t win without rebuilding their operations

Lessons for founders

  • If competitors charge 8% because there’s no alternative, the alternative is a business

  • Fee compression at sufficient volume beats margin optimisation when the market is large enough

  • Solving the same problem twice in adjacent markets is a real strategy: the insight from Sendwave transferred directly to Wave

  • Free at the top of the funnel (free deposits) can eliminate CAC more effectively than any paid channel

Similar companies

  • Kiva: same root problem of inaccessible financial services for low-income populations; different model (peer-to-peer lending vs. payments)

  • NALA: applies the same fee-compression logic to Africa remittances; same founding logic as Wave’s Sendwave predecessor

  • M-Pesa: the mobile money model Wave is displacing in West Africa; higher fees but entrenched first-mover advantage in East Africa

  • Remitly: dramatically lower fees applied to US-to-emerging-market remittances

  • JUMO: AI-powered credit embedded inside mobile money wallets; Wave’s distribution is the infrastructure JUMO builds on top of

Final thought

Wave built a business where 1% was the natural price, and 1% at scale was enough. Wave just needed a cost structure where 1% was profitable before anyone else’s was. The fee that ran at 8% because there was no other option is now 1% because there is.

Thanks for reading Good Business, Better World! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

]]><![CDATA[🚩 Good Business #14 • Plinq]]>https://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/good-business-14-plinqhttps://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/good-business-14-plinqWed, 20 May 2026 17:18:40 GMTHow a growth marketer built a women’s safety subscription to $456K ARR in 3 months without writing a line of code

Hi everyone. I hope you are doing very well. After a very long break, 3 years since the last edition, I’m back!

Why I was away for so long: I moved back to my hometown and had to focus on other things.

What I’ve been doing: learning as much as I can about AI agents, automation, and how AI is changing the way businesses operate.

Why I’m back: after spending years searching for “what to build next” and “what to do with AI,” I realised I had already started something I trully care about: this newsletter and the ecosystem around it.

Going forward, the plan for Good Business, Better World is to:

  • publish 2 in-depth editions per week

  • break down how impactful companies actually make money

  • build a searchable directory/database of high-impact companies

  • extract and organise impact data and reports

  • map emerging ecosystems and trends

  • help mission-driven companies deploy AI agents and automation

Now, onto the edition.

The problem

Brazil has a violence problem that existing institutions cannot solve.

37.5% of Brazilian women aged 16 and over experienced some form of violence in the past 12 months, the highest rate recorded since the Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública began monitoring in 2017. That corresponds to an estimated 21.4 million women.

One case made it concrete.

Journalist Vanessa Ricarte was stabbed to death by her ex-fiancé. He had accumulated at least 11 domestic violence records since 2020, involving multiple ex-partners. She had no way of knowing.

The information was public record. But public records in Brazil are not actually accessible to the public in any practical sense.

They are accessible to:

  • corporations

  • employers running background checks

  • HR departments

  • financial institutions

Individual women had no way to run a check on a date, a driver, or anyone else in their lives.

Large information gap. Existing public data. No consumer distribution.

The company

Plinq

Founded in 2025 by Sabrine Matos in Brazil.

Sabrine spent her career in growth marketing. No coding background.

After learning about the Vanessa Ricarte case, she decided to build something. Using Lovable, an AI no-code development tool, she built the first version in 45 days.

The product:

  • women run criminal background checks directly from their phone

  • the app pulls from public criminal and legal records databases

  • results come back as color-coded risk scores: green, yellow, red

Revenue model: R$97 per year (around $19 USD).

Target market: every woman in Brazil.

The impact model

The business is structured so that every paying subscriber directly funds the infrastructure that protects other women.

  • Criminal record data becomes accessible at consumer scale for the first time

  • Each check runs against the same public databases corporations pay thousands per year to access

  • The lower the barrier to run a check, the more often women actually do it before meeting someone

  • Areas of impact: women empowerment, safety, gender equality

  • SDGs: SDG 5 (Gender Equality), SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions)

Why this business works economically

1. The data already exists

Plinq did not build a new database.

Public criminal records in Brazil exist, maintained by the government. The problem was distribution: fragmented across court systems, hard to query at scale, and not built for consumer interfaces.

Plinq built the interface on top of existing public data. Infrastructure investment is one time. There is no data acquisition cost per user.

2. The unit economics are unusually strong

Annual subscription: R$97 (around $19 USD).

Low price point means:

  • very low churn friction

  • easy impulse purchase

  • word-of-mouth spreads without hesitation

3. Growth is structurally organic

300% month-over-month growth since launch.

Not from paid ads. From word-of-mouth among women who feel safer.

When a product solves a problem people are afraid to admit they have, but that everyone actually has, you get this kind of growth curve without a marketing budget.

4. The addressable market is enormous

Brazil has around 108 million women.

At 1% conversion to paying subscribers, that is 1 million users at R$97/year. That is a R$97M ARR business from 1% penetration in one country.

This is not a niche.

The numbers

Key insight

Corporate background check companies already held the data. The government already maintained the records. Neither had any incentive to serve consumers.

Plinq did not build a database or solve a technical problem that required years of R&D. It built a consumer-facing interface on top of infrastructure that already existed. The unit of work was distribution, not invention.

That is a pattern worth recognising. Many institutional tools exist in forms that are technically public but practically inaccessible. Each one is a potential consumer product waiting for someone with a reason to build it.

Why incumbents missed this

Traditional background check companies serve:

  • HR departments

  • employers

  • landlords

  • financial institutions

Their products are designed for:

  • bulk queries

  • corporate contracts

  • annual enterprise pricing at a different price point entirely

Offering consumer pricing would cannibalise their enterprise pricing structure. They had every incentive to ignore the consumer market.

The government held the records but had no mandate to make them queryable.

What it took to see the opportunity was being a woman in Brazil, knowing the Vanessa Ricarte story, and being willing to ask: what would it take to make this available to anyone with a phone?

The answer was 45 days.

Lessons for founders

  • Public data that is “technically accessible” but practically inaccessible is a product waiting to be built

  • Consumer distribution of institutional tools is a repeating pattern: background checks, credit scores, property records, court filings

  • Low price point and high gross margin are not contradictions when marginal cost per unit is near zero

  • The best safety and social impact products don’t ask users to care about statistics — they solve an urgent personal question

  • Word-of-mouth is structurally built into products that solve problems people share privately with people they trust

  • Being personally affected by a problem is a competitive advantage: it creates urgency, product intuition, and founder credibility that no brief or pitch deck can replace

Thanks for reading Good Business, Better World! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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Similar companies

  • Be My Eyes: consumer-facing tool that unlocked access to real-time visual assistance previously only available through expensive in-person services

  • Citizen: safety information made accessible to individuals through a subscription app; similar consumer safety model

  • Ada Health: democratized access to medical diagnostic information previously locked behind clinical appointments

  • Kiva: gave individual lenders access to microfinance tools previously only available to development banks and institutions

  • Clear: consumer access to identity verification and security clearance data, previously only available through institutional channels

Final thought

Plinq was built by one person in 45 days, without writing a single line of code, using tools that did not exist 3 years ago. It reached $456K ARR in 3 months by solving a problem that governments had the data for and corporations had the tools for but nobody had the incentive to bring to the people who actually needed it.

