What is the PROMISE? Why should anyone join majamba?

Need your guidance. As we are working on the full launch for mid-year, I am struggling to decide what should be the customer promise?

- Is it that Members build a Personal Profile (they inspire others by showing what good they are doing)

- Or is it that Members solve Micro Challenges (social work). The challenges are the focus.

- Or is it that Members collect Social Currency (majambas). The badge with the social capital is the focus.

- Or is it that members get 50% to 100% off on handmade products from around the world. The products are the focus.

- Or is it that Members get Social Gifts that they can share with friends. Combines products with people.

- Or is it that finally someone is building the GOOD social network. And we try to define what we mean by GOOD.

- Or is it...something else!!!!

Please help!!! Take the Poll >>>>>>>>>>>

Nationalism versus Internationalism

Back in La Sarraz after our exciting trip to India - 3 cities (Jabalpur, Ahmedabad & New Delhi): friends, family, new web design & development team, new operations team & partnerships with excellent social enterprises.

But the highlight was something simple - rediscovering "Internationalism". Indians (like me) love the world and everything in it (including India). This is interesting for me as I have seen (and felt) the rise of nationalism in the west. I have been trying to understand why are Indians open towards the world.

Why is that? I think that there are two main reasons:

1. Duality: Genetically, Indians have been comfortable with boxing competing ideologies, philosophies, allegiances and even product preferences into one very Indian framework where the two competing ideas can co-exist.

2. Growth: Living in a hyper-growing economy makes it easier for people to be optimistic (tomorrow is better than yesterday - it actually is for a whole section of the economy when there is growth).

It is truly inspiring to meet good, open minded, talented and straight-forward people.

majamba.me pre-launch campaign is live!

Dear friends,

As you know, we are developing the majamba platform in baby steps, so every 2 months we have been launching something. On December 16th, 2010, we launched the "Social Currency & Social Network" platform, currently being revamped; On the 14th of February 2011, we launched the "Challenges" App, currently being tested on majamba.com. In mid-March, we received partial funding from the Vaud State / SELT for product development and now on the 15th of April, 2011 I am pleased to announce that we are introducing the "pre-launch" campaign for majamba.me. We are on target for the commercial launch in mid-year 2011.

Now you may be wondering - why are we doing a pre-commercial launch campaign?

You see, for the commercial launch of majamba to get any traction, we need around 4,000 supporters, who really want us to succeed. This will allow us to build the good social network with sufficient critical mass that will offer members the following features:

1. build social capital when you do good (e.g. - solve challenges or promote good).
2. when your social capital points reach different levels, you will qualify for rewards & gifts (e.g. - notebooks, music etc).
3. these gifts are procured from the best social enterprises (like SEWA.ORG) in the world that secure the jobs of the bottom of the pyramid.

So the more good you do, the more gifts you get and the more jobs you help create. Our goal is to sign up hundreds of social enterprises and create thousands of jobs for the "bottom of the pyramid" (BOP). The BOP are our friends who live on less than $2.50 a day. That's over 3billion people or nearly half of all humanity.

Yes, please sign-up at majamba.me and use the "Share this" button on majamba.me to share this campaign with your good friends & followers. And together we will change the world!

My best regards,

Rajiv Srivastava

www.majamba.me

Switzerland

majamba.org, a social venture incubator

It took me 10 months to get funding for a company that is focussed on doing good. Upon reflection, I realized that the main reason is that there is a gap in the market for financing start-ups that are untried, untested, very early stage and fragile especially if they are planning to do good for the society AND aim to make a profit.

Socialists do not invest in you because you are making a profit and Capitalists do not really understand why you have to do anything else but make money!

So I got rejection letters & calls saying - we love your resume, we like your idea but come back to us when you are successful. I thought, why will I need them when I am successful, however, there was one clear exception - The Swiss Government / Vaud State / SELT, who decided to partially fund majamba LLC.

Then came a simple insight - hey, why not document all my lessons learnt and provide consulting to other folks starting a venture. I looked around and there are quite a few people doing that already. Then I thought maybe I can package my consulting into a solution for entrepreneurs and take care of 5 to 10 ventures. There are quite a few people in California who do this type of thing quite well...kept on thinking and talking to my friends. And then the idea presented itself - how about building an incubator that can support 1,000 social ventures every year, all focussed on eradicating poverty.

Incubate like a fish.

That is the goal of www.majamba.org

To be continued...

The Good Needs Friends

There are over 3billion people on the planet who are living on less than $2.50 a day. Every time I share this statistic with potential investors or collaborators or friends, they go yeah, that is true but how will you do something about it?

