the winning moment

The president of our university, dozens of potential investors and fellow students/competitors were in the historical assembly hall of Bogazici University to hear out what I had to say for five minutes, in eight slides, about my social entrepreneurship project.

Well, I took the stage and made my case for about 4 minutes; to make the winning presentation. But then there were these experiences I would like to share with all of you,

1. Even though the hall reportedly erupted with applause after my speech, I don’t remember hearing a clap…

2. What truly makes a speech in Albert Long Hall is the resonance, with the feelings of those watching you, and the spirit of the hall itself.. Having survived many presentations I can say resonance is revealed to be the single most important driver of a good presentation.

3. Even though I boast killer presentation skills, the sentimental load was too much on my shoulders to practice any control over my words or motions. In times like these, your experience in speech-making and your faith in your idea are those which make the difference.

The slides are here, if anyone’s interested.

five trends for non-profits of the future

My friend Can Akbulut “waved” me the five trends that will shape the future of non-profits; the key results of a study carried out by La Piana consulting. (By the wave, I was skeptical about Google Wave at first, but then I thought it might be worth a wave after all)

In short, here are the five trends that will shape social ventures of the future…

1. Shifting Demographics.. I didn’t really get this myself.

2. Technological Advances.. Natural selection, non-profits that adapt to latest tech will have the upper hand. Not too hard to spot.

3. New ways to collaborate.. Of course. Social media. Now the meaning has an advantage over the capital, if your cause is chivalrous enough you can rally thousands of followers overnight…

4. Greater interest in service.. The report quotes the Obama campaign with its amazing number of volunteers. This is hardly any proof that volunteerism is the topic of the day everywhere in the world…

5. Blurred lines between for-profit and non-profit. Now this is the single most beautiful finding… The non-profits of the future will be more market-adaptive, and have a greater tendency to generate competitive, aggressive results… In Turkey, one may say, the third sector will be left to entrepreneurs instead of desperate housewives.

seth godin’s pricing thing

In one post, Seth Godin advises that instead of saying “we’re swamped” you as the business-owner may say “i’ll make you top-priority for double the price, your choice..”. He does that through a bike-repairman analogy.

I believe that’s viable only in Ayn Rand’s Galtland, or some fantasy town where all laymen are capitalists at heart. Which is nowhere.

In Turkey,most likely the customer would use all of his social power to put the bike-repairman out of business, and easily take that price-up as an offense if not ill will.

In Freakonomics, Steven Levitt describes that not everything can be explained by monetary exchange/cost and rational-utility. And anyone off the street who has been involved with the Zeitgeist movement would cheerfully tell you how the monetary system is, in reality, virtual.

There is usually a moral incentive/dimension to every problem, and in conservative societies where a social control mechanism is felt strongly, it may be much higher compared to the monetary dimension.

Just wanted to get that off my chest..

the Turkish social venture

I spent some of my time during the last two weeks preparing a detailed business plan about a possible internet-based social venture to be launched in Turkey. The business plan is now in the phase of evaluation; however, some facts I learned during my research proved disturbing.

1 – In Turkey there is no legal entity to host a possible social venture. In the regulation, we have either societies (which are forbidden to pay dividend) or companies (whose happy responsibilities include paying the same tax as any other commercial institution, and can’t take donations). To bypass these, truly ambitious social entrepreneurs go about with double legal entities, sister organizations et cetera…

2 – There are no social ventures in Turkey (: Not anything to represent the spirit in any way… The absence of the “concept” and “funding” drive away candidates, hence most of the social work arena is left to part-timer housewives instead of die-hard entrepreneurs.

3 – The threat of substitutes is quite much present. 80% of Turkish people somehow provide significant aid to others, generally to family and relations, schools and mostly religious institutions. Only 18% of this “aid” is relayed by NGOs. And much to my disappointment, the Turkish NGOs are generally giants, backed by either political, religious or corporate forces; and the media/PR support for these are also huge…

Enough entry barriers to discourage any college student, I guess.