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I think your best bet early on is to start with the crowd funding websites like: http://www.kickstarter.com/ http://rockethub.com/ http://www.pozible.com.au/index.php http://www.quirky.com/ http://www.fundbreak.com.au/ http://www.catwalkgenius.com/ http://en.fansnextdoor.com/ http://www.indiegogo.com/ http://www.cofundos.org/ http://www.profounder.com/ ...

I started writing an answer to this question, but I got so motivated I ended up turning it into a blog post. The full post can be found on my blog. Here’s a summary. I'm a Hispanic female. I’ve wondered about this a lot. I've thought about all the usual reasons people say there is such a lack of minority-owned startups, but none of these reasons made ...

To me, it's not about money at all. Although making money is a part of it, I don't come up with new application ideas because I want to make money, but because I can't help but come up with a million ideas on a daily basis and I love developing new things. I'm the sort of person that is always thinking, what kind of awesome application can I build that ...

Well it needs to be your obsession ... not something you tinker with. There are a fair few reasons not to start, sometimes I advise people not to You have clients hassling, suddenly you have 100s of bosses ... many can seem more like screaming children. Family members are a hard balancing act. Ensure your better half (if you have one) is going to back you ...

What you are looking for is an "impact investor" also known as a "venture philanthropist" : some organization ready to invest on social impact rather than on financial return only. There are several such global organizations as well as some local ones. This field is quickly maturing. Here are some of them : Ashoka Echoing Green the members of The European ...

Well the difference is simple; a social entrepreneur is one who sets up a venture to achieve some greater good aside from just the product and making profit. The drives I suspect are identical as for most entrepreneurs the money isn't the primary driver. One of the aims is to solve some social problem, be that actual projects in the community or simply ...

EDIT: I've really misunderstood what the question was about. So my answer applies to the so-called "social media entrepreneurs", or anything social that's related to latest fad of "social networks" as Jesper pointed out. Not exactly what the question was about. You realize it's just hype right? Marketing or lazy hype. It's title bonanza. "Oh I'm a social ...

For most people, it's not about the money. Or, if it's about the money, the point is to get money to enable you to do bigger and grander things. Most true startup people I have known or worked with want to create something big, change the world, fix a problem and just generally have more productivity and creativity than what could be expressed at at an off ...

I certainly want to provide a very comfortable life for myself and my wife so I can do the things I want to do, more often. But it's definitely about creating something. If I were to hit a goldmine idea, I would almost certainly use a decent portion of that to fund my next investment or idea. I just have too many ideas to sit still for too long. I think that ...

There's no fixed definition of social enterprise, but it's certainly the case that All social entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs Many entrepreneurs are not social entrepreneurs Many organisations that start out as social enterprises in some meaningful sense lose that distinction in time If you'd like a book stuffed with examples of social entrepreneurs in ...

Reasons not to? Confidence - you're simply not convinced it's that certain of success to quit the day job, so you launch it as a part time project. (Now there's much to be said for the mere fact it's a part time project means it's less likely to work, reinforcing your opinion. The lack of time, budget and commitment makes it less likely to be noticed) ...

In my experience working with women-certified start-up business there were several good reasons to become certified as a women-owned business: Business Development: Many major companies (and the government) have programs to encourage women-owned businesses. Some are quotes, others simply prvode invaluable access to critical decision makers. This allows you ...

What a great question. I think that Rob has put together the exhaustive list of resrouces for crowd sourcing the launch of your nonprofit. That is one fantastic idea. Here are others. Framing the Campaign to Raise The key difference between sourcing launch capital for a for-profit and a not-profit is the desired return. In a for-profit the desired return ...

My limited experience with this has been that being certified as women-owned (or minority-owned, etc) is only an advantage if you do business with the US Government. Other than that it is pretty much useless. From what I have seen the Government is the only entity that takes that into consideration when making business decisions. If your client wants to do ...

