First, a meta-discussion … I think when a lot of people hear the word “startup” they think two things: long hours in an under-funded environment, and the hope of a short-term payoff (or at least an exit strategy). This may be incompatible with the idea of pulling a bunch of hours away from a bunch of bright people already involved in other things. It may also be counter-productive to the goal of benefiting people: one of the shortcomings of established corporations is the focus on near-term gains, even at the cost of long-term viability or benefits—that mindset is exponentially worse in a time-accelerated enviro with a burn-rate that implies a near-future mortality for the corporate corpus.
Personally, if someone told me I had to do just 2 more years of what I went through with a startup in order to never work again, I’d say “no thanks”. And while I’m happy to pitch in some time on concepts that either help humanity or personally enrich me (and am extra-eager if we can tie the two together), I’m not leaving my 30-hour-a-week, slippers-&-bathrobe-dress-code, commute-to-the-livingroom business any time soon (although I would if I got involved in something hugely beneficial and moderately profitable). So, I think some of the ideas already mentioned about marrying interests and abilities with different classes of start-ups need implementation if this is going to move from some sort of communal stew to a concrete business with distinct individuals making discrete contributions. [Aside: I think that’s a start-up possibility right there … a mechanism that allows arbitrary-sized contributions to a project (think open-source), but has some (community) basis for valuing those contributions, so when the cash starts rolling in, people can be compensated roughly in proportion to their contributions (yes, this is probably a harder problem than most of the startups suggested here). Thought exercise: if someone gave $1B “to Linux” (sic) for contributions to humanity, how would that money be doled out to contributors?]
Ideas with long payoff time frames are generally not good candidates for startups (unless the founders are willing to light their money on fire just because it’s something they just want to see done), which limits the scope of things that can be done in a “non-philanthropic” enviro. I think you also need to delineate classes of businesses: some people will see the philanthropy angle as a mere selling tool to generate funding/interest; other people are interested in “doing good”, and have ideas for companies that won’t work any better as non-profits than for-profits.
So, for me: I’d like to contribute SOME time to a project with public benefit, and if I happen to get some money out of it down the road, I can decide to commit more time and/or consider that gravy. I’ve had a web design/hosting business (mostly LAMP) for about 15 years, and do a little bit of most things tangentially associated with that.
Second, my concept … essentially, borrowing money from your future self for something with a postive ROI expectation value.
Economists can (OK, do) roughly value certain life milestones, such as the increase in lifetime earnings for finishing high school (for the sake of this discussion, let’s use $500K for that number). They also believe that certain goals (e.g. passing grades for a semester) can be cash-incentivized. So you let an individual borrow a portion of their future benefit (10%? $50K buys a lot of incentive from a HS student) in the present, with a promise to repay that over a very long time period at a very low interest rate (something that works out to about 20% in total repayments, before factoring inflation, if I had to peg it to something for the sake of argument). A website would have a schedule of incentive schemes, possibly scaled by degree-of-difficulty (passing grades being tougher for weaker students, e.g.), and upon meeting the short-term milestones of that goal, and the final goal itself, incentives would be paid out. This could apply to any process that has a {present value of all future returns} greater than the amount needed to repay: reduced medical costs for weight reduction and smoking-cessation, job certifications (passing a CPA or actuarial exam), time off from work to acquire a work-related skill, cost of improving a home/installing energy-reducing features, etc. Yeah, some of those may not work, but I’m sure there’s no shortage of quantifiable processes or goals with a positive future ROI. & I can see that measurement could be tricky, but in the school example we could have schools sign on to the program, in the certification example we get a copy of the certification from the certifying body, etc.
There’s an additional monetary multiplier, in that the younger version (the borrower) is almost certainly in a lower income bracket than the older version (the lender), and the money is valued more highly … I’d happily give $20 inflation-adjusted dollars (a pittance now) to my younger self just to go have fun with (who felt $20 was a lot of money), even taking into account that I wish I’d worked/studied harder when I was younger so I could coast more now. And when it comes time to repay the loan, the fact that I am effectively repaying myself might reduce deadbeatedness.
Of course, not everyone will repay their loans, and the payoff in this venture would be very long-term. So who would provide the seed money for this until repayments match outlays? Well:
The same people who loan money to Kiva, not to make a profit, but because they believe incentivizing people is more effective than aid, and if they make a few dollars off it eventually, that’s gravy
The same people who give gift annuities to schools (a similar mechanism)
Foundations with money to invest and an ethical dictate to do something with that money
People trying to solve long-term problems (eradicating diseases, improving the education system) who just want their money to do the best thing possible
Alumni of the program who see the value (the same way universitites have an easy time getting money from graduates who believe school was one reason they have high incomes)
People who see it as a Very Good Idea and choose to fund that instead of a non-profit (I understand you personally may not consider it a VGI, but weaker concepts have attracted more money)
Please proceed to poke holes/refine. thnx. -b.