15. Accelerate for good

If in SXSW you'd pursued the idea of how business interacts with doing good, you might have gone to a see a session on the Saturday afternoon called 'Accelerate for Good - How Startups can Power Impact.' The idea is a potent one, how the engines for innovation that are the structures around tech startups can be harnessed to create positive social impact.


The speakers were Kevin Barenblat from Fast Forward, an accelerator that focuses on non-profits, helping them to maximise impact, Osnat Fainaru Benari, from Wework, Anastasia Goodstein from The Ad Council, and Brad Goodstein from R/GA.

The session lacked the big  'How to Succeed' answers, and focused more on the realities of a startup with social impact goals. There were two main takeaways. First the importance of quality information about the planned users of a product, the need to research them, talk to them, and design around them. Second, again the need for quality information. While acknowledging its hard for non-profits to accurately measure impact, and it's hard to avoid assumptions, still you have to try, because if you haven't done the research, how do you know what the problems really are?

But the upside for us all, there's 'way more hugs in the non-profit world.'

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