Sherry will be hosting a session on this topic at Boost on April 15th — along with Uber’s Eugenie Teasley. Secure your ticket now.

Until recently, my entire career had been spent in the tech industry. From the inside, leadership led a rallying cry that told employees they weren’t just there building software — they were making the world better.

These ideas would often be delivered through a corporate purpose, a corporate responsibility statement, or sometimes they would be simplified down to a vow to put customers ahead of (or at least next to) shareholders.

As an employee, these grand ambitions used to differentiate the fulfilling workplaces from the rest. But now, I’m hard-pressed to find a company that hasn’t made some kind of bold statement around solving real-world social and environmental problems, in addition to turning a profit.

As a result, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become commoditized, and one company’s ‘moonshot’ can be indistinguishable from the next . How do businesses overcome this? I believe that the only way to truly balance purpose with profit is to marry the two.

In other words, we must think about how to make impact run through businesses, not around them.

Building real impact

The reality is that doing this, particularly in a large corporation, means overcoming many mental obstacles. For one, most businesses weren’t founded with a social mission in mind, the likes of Patagonia and Ben & Jerry’s aside.

But building real impact into any organization requires a re-envisioning of your core business: looking with a fresh perspective at who you serve, what you offer them, and the potential positive or negative externalities it’s creating in the world. And the more established a business is, the harder this is to do.

Additionally, conventional wisdom has made us believe the myth that impact and profit are at odds and thus must be kept separate (enter a world of rgs and corporate foundations). What follows is that one part of the business makes money, and the other spends it. Usually in the form of donations that make consumers feel they are giving back.

As a consultant, my job is to help make this change for companies like Uber, whose global social impact we codified last year, just as their business was being confronted with the realities of the pandemic .

So how do you create a system that enables impact to run through your business? As a brand, a consultant engaging with a client, or anything in between? Here are three ways we approached this with Uber, and ways you can approach it in your own work:

1. Sit at the intersection of many points of view

Though we increasingly do impact-related work, we are not a pure social impact consultancy. We sit at an intersection of business, marketing, brand, social impact and, of course, broader culture.

When thinking about the eventual impact a business can have, we start at the core of that business. What are the unique competencies that have made this business commercially successful? What are the vulnerabilities on the horizon? What are the real challenges leadership is pouring over?

This leads to an approach that is equal parts commercial and cultural — find the moves that help both to advance. For Uber, this meant going beyond only monetary donations to look at what the core business could do to help. What could Uber’s incredible operational and logistics engine, and global scale offer people?

2. Start where you are with practical solutions

One of the most exciting parts of working with a big business is thinking about the massive resources and scale with which that business can affect the world. We know that consumers increasingly expect businesses to solve the world’s problems , so it would be easy to dive in and recommend the biggest and best ideas.

But every business is unique in how they view social impact, and where they (and their leadership) are on the journey. So we level-set.

What are the right moves for a business today ? Where could this eventually go? For a company like Uber, this meant resetting the benchmarks they compare themselves against and setting their own standard for successful impact.

3. Seize the momentum by making it central to every action of the business

As we have all learned, businesses can’t predict where the world will go next. But they need to find the right time, place, and action that builds the momentum and excitement to do more. Because the barriers are largely organizational and mental, internal momentum is critical to making impact run through the business.

For Uber, a pivot came in spring 2020, when they encouraged people to stay home and donated $10 million meals and rides to people in need. This put the social impact team in the driver’s seat of the business’ response in the world and has kept it there since.

The standards for a company’s impact will continue changing, and the stakes will become higher as consumers expect more. The only way to ensure your business (or clients) don’t fall victim to the commoditization of social impact, to truly future-proof your impact strategy, is to make it central to the business strategy.

The above approaches can serve as starting points to making this continuous cycle of evaluation and decision-making active and, dare I say, impactful.

Ready to supercharge your digital marketing strategy? Join us at Boost to learn more!

How to succeed as the leader of a distributed team

Many startup accelerators fail. Here’s how to find the right one

The amount of new startup accelerators has gone through the roof. Since they first entered the scene in 2005 over 3,000 accelerators were advertised globally in 2021 . It all started with accelerator programs backed by a venture capital fund, such as Y-Combinator. Now accelerators are run by governments, corporates, universities, ex-startup founders, or in partnership with the venture capital(VC) ecosystem.

This isn’t surprising, as accelerators are proven to have a positive effect on startup success. Research shows startups that ‘graduate’ from an accelerator program have a 23% better survival rate . This is considerable seeing as an estimated 90% of startups fail .

Moreover, a glut of investor liquidity has fueled the accelerator industry, with a record-shattering $49 billion dollars in funding going to early-stage startups in the first three quarters of 2021. It’s these programs, with their network of VCs and partners, that can provide an efficient inroad to capital.

This begs the question; should your startup join an accelerator? And, if so, how do you weed through the literally thousands of options to find the right program for your business?

While there are many factors to consider, it all boils down to fit, timing, and commitment.