The data existed. The infrastructure to query it was buildable. The market was enormous. What was missing was someone personally affected enough to actually connect those three things and charge $19 a year for it.

That is the pattern behind more impact businesses than people realise. Not a technology breakthrough. A distribution decision.

Thanks for reading Good Business, Better World! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

]]><![CDATA[📚 Good Business #13 • Better World Books]]>https://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/good-business-13-better-world-bookshttps://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/good-business-13-better-world-booksWed, 03 May 2023 11:34:14 GMT😍 Spreading Love

https://cares.betterworldbooks.com

🌰 Good business in a nutshell


Better World Books

  • Problems - Millions of books are thrown away by libraries when new editions arrive.

  • What they do - Collect unwanted books from libraries and resell them. The profits are invested in promoting literacy around the world.

  • How they started - Founders started selling their textbooks online. As the next step, they collected books from University and resold them at a profit.

  • Areas of Impact - Quality Education, Responsible Consumption and Production, Climate Action

  • Saving the World

    • Over 26 million books donated

    • Over $28 million raised

    • Over 320 million books reused

  • Join the Cause

  • Who started everything - Christopher Fuchs, Jeff Kurtzman and Xavier Helgesen

Make an impact. Share it. Go!

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]]><![CDATA[121ForGood #3 - This week: 1 Website, 2 Articles, 1 Podcast]]>https://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/121forgood-3-this-week-1-websitehttps://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/121forgood-3-this-week-1-websiteThu, 27 Apr 2023 15:04:59 GMT

🤮 1 Website

Greenwash.com exposes misleading eco claims made by big consumer brands

Thanks for reading Good Business, Better World! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

🗞️ 2 Articles

Here's How Much Money You Can Make in Social Impact

‘Smart Tampon’ Uses AI to Detect Cervical Cancer • Kate Brennan

📣 1 Podcast

Founders For Good Podcast - the most inspirational impact entrepreneurs solving the world's biggest problems. • Craig Confido

Thanks for reading Good Business, Better World! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

]]><![CDATA[🍆 Good Business #12 • Oddbox]]>https://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/good-business-12-oddboxhttps://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/good-business-12-oddboxTue, 25 Apr 2023 10:41:44 GMTHey, I hope you are having a good week. Still raining a lot here :(

Last week, seeing the confusion about the Twitter blue check, I decided to build something and try to catch the attention of those who don’t want to pay for it. What do you think?

😍 Spreading Love

“We rescued heaps of Lillibet apples (a whopping 70 tonnes) in the run up to June 2022 - all because there were "too many" after a supermarket cancelled its order.

The supermarket was worried the Lillibets (named after Queen Elizabeth Il) wouldn't sell, even though they'd requested our grower plant them - possibly for the Jubilee. So, rather than see the Lillibets potentially go to waste (and because we don't judge an apple by its colour), we were happy to give them a good home.“

“Summer 2022's extreme weather made things tricky for growers. The intense heat meant marrows grew much bigger than usual. This left them in a sticky situation, with many crops "too big" or "too odd" for supermarkets. We helped by rescuing around 29.5 tonnes of their mammoth marrows.”

🌰 Good business in a nutshell

  • Company - Oddbox

  • Problems

    • 33% of food produced globally is wasted.

    • Up to 40% of fruits and vegetables are considered, by UK supermarkets, too ugly to be sold.

  • What they do - Sell boxes of ugly vegs and fruits that would go to waste.

  • How they started - Eating deliciously ugly tomatoes in Portugal, normally not seen in the UK, was the trigger. A trial in London with 10 people validated their assumption that people also wanted the ugly.

  • Areas of Impact - Food Waste, Climate Change

  • Impact Model - Boxes of odd fruits and vegetables are sold and 10% of profits go to fight food poverty.

  • Saving the World

    • 25,000 tonnes of fruit and veg saved.

    • Around 1 million meals have been donated to charities.

  • Join the Cause - https://careers.oddbox.co.uk

  • Who started everything - Deepak Ravindran, Emilie Vanpoperinghe

“I quit to do something with purpose and to get my hands on a physical product,” — Deepak Ravindran

Make an impact. Share it. Go!

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]]><![CDATA[121ForGood #2 - This week: 1 Community, 2 Tweets, 1 Newsletter]]>https://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/121forgood-2-this-week-1-communityhttps://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/121forgood-2-this-week-1-communityFri, 21 Apr 2023 10:11:00 GMTHi all! I’ve seen so many different uses of gpt for everything. I’m still looking for good examples of how gpt can be used for good though.

If you have some use cases, please leave a comment.

🫶🏽 1 Community

Soapbox Project - We believe social and environmental justice is a cause for everyone.
And that taking action should feel good! — by Nivi Achanta

🐦 2 Tweets

Best Twitter accounts for climate tech — Alexis Ohanian

"We created a badass market map of #climatetech meets #AI startups" — Josh Felser

📰 1 Newsletter

Godspeed - Tools, resources, and inspiration for builders of social impact companies — by Russ Stoddard

]]><![CDATA[🍿 Good Business #11 • WaterBear]]>https://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/good-business-11-waterbearhttps://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/good-business-11-waterbearTue, 18 Apr 2023 10:01:45 GMTHey, I hope you are having a good week. A little different format this week (I’ve been testing some variations and would love your feedback). I’m focusing on the “nutshell” section and leaving the “long story” section out for this week.

I personally found WaterBear last year and have been watching so many inspiring films!

😍 Spreading Love

Ellen Windemuth once received a letter from a suicidal man: “This film really gives me hope and I’ll reconnect to nature again.”

“This film is a culmination of a 25-year friendship with Craig, My Octopus Teacher filmmaker” — Ellen Windemuth, My Octopus Teacher producer

99% of fashion students would look for leather alternatives after watching Slay, a film about the leather industry.

🌰 Good business in a nutshell

  • Company - WaterBear

  • What they do - Streaming platform for impactful, educational and inspirational films. It facilitates watchers to take action for a better planet.

  • The problems – There’s no easy connection between watching a documentary and taking action.

  • How they started - “I think we need our own network”. That was Ellen’s lightbulb moment after seeing clips from Craig Foster. He was diving in cold waters to recover from burnout and following the evolution of an octopus. The long-time friends joined forces and launched The Octopus Teacher.

  • Areas of Impact - SDGs

  • Impact Model - Watch a film. Take action through one of more than 100 partners. Sign a petition. Donate.

  • How they make money - Sponsorships

  • Revenue - Not disclosed

  • Join the Cause - https://www.linkedin.com/company/waterbear-network/jobs/

  • Who started everything - Ellen Windemuth

    • Before founding WaterBear, she was buying and selling documentaries for companies.

    • “I was tired of making men look good. It was my need to create a company.” She went to South Africa and started working with young filmmakers there.

“I was tired of making men look good” — Ellen Windemuth

Make an impact. Share it. Go!

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]]><![CDATA[121ForGood #1]]>https://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/121forgood-1https://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/121forgood-1Thu, 13 Apr 2023 09:26:49 GMTHi, welcome to the first edition of 121ForGood! This is a really short, weekly edition, packed with 4 impactful resources.

