The Weekend

We’re excited to present #SocEnt Weekend: Next 50 as part of The Next 50 Commerce & Innovation celebration at Seattle Center!  We’ll be regularly updating this page with event information, so stay tuned.

Locations & Venues

This exciting, multi-day event will take place at multiple locations, depending on the day.

Wednesday

The pre-event Workshop will be hosted at the BGI / Hub Seattle Offices in the Belltown neighborhood in Downtown Seattle.

Bainbridge Graduate Institute   Hub Seattle

BGI / Hub Seattle
2601 4th Avenue #310
Seattle, WA 98121

Friday & Saturday

The main event will be hosted by iLEAP at the Good Shepherd Center in the Wallingford neighborhood.

iLEAP

iLEAP / Good Shepherd Center
4649 Sunnyside Avenue North
Seattle, WA 98103

Sunday

Final preparations and the pitch showcase will be at the Playhouse/Intiman Theatre at Seattle Center on Sunday.

Bainbridge Graduate Institute

Playhouse / Intiman Theatre
201 Mercer Street
Seattle, WA 98109

Schedule

Wednesday, October 3  @ BGI / Hub Seattle

We’re so excited about #SocEnt Weekend that we’re cheating and starting the weekend a little early! We’re having a pre-event on Wednesday to help you hit the ground running on Friday night. This workshop is optional, but highly recommended. You’ll get the opportunity to meet potential teammates early and can get just the boost your team might need to make it to the top on Sunday night! Location TBA in Seattle.

  • 6:00PM — Tuning Your Pitch
    Friday night opens with all attendees pitching their idea within 60 seconds. This workshop will help you fine-tune your pitch so you can attract the best teammates.
  • 7:00PM — What Problem Are You Addressing
    The most important part of realizing change is understanding the problem/situation you have identified that needs to change. It is relatively easy to come up with ideas and solutions. It is harder to dig deeper into the problem/situation to understand what is really going on and why. This deeper understanding of the problem/situation can lead to even better solutions that are more likely to result in the change you are seeking to make. You won’t have much time for this research during the weekend (although you will be encouraged to try to gather as much data as you can!) So this workshop will give you some tools and ways to look deeper into your problem area/situation, and increase the chances that you will design a solution that will be impactful.
  • 8:00PM — Connecting & Ideating
    Now that you have an idea of what you need to pitch and how to identify market opportunities, share your ideas. Connect with others that have similar interests and start gathering team members. Who knows, you may just find your co-founder!

Friday, October 5  @ iLeap / Good Shepherd Center

  • 5:00PM — Networking, pizza and beer
  • 6:30PM — Welcome and introduction
  • 6:45PM — 60 second pitches
  • 8:00PM — Vote on top ideas and form teams
  • 8:15PM — Get to work!
  • 10:00PM — Lights out

Saturday, October 6  @ iLeap / Good Shepherd Center

  • 9:00AM — Breakfast and work continues
  • 9:30AM — Mentors arrive
  • 10:00AM — Session 1: “The Next Step”
  • 12:00PM — Lunch
  • 2:00PM — Session 2: Pitch demos
  • 6:00PM — Dinner
  • 10:00PM — Lights out

Sunday, October 7  @ Playhouse/Intiman Theatre

  • 9:00AM — Breakfast and work continues
  • 9:30AM — Mentors arrive
  • 11:00AM — Pitch coaching starts
  • 12:00PM — Lunch
  • 4:00PM — SLIDE DECK SUBMISSION DEADLINE
  • 5:00PM — Dinner
  • 6:00PM — Pitch Showcase begins
  • 8:00PM — Voting and awards

Competition

This event is not only fun an and exciting, it’s a competition! Keep the judging criteria in mind throughout the weekend, as this is what the judges will be using to score the final pitches.

Judging Criteria

Final pitches will be scored in four areas, based on whether or not the following was addressed:

Customer Validation
Interviewed potential stakeholders?
Integrated feedback into your plans?
Built a base of fans and would-be customers?		 Business Model
Defined your minimal-viable-product?
Defined your critical activities and resources?
Defined your revenue projections?
Social Impact
Impact to community?
Impact to the environment?
Sustainability?		 Innovation
Spun a #SocEnt solution on an old problem?
Differentiated from the competition?

