"For the tomatoes, the clock is ticking" And Other Inspiring Stories From Fledge

Fledge is an accelerator for startups that not only hope to make money, but also to make the world a better place.  I need to say right at the beginning, that I'm related to the creator of Fledge through marriage.  But I think if you look at these videos, you can see for yourself what a great concept it is and how well it's being executed.

A few startups are chosen for each session.  They're given $20,000 and six weeks of extensive training on how to make their business work.  All aspects from financing to marketing to production to human resources.  The fledgelings get mentors and get to meet with investors.  At the end of the six [10] weeks, they have Fledge Demo Day, which was last week in Seattle.  The videos are from Demo Day. I got to go to the first Fledge Demo day about 18 months ago.  It was an exciting event. 

This round's fledgelings are all international - from Africa and Argentina.  I'm particularly impressed by this group because the entrepreneurs are all local folks, not foreigners, who have already started businesses and they'll return to grow those companies.  Several of them talk about how they came to see the problems they're solving as children, watching their moms and grandmothers getting sick from the charcoal fires they cooked on every day.  Or, in another case, how Mom could only cultivate two of her ten acres because she couldn't afford to plant the rest of the land. 



Tom Osborn  Kenya Green Char

Tom is concerned about the health and financial costs of charcoal stoves in Kenya.  And charcoal requires the cutting of 125,000 acres of trees per year.  His answer is to make charcoal from sugar cane waste.  The charcoal is the traditional cooking heating material in his country.  His sugar cane charcoal has no smoke, is cheaper than traditional charcoal, burns longer, and provides jobs for women who act as distributors.  It also, of course, recycles the sugar cane wastes and leaves all those trees standing.




Sebastian Sajoux - Argentina, ArqLite  (the links go to the Youtube vidoes - or you can just let each one take you to the next)

Has a process to turn non-recyclable plastic into little rocks that can be used make concrete.  It produces a cement that is lighter, better thermal insulation, and quieter than traditional cement and also gets rid of the plastic that would go to landfills. 


Paul Nyambe - Zambia - Zamgoat

Buying goats from villagers and getting them to market where there is a big demand for goat meat.  This gives remote villagers extra money for something they already do and meets a demand for goat meat.


Femi Oye - Nigeria  SME Funds, Go Solar Africa, Green Energy Bio Fuel and Cooking Stove

Femi has several companies to bring cleaner, cheaper, and more reliable energy to Nigeria.  There's the alcohol based cooking fuel made of agricultural wastes and the solar panels.

David Opio - Uganda - Ensibuuko 'Germinate'

This is a financial tool - Mobis - that helps SACCO's (cooperative banking groups in Uganda) be more accountable and gives customers access to their accounts on their cell phones.

Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu   Nigeria Cold Hubs

Nnaemeka tells the story "For the tomatoes, the clock is ticking."  He traces the path of the tomatoes from Chibueze's farm, to Eugene's truck, to Alex's stand at the market.  He shows how many tomatoes - about 40% - have to be thrown away because they spoil in the Nigerian heat.  His solution is a solar powered refrigerator.

The market can be the solution to a lot of problems.  An entrepreneur who doesn't pay attention to the needs of the customers won't succeed.  But the market model doesn't require business owners to  pay attention to the needs of the community, or to people's health,  or to the environment's health.  These companies do that. 

Can We Simplify Politics? Simpolfy Thinks They Can

A family member runs a business incubator - called Fledge - for socially-conscious startups.  They have a new group that started a week or so ago.  The website tells it succinctly:

Fledge helps impactful entrepreneurs take their ideas and prototype-stage companies into reality, via an intense, 10-week program of guidance, education, and mentorship, plus a large and growing network of support from past fledglings and hundreds of mentors.

Fledge receives applications from around the world, inviting just 6-7 to participate.  Each team is paid for the privilege, in exchange for an investment in a unique revenue-based model, where you ultimately keep the ownership of your startup.

Our goal is to help foster a wave of companies that make not just a measurable impact in the world, but a noticeable improvement in the lives of everyone on the planet.

So I was looking at the list of new Fledglings and one jumped out for me - mainly because it's a topic I know a little about.  It's called Simpolfy and the aim is set up a website:

"that simplifies politics so you can hold your representatives accountable to you!"

Their particular goal is a) to simplify complicated legislation and b) communicate to users about bills of interest to them.   You can get more details directly from Simpolfy's Indiegogo page where I got the video below.




This is a great concept.  There's simply way too much data out in the world for people to keep track of what's going on.  But simplifying legislation is also difficult.  I tried to do that when I blogged the legislature.  If you hang out at the committee meetings and read the bills carefully, you can get a good idea of what's in the bills.  But really good bill writers know how to word things, using references to other legislation, or specifying parameters so that even clever folks can't figure out that the intent is to favor a particular company or to make it impossible to, say, get an abortion.

This also raises questions for me about what they do with the information they collect from users.  It would seem of great interest to politicians and their handlers.  But these things can be worked out and I'm sure that's what they are busy doing now.  The bigger goal - turning data into useful information - is a worthy one, something that other websites - such as those that parse political ads to determine if they are truthful - have been successfully doing. 

At the end of the ten week period the Fledglings present their companies at Demo Day.  If you're in Seattle October 23 you can go see the presentations, but get your tickets early.  I was able to attend one of these and it was an exciting evening of possibilities.

Things I Haven't Posted

There's a slew of things I haven't posted about yet and stray photos.  I'm hoping some of these will become posts of their own, but here's a preview.

LA Sunset (no photoshop here, this is what it looked like)

History of photography exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

LA no crosswalk sign.

One of the lions freed from illegal Bolivian circuses in the movie Lion Ark.  We got to see it in LA - it will be in the Anchorage International Film Festival.












The food wasn't actually dangerously good, but we were treated well in Komodo and we had a quick fun dinner - in LA near Pico and Robertson.  They said a new one was coming soon in Venice much closer to my mom's.

And I'm a big fan of monitor lizards.









Last night we caught the 4:35pm ferry from Bainbridge to Seattle - here it's just arriving in Bainbridge, with Mt. Rainer in the background.  And yes, we've had four sunny days in a row here. 







The ferry got us into downtown Seattle for 
 Fledge Demo Day.

"Fledge is the “conscious company” accelerator, here to help those entrepreneurs who are bringing products and services to the growing number of consumers, who in their consumption are conscious of the environment, their health, of community, sustainability, and even conscious of consumption itself."

 The founder of Fledge is a relative, which is how I got there. 

Yes, we're back in Seattle to get more time with this young lady.

In fact she's kept me pretty busy all week.  This is all pleasurable busyness. 

But back to LA tomorrow to get more time with my mom before returning to Anchorage.