This week:

🫶🏽 1 Community

Impact Hustlers - The Global Community for Impact-Driven Founders

📰 2 News

Climate tech tapped the brakes in Q1. Will the slowdown continue? — Tim De Chant

Microsoft Pushes to Squeeze All it Can From the Last of its Climate Fund — Dina Bass

🗓️ 1 Event

SF Climate Week • 17-23 March - "San Francisco's week-long series of events gathering thousands of people & organizations to accelerate climate solutions"

Did you enjoy the 121ForGood edition? Share it.

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]]><![CDATA[🍫 Good Business #10: Tony's Chocolonely]]>https://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/good-business-10-tonys-chocolonelyhttps://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/good-business-10-tonys-chocolonelyThu, 06 Apr 2023 09:10:58 GMTI hope you are having a good week. This week, chocolate! Tony’s Chocolonely. Seriously, they have one of the most impressive impact reports I’ve seen. Worth spending some time reading it.

Thanks for reading Good Business, Better World! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Note

I'm doing a little change to this newsletter, splitting it in two:

  1. This usual case study, Good Business, will continue to be delivered once a week.

  2. The sections Good Bits and Tools & Companies will be moved to a new once-a-week edition, called 121ForGood.

121ForGood will be the place where I'll be sharing good findings. Resources like books, podcasts, articles, tv shows, etc.

4 different resources ( 1 / 2 / 1 ) per edition.

Right to the point.

121.

😍 Spreading Love

“Increased access to electricity in both Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, and increased access to safe drinking water in Côte d’Ivoire. Good healthcare coverage has become available in both countries since 21/22.”

“3/4 of the child labor cases detected at our long-term partner cooperatives on
1 October 2021 were closed by 30 September 2022.”

🌰 Good business in a nutshell

  • Company - Tony’s Chocolonely

  • What they do - Trying to make chocolate 100% slave-free the norm

  • How they started - Asking to be arrested. Teun van de Keuken consumed chocolates which cocoa had been harvested by children slaves. This act draw the whole media’s attention and he decided to create a slave-free chocolate brand.

  • Areas of Impact - Poverty Alleviation, Zero Hunger, Reduced Inequalities, Climate Change

  • Saving the world - 8,921 farmers earning a living income

  • How they make money - Selling chocolate bars

  • Revenue - €133 million (2021/22)

  • Who started everything - Teun van de Keuken

If you are enjoying this edition, make an impact. Share it. Go!

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📖 The long version

🧩 Problems

  • 1.56 million children work under illegal conditions in Ghana and the Ivory Coast.

  • The average cocoa farmer in the Ivory Coast earns €0.78 a day.


💡 How they started | How they are going

Asking to be arrested. Journalist Teun van de Keuken consumed chocolates which cocoa had been harvested by children slaves. This act draws the whole media’s attention.

He then approached Nestlé, which was the main sponsor of the new “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory“ film, to produce a slave-free chocolate bar.

Taking no as the answer was his motivation to create a slave-free chocolate brand.

*Section extracted from The Chocolate Case film


🌎 Saving the world

8,672,000 kg of chocolate sold

8,921 farmers earning a living income

€3.8 million paid in premium — Tony’s premium to enable farmers a living income


☄️ Impact Model

Tony’s mission is to make 100% slave-free the norm in the chocolate industry. The mission is guided by 5 principles:

Traceable cocoa beans • know who produces the beans and how (social and environmental conditions) the beans are produced.

Higher price • additional premium on top of the current price + certification premium to ensure farmers earn a living income.

Strong farmers • professionalise farming cooperatives to reduce economic inequality.

The long-term • at least 5 years of sales guaranteed.

Improved quality and productivity • invest in skills to grow cocoa, producing more and better-quality beans.



💰 Let’s talk money *

€133 million (2021/22)


💪 Join the cause

https://join.tonyschocolonely.com



🎬 Who started everything

Teun van de Keuken

2003 - Journalist Teun is shocked after reading an article about children slaves in cocoa farming
2003 - As a way to draw attention, Teun eats tons of chocolate bars and asks to be arrested (he’d consumed cocoa harvested by illegal child labour).
2004 - He is refused to be prosecuted.
2005 - He decides to draw the public’s attention by leading by example: he produces 5,000 chocolate bars which isn’t enough. 13,000 bars are sold!


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]]><![CDATA[☕️ Change Please]]>https://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/change-pleasehttps://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/change-pleaseThu, 30 Mar 2023 10:45:54 GMTLast week I tweeted and shared this:

My initial idea was to use the help of AI to build a table. I’d then use it to create a new bot, similar to the Gender Pay Gap Bot, but for greenwashing. Let’s see how it turns out.

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🛠️ Tools and companies

Breadwinners - Supporting refugees and young people seeking asylum into employment through artisan baked goods.

🙏 Good and Not-so-Good Bits

Rising temperatures in tropics to lead to lower coffee yields and higher prices, study suggests — Donna Lu

This School on Wheels Delivers Tutoring — And Hope — For Homeless Students — Magda Hernandez

😍 Spreading Love

Trained as a chef at one of the best culinary schools in the US. In 2010, he saved a person who’d jumped into the River Thames in London. For this heroic act, in 2012 he was given an award by the Queen. Five years later he was still homeless.

“We met up, and I got a job. Within a few days I was in a hostel. I was wearing clean clothes. I was clean shaven. I was able to have a shower. I had food in my stomach. I don’t think I would have survived much longer. Change Please basically saved my life.” — Adan Abobaker

🌰 Good business in a nutshell

  • Company - Change Please

  • What they do - Train people facing homelessness to become baristas and offer support with housing, therapy, and health services.

  • How they started - Cemal Ezel once was visiting a Banksy exhibition when he saw an interesting piece of art: a homeless person with a cup of coffee by his side, holding a sign written: “Keep your coins, I want change”.

  • Areas of Impact - Poverty Alleviation

  • Saving the world - 500 trainees have become baristas

  • How they make money - Selling coffee

  • Revenue - £144,000 (Sep ‘22 - Nov ‘22)

  • Who started everything - Cemal Ezel

If you are enjoying this edition, make an impact. Share it. Go!

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📖 The long version

🧩 Problems

  • Rise in the number of people living rough on London streets


💡 How they started | How they are going

Visiting a tea shop in Vietnam run by deaf and mute people in 2013 was the starting point for Cemal Ezel.

Two years had passed when in 2015, Ezel saw a person facing homelessness, at a London train station holding a sign “Change Please“.

Then, some weeks later he went to a Banksy exhibition and saw this art:

Banksy wall art: keep your coins, I want change


2 weeks later, he handled his resignation from a financial job to start Change Please.

🌎 Saving the world

500 trainees have become baristas

5,000 nights of accommodation provided

Over 7,500 coffees were donated to frontline health workers during Covid


☄️ Impact Model

Profit from coffees sold is used to help people facing homelessness via two different programmes:

a) Academy - Training them to become baristas and work on Change Please locations or their partners.

b) Driving for change - Change Please baristas are also supported with housing, personal finance, therapy support, and health checks.

Driving for change - Remodelled London buses are used by those experiencing homelessness to have free health checks, employment support, therapy and essential everyday items.
Driving for change - Remodelled London buses are used by those experiencing homelessness to have free health checks, employment support, therapy and essential everyday items.