There are governments with trillions of dollars and billionaires with all their will and resources and millionaires who give large amounts to charity. There are professors with PhD's who are writing books after decades of research on their theories on how to eradicate poverty. There are politicians who promise to provide jobs to millions if they are elected. There are thousands of super dedicated social workers, but still the rich are getting richer and poor are getting poorer.

What can I do? I am not rich, I am not super smart, I am not super connected (this blog has 5 followers and my Linkedin profile has under 200 connections and Twitter & Facebook are in their 20's), yet I dream to move the needle, to make an impact on improving the lives of billions. I am in the 10th month of this journey. Here is why I believe even a small guy like me can make a difference - you see, the good needs friends - no one can overcome the challenge alone.

The challenge is SO enormous that it will take everyone to pitch in - beyond nationality, race, religion, political spectrum, sexual orientation, ideological framework, class or caste, for profit companies and non-profit, Government or Non-Government organizations, everyone to do something about it.

The second point is that I believe that our focus has to be create JOBS for the bottom of the pyramid. With jobs comes dignity and ability to support a family responsibly, get medical attention if required, get shelter and most importantly produce something which is of use to the society. Having a Job allows a person to believe in sustainability much more; more peaceful neighborhoods (there is a direct correlation between inner city unrest and youth unemployment); more education opportunities for the young families.

That is what we are building with majamba - a social network that will make people who want to do good super successful. majamba means to give something insignificant away for the greater good.

What do consumers want?

Yesterday, Dr. Fyfer invited me to present the latest on the "majamba story" amongst other things to the students at the Business School Lausanne (BSL). For those who do not know - BSL is leading the charge for management innovation in Switzerland and perhaps continental Europe. The students are experienced and the professors combine business practice with theory by inviting people who are in the trenches to share their experience (that's why I was there).

After I presented majamba and what we are building and our goals, I opened up for discussion. And the response was awesome!

The BSL folks sliced and diced up the majamba business model to get to the core. And I realized that what consumers really want is to directly help people who need help. And anyone who is able to build a platform that allows the "rich" to support the "poor" directly is going to be able to do good.

That's it - it's that simple. So once again thank you Dr. Fyfer and I think the name of your student was Martin. Martin, thank you!

making sense of it all

I am trying to make sense of the what's happening in the world right now. More specifically in the world of entrepreneurship. And even more specifically in the world of Internet Start-ups.

Here is my take: The Doer's are winning!

The thinkers - Economists, Philosophers, Strategists, Consultants, Architects...have to learn from the Developers, Designers, Activists and other Action oriented people.

Social media is dominated by people who get things done; they do and then they talk. Dreaming, postulating, imagining, or just talking & powerpointing is being pushed to the back seat.

So is this the end of the road for the thinkers?

First of all, I must come clean (as you may know), I am an economist who made his living as a strategist for fourteen years before becoming an entrepreneur last year. I would certainly like to think that thinkers have a place in our world.

So here is what we need to do, my dear fellow thinkers - learn from your friends: The doer's. Learn how they focus on getting things done, not just talking about it. Imagine the impact of combining thinking with doing, you know the oriental saying "Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare".

I am now - together with Alex & Jeannine and thanks to my friends Noel, Tom & Joe - focussing on building majamba to be of more use to our members. We will make majamba more relevant to our members. This is going to be a journey of continuous learning, meeting new people, new friends, new ideas, re-establishing old relationships, sharpening our pure vision (support people who want to do good, become super successful) and most importantly improve continuously - hence the name of this journey is "KAIZEN".

Tell me why?

the other day I heard one of my favorite songs – Tell me why? by Genesis.

Here is how it starts…

Mothers crying in the street
Children dying at their feet, tell me why, ooh tell me why
People starving everywhere
There’s too much food but there’s none to spare,
Tell me why, oh tell me why

...

If there’s a God, is he watching
can he give a ray of hope
so much pain and so much sorrow
tell me what does he see
when he looks at you
when he looks at me
what would he say
cos it seems there’s no-one listening

...

Then I thought what was the defining insight from a major conference in a little Swiss village – inflation of commodity prices. In other words, food prices are going up. OK after many days of parties, that was the declaration!

You know we can do better than this! So what is the solution: the solution, my friends is when everyone starts making small changes in their lifestyles and starts to think about others. Think about it, income disparity is increasing. Unemployment & Hunger by themselves are not the root cause of revolution and destruction. Revolutions happen when a few control wealth and continue to grow richer at the expense of other. When the powerful neuter any dissent. Then the pressure builds up and the lid is blown up. For peace and prosperity, we need to change ourselves. How can we do this? We hope to present a small step forward on the 14th of February, the majamba beta version.