Watch the “Demo Day” Videos at your Convenience

Featuring the Winter 2013 “fledglings”:

• Tansa Clean (a.k.a. Brown Box) – “Valuing” the stream of of human waste in India
• Serve Smart - Preparing volunteers for effective service
• Kodeza - Crowdsourcing local knowledge to create local change
• Shift Labs - Simple, inexpensive, human-centered medical devices for global markets
• Snohomish Soap - Organic, homemade soap, via a distributed women-powered manufacturing network
• UbrLocal - Connecting local food producers and consumers
• Localista - A customer loyalty network for and by your local businesses

They’re all concepts for Fledge’s sophomore class of socially conscious startups.

Fledge, an incubator program led by Michael “Luni” Libes, held its second-ever Demo Day at the HUB Seattle Thursday night, as eight groups demoed the work they’ve been doing for the past few months.

Fledge is a TechStars-like accelerator, but with a focus on “conscious companies.” To be part of Fledge’s program, each company must demonstrate a socially-conscious mission and model.

Libes said about half the companies arrived to the program without much more than an idea. Ten weeks and fifty mentors later, those ideas looked a lot more like a business.

“Almost none are doing what they first thought of,” Libes said.

After helping seven groups get off the ground in last year’s inaugural Fledge program, Libes was happy with another good turnout this year. He said all seven teams from last year are “alive and kicking.”

Apart from the “socially conscious” focus, there’s really no other defining characteristic that ties these startups together. Featuring everything from a comprehensive plan for human waste, to a city-specific point-rewards system of local businesses, each company presented something a little different.

Read the rest of the article, including summaries of the fledlings on GeekWire…

These kits, when combined with local recycled materials such as plastic bottles or glass jars, produce a reading light, a cell phone battery charger, or other electrical gadgets. The power generated from these kits is limited only by our creativity. Each kit provides clean, renewable light. Several kits pave the road to energy independence.

Support TayaSola’s efforts via their Indiegogo campaign.

Demo Day was Thursday, April 25th

Once again the “fledglings” got up on stage and shared their visions and plans with you and the world.

• Tansa Clean (a.k.a. Brown Box) – “Valuing” the stream of of human waste in India
• Serve Smart - Preparing volunteers for effective service
• Kodeza - Crowdsourcing local knowledge to create local change
• Shift Labs - Simple, inexpensive, human-centered medical devices for global markets
• Snohomish Soap - Organic, homemade soap, via a distributed women-powered manufacturing network
• UbrLocal - Connecting local food producers and consumers
• Localista - A customer loyalty network for and by your local businesses

What did you miss?  Read the wrap-up, and watch the videos.

And if you missed the previous Demo Day, watch it now…

Seven inspiring companies with the potential impact to improve the lives of billions… to save millions of lives… to make it easy to share and reuse the planet’s limited resources… to make it easy for us to share our time with those in need… to recreate the world where we know our neighbors… and to work with those neighbors to create the world we want to live in!

These companies presented their visions and plans on-stage on Sunday, September 23rd, at the Playhouse/Intiman Theater at the Seattle Center as part of the Seattle Next 50′s celebration of commerce and innovation.

‘Impact Entrepreneurship’ Places Importance on Social Consciousness

by Michelle Goodman | March 6, 2013 

photography by Jose Mandojana

On a trip to Africa in 1990, Peter Scott was moved to tears by the deforestation he encountered. Determined to do something, he spent 15 years as a consultant for governments and NGOs in the developing world, designing fuel-efficient cooking technologies that didn’t rely on wood. Through his work he taught people in 20 countries to build and sell more than 400,000 clean stoves, bread ovens and food dryers.

Still, Scott knew he could do more. In 2010 he formed Vashon Island, Wash.-based Burn Design Lab, a nonprofit organization that creates sustainable stoves for developing countries to build and distribute. The following year he founded Burn Manufacturing, the for-profit arm that licenses the Lab’s designs to build and sell stoves in Africa. Scott scored a $1 million loan from a Fortune 10 corporation for Burn Manufacturing; now he’s working on securing a $3 million loan from the U.S. government’s Overseas Private Investment Corporation and trying to raise an additional $2 million in equity funding.