Define minority... or better yet, who isn't a minority? For instance, there are 14 million Jews in the world, 0.5% of the world's population, a Mega-Minority, yet Israel (pop. 7 million) is second only to the U.S. in the number of startups (in absolute numbers, not per capita). Many Jews and ex-Israelis are leading U.S. startups. I've also seen a lot of ...

As others have said, it's not accurate to put 'Money' and 'Selfless Mother Theresa-like devotion to the problems of the world' as the two end points on a one dimensional axis of motivation. Both are the rare outcomes of the start-up process and not a reason to quit a good-job in favor of less or no pay and longer hours. Brian and Dwayne are on the right ...

I hope not! I believe the greatest motivator to do anything in our life is far more than money for money. If we do anything just thinking about profits, it's call labour... and I believe (and hope, actually) that to make a startup succeed, is required more than money, but passion for what you're doing. Do one thing thinking purely in profits, you'll get ...

I see two sides to this. Would you enjoy doing it full time? Or is it better suited / more rewarding keeping it a hobby. If you start working on it full time, your hobby can turn into work. If you really love it, it could turn out to be a great proposition. To quote Confucius "Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life". ...

To give you a feel for how "fuzzy" the concept of social entrepreneurship, I turn to the Wikipedias: While a business entrepreneur typically measures performance in profit and return, a social entrepreneur focuses on creating social capital. Thus, the main aim of social entrepreneurship is to further social and environmental goals. Which is the ...

I think many minorities have struggled throughout history. There have been hard times, and through hard work and good decisions they have made a better life for themselves. Good decisions when you're talking about life and death and one's family, includes as less risk as possible. When it comes to starting a company with extremely high risk, or finding ...

One of the very best reasons would be because you do not have the ability to focus 100% of your time on it's launch and success. Things like kids, marriage, taking care of elderly parents -- all get in the way of focusing 100% of your time on your start-up. Start-ups are hard enough without trying to multi-task its success. And it is very difficult for ...

I want to have a job that I really look forward to going to every day. I don't want to have any anxiety about a decision made by someone else that serves to inflate their ego or line their pockets to throw my life in to chaos. For me, the motivation behind starting and running my own business comes down to day-to-day job satisfaction and controlling my own ...

It’s important in a volunteer group and a start up to have: A clear purpose of the organization. Defined roles, responsibilities and organizational structure of the membership. Clearly defined goals and the means to accomplish them. Open communication within reason where everyone is heard and feel they are able to voice their ideas, opinions and concerns. ...

Nope, it's just about making money - just ask Ayn Rand. "Atlas Shrugged" was recently made into a movie. The critics panned it. It grossed less than $500,000 and was unprofitable. I am sure that Stephen Colbert would agree that the marketplace spoke. All right, I am being a bit tongue in cheek here but there is a point. Money matters. Even not-for-profit ...

The sooner the better. Otherwise clients who started using your services but didn't take advantage of the loyalty program may feel mistreated. Plus, bear in mind that the first clients are usually the "pioneers", and therefore potential ambassadors of your service. I would treat them with the utmost respect and give them all reasonable benefits. Also, ...

As you said you are going to launched your site so introduce something like opening bonanza for a week or two and offer different variety of doscounts or bundles which includes benefits for both the parents & kids. Don't assume this scheme as a loyalty programme, it'll help you know you customer demands and gather their feedback about your services and ...

This reminds me of Bhutan's Gross National Happiness (as opposed to Gross National Product). A method that is put forward in the field of economics to measure such impacts is the Genuine Progress Indicator. While this doesn't perfectly fill the bill here, it does suggest a methodology. The first thing you would have to do is to define the impacts you wish to ...

Your pitch is toned for the audience. If your audience shares your commitment to the community-- then the potential positive return for the community can be the primary focus of the pitch. If the audience is being solicited for an investment in which they are expecting a financial return, then omitting the profit potential from your pitch will be a bad ...

You are adult enough to start your own business if you are very keen on it, but what matters above the concerns you mentioned is the viable idea or projects, capital and execution to sustain in business, if idea/project is huge you may need to involve many people, managing finance and all other aspects of business needs patience, dedication, hard work and ...