The secret of success

In my opinion, the secret of success has four ingredients:

1. Identifying a cause worth fighting for

2. Building a talented & diverse team

3. Delivering with limited budget and under unlimited pressure

4. Patience

Is Crowdsourcing a solution to poverty?

I believe that Crowdsourcing is the solution to global poverty. But before I go further, let's look at the alternatives:

1. Govt. financed poverty alleviation programs: Financed by tax and currently fighting for survival because funding is under attack due to rising public debt.

On the positive side: Chinese & Brazilian Governments have lifted millions from poverty however at the cost of relocation in most cases.

2. Charity/Donation financed programs: Financed by donations and currently facing a decline in donations as economic/political/market volatility means that people are unsure about the future (and market is volatile because people are unsure).

On the positive side: Bill Gates & other billionaires stand out as they are focussing on specific issues for example vaccination.

3. Business Innovation/Corporate Social Responsibility Programs: All companies want ROI on any investment and a CSR campaign is generally no different. Only visionary companies keep up their CSR campaigns during uncertain times.

On the positive side: Toms.com is one of the best examples of CSR based marketing.

Now the beauty of crowdsourcing is the "peer2peer" nature. In other words, individuals connect with other individuals and together create a better world. Peer2Peer networks are the future because they democratize doing good, so anyone and not just Governments, Corporations & Billionaires can make the world a better place and directly control what is being done with their funds.

In summary, crowdsourcing is the solution to alleviating billions out of the viscous circle of poverty is because the biggest source of happiness is helping others (this is backed up by research from Prof. Dr. Martin Seligman who has empirically shown that people are most fulfilled when they help others).

Internship at a Swiss Fair Trade Social Commerce Start-up

Do you believe that business can be a force for good?

Do you want to become part of a start-up team focussed on Fair Trade?

Are you interested in a 6 month, part-time, 100% flexible internship to shape and execute the majamba.me launch strategy?


Yes, please read on:

Introduction
majamba.me is the world’s first fair trade social commerce platform. We empower social enterprises by providing social commerce services - Catalog, Payment, Logistics & Social Marketing. We offer handmade gifts to consumers at unbeatable prices. And we offer a powerful campaign management system for corporations to manage their global social corporate responsibility campaigns. We are funded by an innovation reward from the Swiss Govt.

Your Mission
- Work online with the core team in Switzerland and India to fine tune the launch strategy for majamba.me. The planned launch date is October 2nd, 2011.
- Create interesting missions that anyone can solve online in minutes and get majamba credits (MC).
- Procure interesting & beautiful fair trade products that members can get using their credits.

Our Ambition
- thousands of members in Switzerland, India, UK, US and around the world helping each other and getting fair trade gifts
- millions in sales revenues for our partners, the fair trade social enterprises
- unlimited dignity (and Jobs) for makers of handmade products around the world.

Your Reward
- Boost for your resume
- Our support for starting your own venture
- 100,000 majamba credits (that you can use to get amazing handmade gifts)

Contact Details
intern@majamba.com

www.majamba.me
we♥fair trade

What is professional success?

1. Doing something that gives you that warm, fuzzy feeling.

2. Being able to talk about what you do for a living without cringing.

3. Knowing whatever happens next, you will be fine.

What can Fair Trade companies learn from Apple?

First of all, fair trade is a very powerful concept - allow the producers of handmade goods to get a fair price for their products and allow them to lift themselves from poverty.

However, 200 years of industrial revolution has pretty much left the 4,000,000,000 people aside.

So the question is - what can be done to lift millions from poverty en masse (using the principles of industrial world)?

1. Build a powerful aggregation platform (like iTunes or Apps Store) that allows individual products to be promoted & sold worldwide.

2. Build a seamless customer experience 24x7.

3. Tell a story that people can identify with.

4. Ensure that the product works.

What are Groupon, Living Social missing?

Groupon, Living Social and a bunch of daily deal companies have some flaws:

1. Limited brand building options for partners

2. Erosion of price point for partners

3. Almost no new capability boost for partners

4. Consumers have to spend money to buy the discount and then spend money to buy the product (sooner or later the credit card bill will catch up with the people)

Facebook vs. Google+

The question is - what happens when two giants duke it out?

1. Customers win

2. Niche Competitors win

3. Developers win

So what does it mean for majamba.me?

1. Stay focussed on developing our platform

2. Continue to sign up partners

3. Prepare for offering our customers a great offer

Thank you!

Today, 16th of July 2011 is the first anniversary of majamba LLC.

At this time, we would like to thank all the majamba social venture network members.

And we would like to highlight folks who went out of their way to advise us:

Bhaskar B

Marc S

Tom W

Joe H

Noel T

Shyam S

Anil G

Aslam M

Jaldip U

Narendra V

Chandan W

Ojasvi B

Sandy W

Raphaël C

John A

Patrick B

Guido S

Thomas V-A

Simon F

Simon S

Fabrice A

Alejandro A

Michel J

Vincent R

Jean-Baptiste E

Michel T

Didier W

Chris T

Laurent L

Patrick G

Joe B

Steve M

Barb N

Sebastien F

Rika N

Robin L

Frank D

Francis C

Markus S

Damien C

Karim P

Peter H

Krishnan S

Nicolas S

Johnny K

Jena B

Daniel F

Mike F

Rahul B

Nilam S

Nandini D

Prableen S

Martine B

Sabine E

Rene D

Geert DB

Sanjiv D

Caroline S

Jean-François B

Roland G

Eric M

Didier M

Metin C

Chris B

Caroline R

Eric G

Xavier B

Gauthier J

Ricardo I

Juan R

Francisco M

Brian M

We are grateful to you. Of course, a startup is super challenging and your good wishes and support has made it a lot easier. Now the challenge for us is to use all the positive thinking to launch majamba.me later this year.