💰 Let’s talk money *

$350k funding

£144,000 from Sep/22 - Nov/22

Costs of a high street coffee vs change please coffee. 54% of change please coffee's revenue goes to savings lives
Cost of a traditional high street coffee and Change Please coffee


💪 Join the cause

https://www.linkedin.com/company/change-please/jobs/


🎬 Who started everything

Cemal Ezel

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]]><![CDATA[👩🏽‍💻 Girls Who Code]]>https://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/girls-who-codehttps://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/girls-who-codeFri, 24 Mar 2023 11:24:46 GMTI hope you are enjoying this weekend, wherever you are in the world!

I added a new section called Tools and Companies where I share some good findings of the week. The “Who started everything“ section has now a founder’s timeline.

🛠️ Tools and companies

CONCAT The first digital agency led by talented refugee & female developers

🙏 Good Bits

You're going to need coding in your sustainability career — Tannis Thorlakson

Alongside Math and Reading, Schools Are Now Teaching Happiness — Michaela Haas

😍 Spreading Love

Sophie Houser and Andrea Gonzales are Girls Who Code former participants who created "Tampon Run", a video game that challenges menstrual stigma. The game went viral and was covered all over the world.

"Girls Who Code taught me to be fearless. Being in a field that doesn't have a lot of people who look like me or come from the same background has been more of a barrier than I could have imagined. Without my Girls Who Code community, I wouldn't have gone as far as I have today." — Joyce Guo

“It’s okay to not have a single clue about what you’re doing. As crazy as that sounds, it really is perfectly normal. All that matters is that you want to learn and you’re willing to learn. Ask questions. Ask for help.” — Mackenzie Saephanh

“Girls Who Code taught me how to adapt to a male-dominated field and find empowerment in my work. I feel confident and ambitious to pursue my dreams and feel resilient when challenges arise.” — Kaylyn Torres

“Don’t be afraid to try new experiences and never let being “different” or “the first” stop you from pursuing your interests.” — Kaylyn Torres

https://www.bareminerals.com/blog/women-on-how-coding-changed-their-lives.html

🌰 Good business in a nutshell

Company • Girls Who Code
What they do • Free coding programs for girls, women and non-binary students
How they started • An election campaign where Reshma Saujani visited robot labs and computer science classes. There were only boys in those classes which led her to create Girls Who Code.
Areas of Impact • Girls’ Education, Poverty Alleviation
Saving the world • 500,000 girls, women and non-binary students since 2012
How they make money • Donations
Revenue • $27 million (2021)
Who started everything • Reshma Saujani

"I had naively thought that if I taught them, that they would get hired. We're realizing that we're still up against a lot of racism, a lot of sexism that still occurs in technology companies that purport to be fair and just and libertarian.” — Reshma Saujani

Are you enjoying this edition? Make an impact. Share it. Go!

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📖 The long version

🧩 Problems

💡 How they started | How they are going

Humiliated. Shattered. Excluded. That’s how Reshma Saujani felt after losing the election for the US House of Representatives. Her own party had advised her not to run for the election.

As part of her campaign, she visited robotics labs and computer science classes all over the US. She would often see classes full of boys trying to be “the next Mark Zuckerberg”.

I remember thinking to myself, ‘Where are all the girls?’ and that question stayed with me.”

She saw this lack of girls as a massive opportunity. In 2012, Girls Who Code started, with 12 students.

🌎 Saving the world

500,000 girls, women and non-binary students since 2012.

Over 50% come from underrepresented groups in tech.

☄️ Impact Model

Girls learn not only how to code and build software but more importantly: they socialise, share learnings and learn how to be brave through coding.

The coding process is full of trial and error. It requires perseverance and bravery. Not being perfect is perfectly normal.

Girls Who Code runs three different programs: Clubs, Summer programs and College programs (See what they are building).

Impact. Sisterhood. Build community. Build skills. Build a professional network. That’s what they will achieve by joining the programs.

💰 Let’s talk money *

$27 million in revenue (2021) - donations from partners

*Over $100 million in donations since 2012

💪 Join the cause

https://jobs.lever.co/girlswhocode

🎬 Who started everything

Reshma Saujani

Timeline

  • Early 70s - Saujani’s family was forced by a dictator to leave their home country Uganda and moved to the US.

  • 1975 - Reshma Saujani is born.

  • 1988 - After suffering a racist attack, she launches Prejudice Reduction Interested Students Movement.

  • 2008 - Leaves a career in finance and law to enter politics.

  • 2010 - Saujani loses the election.

  • 2012 - She found Girls Who Code.

Biography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reshma_Saujani

Thanks for reading Good Business, Better World! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

]]><![CDATA[🎫 Humanitix]]>https://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/humanitixhttps://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/humanitixThu, 16 Mar 2023 13:26:04 GMTPicture this: you want to go to a summer music festival. The ticket costs $100 each. You need 2. The tickets are still available. You add them to the basket and go to checkout. The total should be around $210, $220, depending on fees. Surprise, surprise.

tickets = $200
service fees = $40
convenience fees = $10
delivery fees = $50
blah blah blah fees = $……….

Total cost = $320

Well, let’s focus on the good things instead….

🙏 Good Bits

😍 Spreading Love

  • “I am vision impaired and use the screen reader on my iPhone. We ran an in-person event this week and I tried it. I can’t tell you how rare it is to download an app that is fully accessible.” — Natasha Brake

  • “We've been best friends for years, and the concern is that we're going to screw up one of the most beautiful friendships ever by, let alone getting into business, we're going to get into business on this hairy arrangement of sharing a salary” — Adam McCurdie, Humanitix co-founder

  • "Look, the worst thing that could ever happen here is for us to lose our friendship. If we ever feel like that's happening, we need to communicate and be upfront with that and respect that and perhaps pull away from setting up Humanitix if it gets to that." — Adam McCurdie, Humanitix co-founder

  • Letter from Manju - Girls' Education Program Associate

  • Impact Stories - Kiirra from Yalari

🌰 Good business in a nutshell

  • Company • Humanitix

  • What they do • Ticketing platform

  • How they started • Co-founders Adam McCurdie and Joshua Ross wanted to support disadvantaged children around the world. Seeing the high fees on standard ticketing platforms, they decided to build a competitor, charge lower fees and donate the profits to good causes.

  • Areas of Impact • Children’s education

  • Saving the world • Over AUD $2.5 million has been donated to children’s education

  • How they make money • Booking Fees

  • Revenue • Not disclosed

  • Who started everything • Adam McCurdie and Joshua Ross

‘There is a lot of potential for tech companies to make a social difference. Yet social enterprises are rare in our industry. We see Humanitix as an opportunity to take on the giants of Silicon Valley, change the ticketing game, and make a difference to the world.’ — Adam McCurdie

Share

📖 The long version

🧩 Problems

💡 How they started | How they are going

Like many people around the world, high-school friends Adam and Joshua wanted to make more money. Were they dreaming about new cars? Houses? Yachts?

Inspired by Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Prize Winner, who introduced the microfinance concept and founded Grameen Bank, they wanted to support disadvantaged children around the world with better education.

How? Building a new ticketing platform. The platform would charge less in fees than the usual ticketing systems. It would be the world’s most accessible ticketing platform and 100% of profits would be donated to support children’s education.

But, initially, rather than making more money, they were earning less.