Burn Manufacturing set up shop in Kenya late last year and received its first order for 8,000 stoves. The company is on track to build 100,000 stoves by the end of 2013 and aims to build and sell 3.6 million units in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda over the next 10 years.

Scaling his vision so he could reach more people and save more forests–and convincing others to fund that vision–required Scott to do a lot of pitching and educating. “People have misconceptions of Africa about it being a poor place to invest,” he says, noting high historic rates of return on investments in the continent. According to the U.S. State Department, Africa is home to at least six of the world’s 10 fastest-growing economies.

Welcome to the world of impact entrepreneurship, which places as much importance on socially conscious activities as on profit. With consumers increasingly weary of perceived corporate greed, companies peddling products and services that tackle societal and environmental ills are gaining a following. Incubators aimed at impact entrepreneurship are sprouting up. And investors are warming to the do-good trend. According to a survey conducted by First Affirmative Financial Network (FAFN), a Colorado Springs, Colo.-based advisor on socially conscious investments, most investment professionals say impact investing is on the rise and becoming more widely accepted by institutions.

“There’s this whole new thing happening where people want to do social good, and they’re recognizing the limitations of just straight charity,” Scott says.

Read the rest at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/225480#ixzz2PqEJD212

Kick is the inclusive business incubator, here to help all entrepreneurs through the difficult path from idea to started startup.  We are here to help all the teams after the weekend entrepreneurship events, after the business plan competitions, after graduation, or any other stage of life when an entrepreneur realizes that some help could help.

Kick is here for the lifestyle entrepreneurs, the social entrepreneurs, and the tech entrepreneurs.

Kick is here for the for-profits, the non-profits, and the hybrid models.

The startup process isn’t that different between low-growth and high-growth businesses, nor between tech-centric and people-centric companies.  All entrepreneurs need to understand their customers, understand their markets, and with that knowledge, find a path to sustainable revenues.

Here’s how Kick works:

• Participants fill out a standard application
• Participants create a crowdfunding campaign to pay for the tuition
• The crowd determines if the entrepreneurs should attend, by funding their campaign

The entrepreneurs who make it through that selection process then receive:

• 8 weeks of incubation, July 1st through August 22nd
• Twice-weekly sessions of:
  • Kicking your business forward
    • Creating a weekly plan
    • Sticking to that plan
    • Sharing your progress with your peers
  • Entrepreneurial education, based on:
    • The Next Step: Guiding you from idea to startup, by Michael “Luni” Libes
      
    • The Next Step: A guide to pitching your idea, by Michael “Luni” Libes
    • The Lean Startup, by Eric Reis
      
    • The Startup Owners Manual, by Steve Blank
      
    • Business Model Generation, by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur
      
    • Purple Cow, by Seth Godin
      
    • Evil Plans, by Hugh MacCleod
  • Office Hours / Guidance with Managing Director, Michael “Luni” Libes
  • Peer mentorship, amongst the participants
  • Plus coaching for:
    • Social Innovation Fast Pitch (SIFP)
    • The Seattle Angel Conference
    • The Cleantech Open
    • Other business plan competitions
• Thousands of dollars of perks and discounts

Is Kick right for you?

If you have any questions, first check our FAQ, then if not satisfied, contact us.

What are you waiting for?  Apply today!

Downloadable at: http://media.blubrry.com/ceocoach/p/media.rawvoice.com/seorockstars/p/www2.webmasterradio.fm/mp3/ceocoach/13/CEO031813.mp3

Downloadable at: http://www2.webmasterradio.fm/mp3/ceocoach/13/CEO031113.mp3

After spending twenty years of entrepreneurship, building (tech) companies comprised almost completely of men, it is nice to find that is not the case in the new wave of sustainable, conscious companies.  In these companies, it appears that women-run companies are not just common, but may be the majority.

The numbers of such companies are still small, but clearly growing.  Business incubators like Fledge (Seattle, WA), The Unreasonable Institute (Boulder, CO), and Village Capital (Atlanta, GA) are helping dozens of these companies annually, and unlike the tech-focused incubators, the norm is for at least half of the companies to be led by women.