Find your fit

“The number one tip for founders is: Do your research! Founders should be a bit cautious when picking an accelerator, and before you apply to any, you should look at their track record,” Nataly Schammel tells me. As a program manager for the Future of Finance Accelerator backed by a partnership between Techstars and ABN AMRO Bank, she’s seen many startups go through this process. Her advice is to vet an accelerator by, “reaching out to founders who went through the program previously,” Schammel added.

Another question founders should ask themselves is: “what’s my main motivation for joining a specific program?” You shouldn’t just be looking at whether or not an accelerator fits the industry you’re in. Also consider what you and your fellow founders hope to gain from it.

A corporate accelerator, for example, is a great way to get access to industry expertise, assets, and a network of clients and partners. Take this as an opportunity to build long-lasting relationships within these organizations. These people can help you beyond the three months accelerator program. As Schammel explained:

Another way to find the right accelerator program is by checking the quality of the mentors. How involved are they, and which ones would help your business most?

Research by the University of Georgia found accelerators that offer more interaction between mentors and startups yield more successful batches, especially if the mentors and programs stay involved in the long term.

Is the timing right?

The second factor to consider is if it’s the right time for your startup to join an accelerator, both in terms of how mature the business idea is and what stage of funding a company might be in.

“Some early-stage startups are still in the idea stage. Meanwhile, some are already mature businesses, often applying for the wrong reasons, like getting a shortcut to procurement,” says Laurens Hamerlinck, who as Innovation Partnership Lead, oversees the Future of Finance accelerator at ABN AMRO Bank. “In my conversations with founders I try to figure out whether the program can deliver the support they seek and truly accelerate the business.”

A startup should be somewhere in the sweet spot between having an idea and product that shows promise, and before the stage of being an established company with a proven business model and existing pool of mentors.

This is also important in terms of the ‘hard’ skills founders can learn during an accelerator program; these can be services in the legal domain for IP protection, help with financial modeling, and support in necessary due diligence processes. None of these are useful if a startup is at the idea stage, nor when already mature and growing their customer base.

And then there’s the money question. Investment maturity should also play a role in considering whether to join an equity-basedaccelerator. Accelerators often provide seed funding in exchange for equity, or as convertible debt or a stipend. Founders should weigh the value of the program and consider in advance how much equity they’re willing and able to give at this stage in your startup’s development (keeping in mind future angel investment). Hamerlinck adds:

That’s why coming up with a clear future funding strategy will help.

Startups pay the Future of Finance Accelerator 6% of equity for access to the program and get $20,000. “If you consider that as a valuation event that would be a bad deal,” Schammel says.

There are definitely easier ways to find that kind of money, with the EU pushing grants and subsidies for technology startups. “The reason startups give us 6% equity is for the network. We want to become fellow founders, get skin in the game, and startups that graduate from the program will get lifelong support from Techstars and ABN AMRO. You basically give 6% tous as a co-founder.”

On this note, one thing that startup accelerators can and should really help founders with is finding the right investors for their business. If you thought there were a lot of accelerators to choose from, there are even more VCs. First-time founders in particular tend to need help with finding the right investors and negotiating favorable terms.

The right accelerator programs will help their cohorts with this by providing shortlists of investors, making those connections, and educating them on what they need to know about the deal-making process.

Commitment is everything

If you actually want to reap the full benefits, joining a startup accelerator is a full-time commitment. They often take three to six months during which founders are exposed to an intense program and attend daily sessions with mentors and coaches. Running your business as you go through the program can be challenging and tough. Nataly Schammel says:

One of the authors of the University of Georgia study, Christopher Bingham, said that, “Founders might experience ‘mentor whiplash’ in that process, but after dozens of meetings common themes start to emerge, providing useful insights.”

This time investment can inevitably be a time-saver. Co-author Susan Cohen said:

The intensiveness of the program makes it harder to complete as a solo founder. There are in fact many accelerators out there that limit the number of solo founders accepted. Y-Combinator’s founder Paul Graham famously said, “Starting a startup is too hard for one person.” Schammel agrees, saying there have been successful solo founders in the program, but,

Then again, why not try? Research conducted by Wharton in the USA concluded that, even though startups with multiple founder teams tend to raise more venture capital investment, startups with solo founders often lasted longer and achieved higher revenue. The researchers suggest this might be due to the increased agility of having a single decision-maker.

Join or not?

“In the end, it should be a deliberate business decision. If you find a program that fits your business, the stage of your company, and you dare to commit and take a leap it will be a life-changing event,” Hamerlinck says.

So if you’re in fintech and have a focus on sustainability and digital assets looking for an Accelerator with a strong mentor pool, a highly engaged corporate partner, a global network, that also has a high-level track record of its 2600+ portfolio companies, then wait no longer and apply here.

The Techstars + ABN AMRO Future of Finance Accelerator takes place in September-December 2022 in hybrid format in Amsterdam. You can register until May 11th.