To fund the idea without raising money, Joshua stayed in his job while Adam went full-time on Humanitix with no salary. How was Adam surviving then? Joshua was sharing his salary with Adam. Yes, they were sharing Joshua’s salary. This situation lasted for 16 months until Joshua quit his job.

The very first ticket was sold for AUD 10, plus booking fee of 0.50p. To date, they have donated over AUD $2.5m


🌎 Saving the world

☄️ Impact Model

  • 100% of profits from booking fees are donated to children's education

💰 Let’s talk money *

  • AUD $1.2 million grant - Atlassian Foundation (2019)

  • AUD $1 million grant - Google.org (2018)

A straightforward pricing table. No hidden fees. No sign-up fees. No contracts. Standard 2.1% + $0.99 per paid ticket. 1% + $0.99 for charities and schools
A straightforward pricing table. No hidden fees. No sign-up fees. No contracts.

💪 Join the cause

https://humanitix.com/us/careers

🎬 Who started everything

Adam McCurdie and Joshua Ross

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]]><![CDATA[Solar Sister]]>https://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/solar-sisterhttps://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/solar-sisterFri, 10 Mar 2023 11:10:56 GMTHappy Friday! I’m introducing a new section here, called Spreading Love. This is the place to focus more on the personal side of the story: life-changing events, founders’ story, how those companies are helping their customers, etc.

Why? The world is already full of tragedies and grumpy people complaining about everything.


🙏 Good Bits

😍 Spreading Love

“I was able to pay part of my daughter’s school fees. And that one has gone down in the record of my life.”

“Before now I struggled a lot to make ends meet as I am a single mother taking care of my children here in Bauchi after my husband remarried, but with [the] Women’s Entrepreneurship Project, I have been able to support my family from the savings I get from my solar business.” — Mary Dauda

“With solar light I can weave my baskets even at night.”

Hilaria Paschal believes that when women contribute to their household income, they are investing in their future. She uses her own lamp to weave baskets and rugs by night, which she later sells at the market.

🌰 Good business in a nutshell

  • Company • Solar Sister

  • Areas of Impact • Clean energy, Girls’ Education, Poverty Alleviation

  • Saving the world • 8,500 (87% women) Solar Sister Entrepreneurs

  • How they started • Katherine Lucey met a farmer using solar light to make chickens produce more eggs. The extra money she made selling more eggs, was used to improve the family’s living standard and also to build a community school

  • What they do • Train and provide solar products for women to become entrepreneurs

  • How they make money • Sales of products at cost to Solar Sister Entrepreneurs and Grants

  • Revenue • $3.3 million

  • Who started everything • Katherine Lucey and Neha Misra

"if you want to see things happen at a global level start at the village level. Give women the tools and the education and they will drive the change." — Melinda French Gates

Share

📖 The long version


🧩 Problems

  • Over 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa live without electricity

  • Energy poverty has negative consequences on the health, education, and incomes of women in particular

  • 940 million people depend on harmful fuels for cooking

  • Smoke from cooking over open fires causes 2.6 million premature deaths

💡 How they started | How they are going

While working in Africa, Lucey saw the urgent need for access to clean energy solutions. She also saw the potential of women as key drivers of economic growth and social change in these communities.

https://solarsister.org/about-us/our-origin/


🌎 Saving the world

  • 8,500 (87% women) Solar Sister Entrepreneurs

  • 894,848 tonnes of CO2 emissions mitigated

  • $215 million in economic benefits to customers

  • 3,516,348 people reached



☄️ Impact Model

Empower women entrepreneurs to drive social and economic change in their communities through the adoption of clean energy solutions. How?

Recruitment and training • Solar Sister recruit and train women entrepreneurs, to start and grow their clean energy businesses.

Access to clean energy products • Solar Sister buy high-quality clean energy products in bulk, such as solar lamps, clean cookstoves, and mobile phone chargers and sell to Solar Sisters entrepreneurs at cost.

Door-to-door sales • Solar Sister entrepreneurs mark up these clean energy products and sell them door-to-door in their communities, using their local knowledge and networks.



💰 Let’s talk money *

  • Sales $1,124,408

  • Grants $1,655,357

  • Contributions $ 550,275

* 2021 financial numbers

Solar Sister's revenue over the years.
Revenue over the years


💪 Join the cause

https://solarsister.org/career/

🎬 Who started everything

Katherine Lucey

Neha Misra

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]]><![CDATA[Be My Eyes]]>https://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/be-my-eyeshttps://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/be-my-eyesFri, 03 Mar 2023 11:25:56 GMT👋 Welcome to all new subscribers! Excited to have you here.

🎉 I’m celebrating this small milestone: this is edition #5

I’m inclined towards creating a searchable website, using filters to find high-impact companies I’m writing about. Let’s see if I find time in my crazy life to do it.

⚠️⚠️ Message from the editor ⚠️⚠️

I really appreciate your support here and want to make the best of your time. So, if you have a few seconds, I have 3 quick questions for you:

1. What would you like to see less in this newsletter?
2. What would you like to see more?
3. What companies and/or industries would you like to see here?

Thank you.

Leave a comment

🙏 Good bits

🌰 Good business in a nutshell

  • Company • Be My Eyes

  • Areas of Impact • Accessibility, Visual Impairment

  • Saving the world • 467,802 blind and low-vision users

  • How they started • Hans Jørgen Wiberg’s friends were Facetiming their friends asking for help on short, daily tasks

  • What they do • Connect volunteers and companies offering real-time sight assistance with visually impaired people

  • How they make money • B2B programs

  • Revenue • Not disclosed

  • Who started everything • Christian Erfurt, Hans Jørgen Wiberg

“Sometimes there is information that you want to have for some time before you share it with other people,” — Wiberg, about a woman using Be My Eyes to read the results of a pregnancy test ❤️

Share

📖 The long version


🧩 Problems

  • Everyday activities are extremely difficult for visually-impaired people

  • There are an endless number of problems that I could list here


💡 How they started | How they are going

‘Facetiming’ a friend, asking for help on short simple tasks like: “what’s the expiring date of this butter?“ or “can you tell me which of these three cans is the coconut milk one?“ That’s how Hans Jørgen Wiberg’s friends were sorting out their everyday tasks.

During a Startup Weekend event, in 2012 Wiberg presented the idea of an app to match volunteers with blind, low-vision people needing help.

In 2015 the app was officially launched.

Within the first 24 hours, Be My Eyes had 1000 blind or visually impaired users and 10,000 volunteers signed up. Eight weeks later, they had registered users in 100 countries.

How the website was in 2013 and how it is in 2023. 2013 - There's a mobile with the app inside, with a sign up and login buttons. In 2023, there are stats on the website: over 6 million volunteers. 467,804 blind and low-vision users. 150+ countries. 180+ languages.



5️⃣ Explain like I’m 5

You are looking for your teddy bear in the darkness of your bedroom. You can’t see where she is. You pick up the mobile and call a superhero, with a super powerful vision that finds her for you, using your mobile camera.

🌎 Saving the world

  • 150+ Countries

  • 180+ Languages

  • Over 6.3 million volunteers

  • Over 467,000 blind and low-vision users

☄️ Impact Model

A blind/low-vision person needs help to find out which can have green olives.

