Crazy idea of the day: Making every business around the world a social enterprise

Listen to the wise words of Leila Janah, Selection Board member of STATION F:

“We live in this outdated model that we should work all day to make money, and then at the end of the day, donate a percentage of this money to a charity. This has created the broken system that we are living in.

The billion people living with under $1 a day: they need work and a chance to participate fairly in global economic systems.”

This is from an interview recorded at STATION F where Leila, founder of Samasource and LXMI explains in great details her vision about social businesses. And she doesn’t forget about the “business” part of “social businesses”.

A sharp and inspiring view that makes social impact businesses… not such a crazy idea after all!

What are ways we can provide higher-wage work to the poorest people?

“Samasource was created from the realization that the Internet and the wide-spread access to digitized resources could enable — for the first time in history — someone in a slum in India or someone from a rural area in Africa to sell their services online.

Since its creation, the team has moved 35,000 people out of poverty in a long-term manner.

A few examples of services Samasource can provide: data cleaning, producing an e-commerce catalog for Walmart, editing and curating content, etc.”

What can we say about the people scared that their social businesses have greater chances of failure?

“First, your product is everything. It doesn’t change if you have a social mission behind it or not. It has to solve a real customer problem. We have to make social impact first and foremost about the quality of the product.

If the product is good, all other things being equal, why would a customer not choose a product with higher social impact?”

Watch Leila’s full interview below!

Pssst: we have open applications to join STATION F and get to meet inspiring mentors like Leila! Apply to the Fighters program now