At the first two cohorts at Fledge, the numbers are even more dramatic.  Six of the eight startups in the Winter 2013 program are run by women:

• AlchemList is an online wish list for non-profits, Freecycle meets philanthropy.
• Brown Box is cleaning up India, turning the waste stream of human cesspit effluent into a profit stream via power, biogas, and other products of value.
• MyVoice uses crowdsourcing to match the use of philanthropic funds with the desires of the stakeholders.
• Seattle Good Business Network is bringing a multi-store, local shopping loyalty card to Seattle.
• Shift Labs  creates simple, inexpensive, human-centered medical devices for global markets.
• Snohomish Soap produces organic, homemade soap, via a distributed, local, women-powered manufacturing network.

This in addition to Trash Backwards, TayaSola, and Community Sourced Capital from the Summer 2012 program.

And this is not a bias in the Fledge application process.  More than half of the applicants were startups with women founders.  Plus in the last two years of entrepreneurial startups coming out the Bainbridge Graduate Institute, all four are headed by, or run completely by women: Community Sourced Capital, Slice Finance, Stockbox Neighborhood Grocery, and TayaSola.

What is it about “conscious” companies that attracts so many women?

According to Carrie Ferrence, co-founder and CEO of Stockbox Neighborhood Grocery , “The traditional start-up model has been long dominated by men, but the shift toward conscious companies has created space for women to take a more prominent leadership role, designing business to be responsive to more stakeholder groups (community, family, environment, etc) and, hopefully, due to that inclusivity, more sustainable over the long term.”

Cindy Todd, founder of Snohomish Soap, thinks the difference is deeper, that many women “view things holistically.” For example, “our kids, our work, our passion…they aren’t separate, they are all part of a greater whole.” Like our everyday lives, and our companies can be just as holistic, while making a profit.

Rachel Maxwell, co-founder and CEO of Community Sourced Capital  sees the chance the change the status quo.  “I believe women are willing to step into the space of business for good because they aren’t as invested in competing in the world as it, they are willing to take the risks required to make the world as they
would like it to become.”

Whatever the reason, it’s nice to see an industry that doesn’t begin with the old gender biases seen elsewhere.

About Michael “Luni” Libes  - http://about.me/luni
Luni is a 20+ year serial entrepreneur, founder/co-founder of five companies.  His latest startup is Fledge, the “conscious company” incubator.  In addition, Luni is Entrepreneur in Residence and Entrepreneurship Instructor at Bainbridge Graduate Institute, and an Entrepreneur in Residence Emeritus at the University of Washington’s Center for Commercialization.  Luni is author of The Next Step: Guiding you from idea to startup and The Next Step: A guide to pitching your idea.

Fledge, the “conscious company” incubator has invited seven new, impactful companies to come work with us within HUB Seattle, every day for 10 weeks.

These seven were chosen from amongst over 60 applicants, invited due to their potential impact on the world and the strength of their teams. Plus, we’re excited to see these teams prior participation in the “conscious” ecosystem.

#SocEnt Weekend winners:

• Brown Box - “Valuing” the stream of of human waste in India
• Serve Smart - Preparing experteers and volunteers for service

Social Innovation Fast Pitch (SIFP) winner & quarterfinalist:

• Localista - A customer loyalty network for and by your local businesses
• Snohomish Soap - Organic, homemade soap, via a distributed women-powered manufacturing network

Bainbridge Graduate Institute alumni

• MyVoice - Crowdsourcing local knowledge to create local change
• UbrLocal - Connecting local food producers and consumers

University of Washington’s Human Centered Design & Engineering

•  Shift Labs - Simple, inexpensive, human-centered medical devices for global markets

Plus…

In this “cohort”, our Program Manager is herself a conscious entrepreneur, running AlchemList

We encourage you to stop by to meet any of these companies.  We’re all located on the 1st floor of HUB Seattle, working daily to make these ideas into reality.  To schedule a time to visit, contact us here.