  1. They ask for help on Be My Eyes

  2. A team of superheroes volunteers receive the request on their mobile

  3. A superhero picks up the call and finds the green olives, using the person’s mobile camera

💰 Let’s talk money

  • $12.4 million funding to date

Be My Eyes is free for users. They make money mainly from five B2B revenue streams: Corporate Volunteering, Specialized Help, Be My Eyes for Work, Be My Eyes Careers and Be My Eyes Experiences.

“But part of the reason for keeping it free is that 90% of the blind people in this world live in India and Africa and China and other places,” — Hans Jørgen Wiberg


📦 The product

From the users’ perspective, Be My Eyes provide visual assistance for people in need. Open the app, ask for help and in less than 20 seconds, someone from the fantastic team of over 6 million volunteers will accept the request to be kind and do good.

In 2018 Microsoft joined as the first company to use Specialized Help. Since then, a few more B2B products were created:

Corporate Volunteering • businesses can contribute and offer assistance to Be My Eyes community at a specific time. For example, company ABC will do a “volunteering day” tomorrow.

a) They simply select the number of employees who will participate.
b) Employees join Be My Eyes as volunteers, using their business email.
c) At the scheduled time, calls will pop up

Specialized Help • Customer service platform for blind and low-vision customers. Partner companies set up profiles on the platform. Companies’ blind and low-vision customers request assistance on the app and their customer service team answers the call.

Be My Eyes for Work • The same methodology of Be My Eyes but as an internal platform for the company. Blind employees are connected with sighted colleagues.

😍 Moments that are worth all the efforts

💪 Join the cause

https://www.linkedin.com/company/be-my-eyes/

🎬 Who started everything

Christian Erfurt

Hans Jørgen Wiberg

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]]><![CDATA[😇 B1G1]]>https://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/b1g1https://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/b1g1Fri, 24 Feb 2023 15:16:52 GMT👋 Welcome to all new subscribers! Excited to have you here.

This week we were hit by the terrible news of landslides in my home country. 

⚠️ Message from the editor (hopefully it caught your attention 😇) 

I really appreciate your support here and want to make the best of your time. So, if you have a 1-minute spare, I have 3 quick questions for you:

1. What would you like to see less in this newsletter?
2. What would you like to see more?
3. What companies and/or industries would you like to see here?

Thank you.

Leave a comment

🙏 Good bits

🌰 Good business in a nutshell

  • Company • B1G1

  • Areas of Impact • Education, Health, Poverty Alleviation, Climate Change, Disaster Relief

  • Saving the world • 316,343,176 Giving Impacts (sum of all impacts created across B1G1 projects)

    How they started • In her previous business, Masami Sato, B1G1 co-founder, was giving one meal for every meal sold

  • What they do • Easily transform businesses actions into donations

  • How they make money • Businesses’ donations to selected causes

  • Revenue • $2.5 million (2021)

  • Who started everything • Masami Sato

“In Kenya, I learned one incredible fact: All it takes is to empower one woman, just one, to see a positive effect in a community.” — Jene Roestorf, founder of Luxe Botanics, B1G1 member

Share

📖 The long version

🧩 Problems

  • NGOs lack access to funding

  • Businesses get lost with so many different NGOs to help

  • Companies don’t know how to integrate giving into everyday operations

💡 How they started | How they are going

The urge to help children around the world. When her daughter was born, Masami realised that not every child was lucky to be born with shelter and food.

One meal was given for each frozen food sold. That’s how Masami was helping children in need, with her first business. During this process, the lightbulb moment appeared: there must be other companies and other causes that could use the same model.

B1G1 was once a very manual service-oriented initiative

🌎 Saving the world

Read more on B1G1 Impact report

B1G1 Impact Page

☄️ Impact Model

  1. Companies select on B1G1 platform the causes they want to support and the business activity to trigger the cause *.

  2. Once triggered, the NGOs** receive the donation.

*for example, when a meeting is set up on Google Calendar, provide a day of clean water for a person.

**Charities follow strict criteria to be selected. Approved charities have their projects broken down into micro impacts.

💰 Let’s talk money

📦 The product

  • 2800 members (as of 2021)

  • 400+ high-impact projects

Giving Story
Tiny little actions, repeated, can create a massive impact. Members can link everyday business activities with a selected micro-impact (see image below). The more business actions happen, the more impact businesses will do.

Examples of giving stories

😍 Moments that are worth all the efforts

💪 Join the cause

https://b1g1.com/careers

🎬 Who started everything

Masami Sato

References

Share! Share! Share! Share this post if you like your friends. Maybe, share with your friends if you like this post ;)

Share

Thanks for stopping by! If you want these fantastic companies to make your week better, subscribe!

]]><![CDATA[🌳 Ecosia - correction: now the images were found]]>https://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/ecosia-correction-now-the-imageshttps://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/ecosia-correction-now-the-imagesFri, 17 Feb 2023 15:02:26 GMT👋 Welcome to all new subscribers! Excited to have you here.

The more I research about those companies and people doing good, the more guilty I feel about my past actions. Being aware of that is the best I can do for a better future.

⚠️ Message from the editor (this might gain your attention lol) 

I really appreciate your support here and want to make the best of your time. So, if you have a 1-minute spare, I have 3 quick questions for you:

1. What would you like to see less in this newsletter?
2. What would you like to see more?
3. What companies and/or industries would you like to see here?

Thank you.

Leave a comment

🧐 Around the web

Before we jump on this week’s article, I want to share some interesting things I found.

🎵 Listen to Spotify. Plant trees.

⛷️ Alpine tourism in the face of climate crisis

🌲 The surprising downsides to planting trillions of trees

🌊 How The Ocean Cleanup started

Now, on to this week’s article.

🌰 Good business in a nutshell

Company • Ecosia

Areas of Impact • Climate Change

Saving the world • Over 168 million trees planted

How they started • Two failed attempts were the inspiration

What they do • Search engine

Impact model • Income generated off of ads is used to plant trees

How they make money • Ads on search results

Revenue • €36 million in 2022 (estimated)

Who started everything • Christian Kroll

Women are the driving force behind many of our reforestation projects. By planting trees, they can grow their own food and become financially independent from their husbands.

📖 The long version

🧩 Problems with deforestation

  • Responsible for up to 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

  • Deforestation has led to a 20% reduction in the Amazon Forest's ability to absorb carbon dioxide.

  • Net loss of 10 million hectares of forest per year, leading to significant soil erosion and land degradation.

If you see a problem, try and solve it. That mindset is more important now than ever. — Christian Kroll

🌎 Saving the world

💡 How they started | How they are going

Two failed attempts to make Internet money led Christian Kroll to create in 2009 Ecosia: a search engine that plants trees using revenue from ads.

On his first attempt, he was spending most of the revenue from his broker comparison website with Google Ads. A search engine that generated funds for NGOs was his second attempt.

His next step was to stay in South America for 10 months, where he experienced the effects of deforestation. Back in Germany, Ecosia was born.

💰 Let’s talk money

☄️ Impact Model

Clicks on ads generate revenue. Part of this revenue, around 50%, is used to plant trees.

if everyone switched from Google to Ecosia, we could plant 300 billion trees — every year - Ecosia Blog


📦 The product

  • 0.3% of search engine market share

  • 500,000 million searches each month

  • 20 million monthly active users, mainly in Europe

Ecosia launched in 2009, using search results provided by Bing and Yahoo and ads delivered by Yahoo, as part of their revenue share agreement.