Prizes

The grand prize is a package from She Can Do It and Apex Law:

Foundational legal and marketing services for a socially-conscious company
She Can Do It, LLC, Andrea Gates Sanford—

  • Social Purpose Corporations are Washington state’s new form of incorporation, providing business with legal means to go beyond maximizing profit and to promote their positive social or environmental impact. SPCs are a way for Washington socially-conscious businesses to grow based on values rooted in their mission. Being an SPC can put your social value to work for you. She Can Do It offers the following services—
  • Definition of social purpose: A brief analysis report establishing the general social purpose through the business entity’s mission, vision and values, including suggested Specific Social Purpose(s).
  • Strategic Outline for social purpose: Suggested performance indicators for impact measurements & metrics to help integrate and promote the social purpose.
  • SPC report: A sustainability report for 2013 based on GRI framework C-level, that reflects the status of the social purpose to stakeholders / customers. Report will be prepared for online posting or print in PDF form, does not include website development or other media production.
  • She Can Do It will act as the principal for the awarded services. We work in close cooperation with our key partner, Honest Goods, LLC, to offer broad expertise in Social Purpose Corporations and to ensure our services are practical and feasible both financially and logistically.

Apex Law, Peter Smith—

  • 2 hours of free advice on choice of entity and entity formation, including state of incorporation, and legal risk analysis and advice on business models
  • Form the business entity by filing with the chosen state of incorporation (filing Articles of Incorporation (Corporation or SPC) or Certificate of formation (LLC))
  • File for a Federal Employer Identification Number (necessary for opening a bank account); and
  • Complete registration for a master business license and city business license (if entity is formed in WA only).

Additional prizes are provided by the event organizers:

Nsansa logo Hub Seattle logo Fledge logo

The First #SocEnt Weekend

#SocEnt Weekend

Friday, February 24th, 2012, 80 strangers stepped forward into a novel experiment, moving from raw ideas into operational social enterprises in just 50 hours.  The results were not only astounding in terms of effort, but inspirational in terms of content.  Thirteen companies were created, with a potential for over a trillion dollars in combined revenue and social impact!

Winner of “Best Startup of the Weekend” went to bwallet, a Mint-like tool for consumers which not only keeps tracks of finances, but integrates the CSRHub sustainability ratings to allow consumers to understand the impact of their purchase and make changes to improve everyone’s sustainability.

“Best Global Impact” was awarded to haitibaby, providing income to Haitian women by creating and selling baby knitwear via an eCommerce web site.  @haitibaby

“Best Local Impact” was awarded to SeattleFarmBrokers, an idea pitched by none other than Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn.  This is a service to take the otherwise unused properties owned by the City of Seattle, and turn them into productive urban farmland and gardens.

The “Most Innovative Idea” of the weekend was Money Bags, a mobile application which turns the common $1 to $10 wagers with friends into charitable giving.

In keeping with the experimental nature of the event, the judges came back from deliberation with one extra award, “Best Social Entrepreneurship from an Established Enterprise”, awarded to Flipped Publishing, an idea pitched by Gifford Pinchot III, Founder of Bainbridge Graduate Institute, who had to recuse himself as judge for being an incessant entrepreneur.

The judges deliberated for quite a long time to determine these five award winners, and that was not surprising given the breadth of great choices and amazingly high quality of the Sunday presentations.

 

The other companies created over the weekend included:

  • Meaningful Trips, making travel more impactful for both travelers and those that they visit
  • Casual Coffee, defrosting the “Seattle Freeze” by bringing like-minds together
  • needscout, a marketplace to match non-profits with service providers
  • Homes for First Peoples, building homes and teaching construction skills to Native Americans
  • The Greenwood Microfactory, turning lifestyle jobs into lifeline jobs
  • Choice Renewals, lowering the cost of solar panel
  • The Canary, a flat packed, multi-use, compostable filter mask
  • ShareBox, a tool lending library, packed in a recycled shipping container

In the quick poll conducted Sunday night, the vast majority of these companies planned on continuing toward reality after the weekend.

SeattleFarmBrokers returned to action March 25, 2012 at the “2012 National Interagency Community Reinvestment Conference“, hosted by the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, U.S. Department of the Treasury, and the FDIC.

Both bwallet and Money Bags will be participating at the next “Seattle Social Innovation Fast Pitch”, presented by Social Venture Partners.