The climate-related features are their differential.

Personal Impact Counter

Ecosia shows an estimation of how many trees you have helped plant.

Indicators in search results

The green leaf icon and the fossil fuel icon were launched in 2019, to help people make climate-conscious decisions.

The green leaf icon
The fossil fuel icon

Then next, they introduced the environmental impact of countries.

2022 was the time to introduce the climate pledge rating, which evaluates in an A-F grade, how a company is tackling the climate crisis.

The data for those 4 indicators come from accredited organisations like B-Corp, The Global Coal Exit List, Technical University Berlin and Climate Action Tracker.

😍 Moments that are worth all the efforts

How Acacia Senegal trees change the lives and roles of women in a Sudanese village

💪 Join the cause

https://explore.ecosia.org/jobs

🎬 Who started everything

Christian Kroll

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]]><![CDATA[🌳 Ecosia]]>https://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/ecosiahttps://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/ecosiaFri, 17 Feb 2023 14:51:12 GMT👋 Welcome to all new subscribers! Excited to have you here.

The more I research about those companies and people doing good, the more guilty I feel about my past actions. Being aware of that is the best I can do for a better future.

⚠️ Message from the editor (this might gain your attention lol) 

I really appreciate your support here and want to make the best of your time. So, if you have a 1-minute spare, I have 3 quick questions for you:

1. What would you like to see less in this newsletter?
2. What would you like to see more?
3. What companies and/or industries would you like to see here?

Thank you.

Leave a comment

🧐 Around the web

Before we jump on this week’s article, I want to share some interesting things I found.

🎵 Listen to Spotify. Plant trees.

⛷️ Alpine tourism in the face of climate crisis

🌲 The surprising downsides to planting trillions of trees

🌊 How The Ocean Cleanup started

Now, on to this week’s article.

🌰 Good business in a nutshell

Company • Ecosia

Areas of Impact • Climate Change

Saving the world • Over 168 million trees planted

How they started • Two failed attempts were the inspiration

What they do • Search engine

Impact model • Income generated off of ads is used to plant trees

How they make money • Ads on search results

Revenue • €36 million in 2022 (estimated)

Who started everything • Christian Kroll

Women are the driving force behind many of our reforestation projects. By planting trees, they can grow their own food and become financially independent from their husbands.

📖 The long version

🧩 Problems with deforestation

  • Responsible for up to 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

  • Deforestation has led to a 20% reduction in the Amazon Forest's ability to absorb carbon dioxide.

  • Net loss of 10 million hectares of forest per year, leading to significant soil erosion and land degradation.

If you see a problem, try and solve it. That mindset is more important now than ever. — Christian Kroll

🌎 Saving the world

💡 How they started | How they are going

Two failed attempts to make Internet money led Christian Kroll to create in 2009 Ecosia: a search engine that plants trees using revenue from ads.

On his first attempt, he was spending most of the revenue from his broker comparison website with Google Ads. A search engine that generated funds for NGOs was his second attempt.

His next step was to stay in South America for 10 months, where he experienced the effects of deforestation. Back in Germany, Ecosia was born.

💰 Let’s talk money

☄️ Impact Model

Clicks on ads generate revenue. Part of this revenue, around 50%, is used to plant trees.

if everyone switched from Google to Ecosia, we could plant 300 billion trees — every year - Ecosia Blog


📦 The product

  • 0.3% of search engine market share

  • 500,000 million searches each month

  • 20 million monthly active users, mainly in Europe

Ecosia launched in 2009, using search results provided by Bing and Yahoo and ads delivered by Yahoo, as part of their revenue share agreement.

The climate-related features are their differential.

Personal Impact Counter

Ecosia shows an estimation of how many trees you have helped plant.

Indicators in search results

The green leaf icon and the fossil fuel icon were launched in 2019, to help people make climate-conscious decisions.

The green leaf icon
The fossil fuel icon

Then next, they introduced the environmental impact of countries.

2022 was the time to introduce the climate pledge rating, which evaluates in an A-F grade, how a company is tackling the climate crisis.

The data for those 4 indicators come from accredited organisations like B-Corp, The Global Coal Exit List, Technical University Berlin and Climate Action Tracker.

😍 Moments that are worth all the efforts

How Acacia Senegal trees change the lives and roles of women in a Sudanese village

💪 Join the cause

https://explore.ecosia.org/jobs

🎬 Who started everything

Christian Kroll

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]]><![CDATA[🥑♻️ Olio]]> over 6 million conscious consumers sharing food]]>https://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/oliohttps://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/olioSat, 11 Feb 2023 22:10:17 GMTOlio’s co-founders give super valuable lessons on how to test and validate hypotheses without building, start small, move fast, iterate, pivot, and grow.

I will closely follow their next steps and see the plans to impact 1 billion people, reduce hunger even more and be profitable.

🌰 Good business in a nutshell

Company Olio

Problems Food Waste / Hunger / Climate Change

How they started WhatsApp group

What they do Neighbours/Businesses share unwanted food with those who want

Business model It connects people wanting food or items with sharers

Areas of impact Food Waste / Social Good / Climate Crisis

Saving the world 65,312,492 Portions of food have been shared

How they make money Businesses pay a fee to give unwanted food

Funding $53.1m

Who started everything Saasha Celestial-One and Tessa Clarke

Their mission: 1 billion OLIOers by 2030

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📖 The long version

Problems

  • Over 30% of the food produced globally is wasted.

  • $1 trillion. It’s the annual value of food waste globally.

  • 25% of the world’s freshwater supply is used to grow food that is never eaten.

  • In most developed countries, over 50% of all food waste takes place in the home.

  • All the world’s nearly 1 billion hungry people could be fed on less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the US, UK and Europe.

Ok, we have all those catastrophic, massive-scale problems to tackle. But how to start? What is the most pressing problem? Where should we go to begin?

Facts from Olio's website

How they started

Would you ever imagine starting a massive food waste fight, setting up a WhatsApp group of 12 people?

Yes, you got it right. Olio tested and validated their assumptions by creating a WhatsApp group in North London. 12 people living close to each other and sharing surplus food for 2 weeks. No fancy app, no state-of-the-art software development skills, no ratings, no user profiles…Nothing. Zero.

Saasha Celestial-One requesting early adopters on a local Forum
Olio’s waiting list

“This was a great proof of concept: we didn’t need to spend time developing sophisticated technology, user profiles, reviews, and ratings, it just needed to be slightly better than Whatsapp.“ — Tessa Clarke

What they do

Olio brings back the sense of community, connecting neighbours sharing surplus food by simply taking a photo and sharing it on the app.

Businesses can also share their surplus food, by joining the Food Waste Heroes Programme. This programme has been the key element for Olio’s strong growth in the last few years.

Nowadays, neighbours can also share non-food items.

Business Model

Excuse my lack of skills :(

  1. Neighbours with surplus food share it on the app (in purple)

  2. Supermarkets, grocery stores, events organisers, and businesses in general request collection via Food Waste Heroes Programme (in black)

  3. The army of Food Waste Heroes collects the food from businesses and shares it on the app (in green)

  4. People from the neighbourhood request the food shared (in blue)

  5. Food Waste Heroes or neighbours giving food, meet the requesters (pink arrows)

The growth-hack

The team of Food Waste Heroes allowed businesses like Tesco, Eurostar, and Costa Coffee to give food at scale.

Explain like I’m five

If supermarkets, grocery shops, you or your neighbours have unwanted food, simply open Olio and share it. Someone will open the app and might request your bag of salad.

The Food Waste Heroes are the real superheroes, going to supermarkets, collecting all extra food and sharing on the app.

Areas of Impact

  • Food Waste

  • Social Good

  • Climate Action

Saving the world

  • ​​8,653,000,000 Litres of water saved

  • 65,312,492 Portions of food have been shared

  • 62 Countries OLIOers have successfully shared in

  • 6,310,450 OLIOers have joined the Free Sharing App

Their mission: 1 billion OLIOers by 2030

Impact page

Olio’s impact

Net Zero

Let’s talk money

Olio makes money via Food Waste Heroes Programme.

How the programme started: early adopters hated food waste, so, they had nothing to share on the app and businesses were too busy to post unwanted food on the app.

How to solve this conundrum? They matched people with plenty of time to post and share but had no food waste, with those businesses that didn’t have time.

Olio charges a monthly fee from businesses joining the programme. Over 100 companies have joined. The fees cover approximately 30% of the company’s costs.

Why should a company pay a fee to have unwanted food collected?

  • In some countries, like France, it’s forbidden by law to throw edible food away

  • Some companies already pay for traditional waste collectors

  • Positive marketing with employees and also with the public

  • Be truly involved in ending hunger worldwide

Why does Olio charge a fee from companies?

  • There’s a heavy investment in tech to support the programme

  • Olio manages a team of over 65,000 volunteers

  • Investments to promote the programme

Total Funding

They have raised $53.1m in funding so far.

Moments that are worth all the efforts

30 million meals rescued through Tesco’s (the third-largest retailer in the world) partnership

Save the world, join the cause

https://olioex.com/careers/

Who started everything

Saasha Celestial-One

Tessa Clarke

References used to build this report

https://olioex.com/

https://olioex.com/about/our-story/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48934122

https://www.mcjcollective.com/my-climate-journey-podcast/olio

RSNG What are the three main business lessons you've learned?

‘First, start small, really small. Second, test, iterate and learn as quickly as possible. And third, having a clear mission/ purpose that is undeniably good for the world is the most powerful of all secret weapons!’ — Tessa Clark

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]]><![CDATA[Ocean Bottle]]>https://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/ocean-bottlehttps://goodbusinessbetterworld.substack.com/p/ocean-bottleMon, 06 Feb 2023 22:37:39 GMTImagine working on a boat, dreaming of navigating turquoise waters and arriving at paradisiac islands straight from screensavers. The problem: some of those islands became gigantic piles of plastic. The whole marine ecosystem is dying as a consequence.

During his time working on a boat, Will Pearson, Ocean Bottle's co-founder, faced this increasing problem and wanted to create a solution to collect plastic before it enters the oceans.

Thanks for reading Good Business, Better World! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Enter Nick Doman, who has a passion for meaningful business. The future co-founders met during their masters and decided to create the bottle.

“Seeing stretches of water quite literally choking with plastic made me motivated to take action,” – Will Pearson

https://www.london.edu/think/iepc-ocean-bottle-a-planet-positive-success-story

“I was looking to redefine business and prove that we could fix global environmental and societal issues by putting people and the planet first.” — Nick Doman

https://www.london.edu/think/iepc-ocean-bottle-a-planet-positive-success-story

What they do

Ocean Bottle produces reusable water bottles made of stainless steel and ocean-bound recycled plastic. For every bottle sold, communities close to coastal areas collect 11.4kgs of ocean-bound plastic.

Collectors exchange plastic for money, giving them access to healthcare, education, and financial stability.

"Ocean-bound plastic is defined as mismanaged plastic waste (or MMPW) that ends up along coastlines and rivers and waterways within towns, cities and rural areas. When the seasonal rain arrives, this plastic gets flushed into the ocean often because of a lack of recycling infrastructure." —Ocean Bottle website [https://oceanbottle.co/pages/faqs]


Business Model

(Excuse my lack of skills)

  1. Consumers and Partnerships buy ocean bottles (in black)

  2. 20% of the profits go to plastic collection (in green)

  3. Collectors collect the plastic and exchange it for education, health care, and financial stability.

  4. The plastic is recycled and part is used to produce more bottles.

Explain like I’m five

Bad companies use plastic. Bad people throw plastic on the streets. The wind pushes plastic into the ocean. Poor fishes eat plastic and go to heaven.

A good company sells water bottles and gives money to men and women to pick up the plastic, thrown by bad people, that are close to rivers and oceans. Collectors can now use the money and go to school, see the doctors and save some money to spend with their families.

Fishes and whales don’t eat plastic anymore.

The ocean is saved.

Areas of Impact

  • Ocean Health

  • Social Good

  • Climate Action

Saving the world

  • 8,137,584 Kgs ocean-bound plastic collected

  • 4,300+ families supported

  • 2,500 mangrove trees nurtured

Impact page

https://oceanbottle.co/pages/ocean-impact

Let’s talk money

Ocean Bottle generates revenue by selling reusable bottles. Around 20% of the revenue is destined for plastic collectors.

I reverse-engineered their revenue and how much money was given to plastic collectors, considering how many kg of plastic has been collected.

To date

£3,800,000 given to collectors

8,137,584kg of ocean-bound plastic collected

£19,000,000 Estimated revenue *

* Assuming my estimations below are correct

The details if you have time and patience to read:

To date

8,137,584 Kgs ocean-bound plastic collected to date

8,137,584 / 11.368kg (collected for each bottle) = 715,832 bottles sold

715,832 bottles x £27 = £19 million total revenue

2021

2,421,952kg of ocean-bound plastic collected

2,421,952kg / 11.368kg (collected for each bottle) = 323,988 bottles sold

323,988 bottles x £22* approx. £7.1 million revenue

* assuming the average price of £22 for each bottle 

2020

632,413kg of ocean-bound plastic collected

632,413kg / 11.368kg (collected for each bottle) = 55,630 bottles sold

55,630 bottles x £25* approx. £1.3 million revenue

* assuming the average price of £25 for each bottle

Partnerships

https://oceanbottle.co/blogs/news/rbed-ull-x-ocean-bottle

7,464,000 equivalent of plastic bottles saved

7,464,000 / 1,000 (1 ocean bottle = 1,000 plastic bottles saved) = 7,464 bottles requested by Red Bull Racing

If each bottle was sold for £20, this partnership had revenue of £150k

Moments that are worth all the efforts

and the not-so-good moments

Once, Ed Sheeran bought bottles for his crew. The bottles were leaking…

Save the world, join the cause

https://oceanbottle.co/pages/ocean-bottle-careers

Who started everything

Nick Doman

Will Pearson

What I watched/listened to/read to make this report

https://www.oceanbottle.co

https://realbusiness.co.uk/plastics-pollution-ocean-bottle

https://www.london.edu/think/iepc-ocean-bottle-a-planet-positive-success-story

https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/find-a-b-corp/company/ocean-bottle

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