Wow, responses to the last post were great, and I think we’re going to go for it. I thought about it a lot, and I imagined that when I put the idea out there it would have the effect of dampering some peoples’ hopes. It did for some, but way more people seemed to have more hope than ever with this new twist. Here’s part of an email I got (didn’t make it into the comments):

Capitalism is the strongest force in the world and can be used for good.  I am only a college freshman, but this company makes me feel like there is some sense and hope for this messed up world we are living in right now. Thank you for all that you are doing and making the move to become a for-profit status…. I can’t imagine you needing an engineer in four years, but I would love to work for you.

This is so nice. People are asking us to change capitalism not just through our campaigns, but by being role models and pioneers of a new kind of business. It’s a tall order, but we’re going for it. We’re going to be building on the idea that today there are economic advantages built in to choosing good over evil. I recently saw this blog post that seems a bit harsh but has some great insights:

What’s really going on here? There’s a massive tectonic shift
rocking the economic landscape. All these players are discovering that
the boardroom’s first and most important task is simply to try always
and everywhere do less evil. In the dismal language of economics: as
interaction explodes, the costs of evil are starting to outweigh the
benefits.

It’s time for all us – especially would-be revolutionaries, like the
Facebook kru – to grow up. It’s time for us, perhaps, to think about
outgrowing orthodox competitive strategy. That’s really what Facebook’s
mini case is all about: no amount of competitive strategy can help Facebook gain advantage – because advantage is built on putting good before evil.

The deeper point is this. As Starbucks and Wal-Mart are discovering,
orthodox strategy was built for an industrial world – an equilibrium
world of oligopolies, soulless "product", and zombified "consumers".
But that’s not today’s world. Playing the games of orthodox strategy in
a world whose economic fabric is being rewoven isn’t just small: the
opportunity cost is never discovering newer, better approaches to
strategy.

The consumers shall be zombified no more! (Also, if anyone knows a talented Ruby on Rails developer looking for a job, have them drop me a line…)

It was one month ago that I wrote a post asking you all for your advice on what to do next. Reading it now, it feels ancient. My attitude then was basically that I wanted some magical resources to come along so we could take it up a notch, but since that was unlikely to happen, the real question was what kind of campaign to organize in order for us to slowly build the capacity that would one day allow us to go asking for funding as I continued working part-time…then maybe a year later we would have a couple of employees and we would expand beyond the Bay Area, etc, etc…

In the last month what has basically happened is that some magical resources came along, allowing us to take it up a notch. In brief, all of our Carrotmobby dreams may be about to come true. But there’s a catch! The plan I’m considering is a for-profit model, not a non-profit model. I know. I know, that was my first reaction too. But after a couple weeks of thinking and discussing and researching, I think it’s a great idea. To the extent that I had a plan before, this is a departure from it, and it’s not something I’m taking lightly. This is not my final answer, and I’d like to hear your feedback on this. But the bottom line is I’m really excited about these new developments and I will tell you why….

(more…)

If you’re on the mailing list, you’ve already seen this. If not, here’s an update…

(more…)

I will soon post a link to some of the press that Carrotmob has been getting…I have been doing a lot of that, a lot of emails, and a lot of meetings, and the basic situation is that everything is going well, but I still haven’t been able to start planning the next campaign. For now I thought I would post this thought and see what you guys think…. I wrote up a little thing for a blog interview, and after reading that and hearing me do a radio interview, my girlfriend called me out: "you flip flop on this… in your radio interview you say that the most
important thing on the large scale will be reputation value… here you
imply that it’s just the cash reward.  this is just generally an issue
on which i think you need to come up with a more defined position…on
the radio you say a bunch of different things (all of which i’ve heard
you say at some point to other people…): what matters is reputation
value; what matters is the cash reward; we’ll give a limited time
endorsement; we’ll "define" which coffee company is "good"; we won’t
make judgments on whether companies are good or bad.  get it straight!" She’s right. So I organized my thoughts a bit, and here they are:

Rather than focus on how good or how bad companies are overall, we are
going to focus on whether or not they have earned a carrot. When we
offer a carrot to a company, we are signaling to consumers that this
company has done something good and they deserve a carrot. This
"carrot" can be thought of as a "recommended status", that is finite,
and doesn’t imply perfection, but it means that it would be appropriate
for consumers to favor that company in the future. So we will boost the
company’s reputation in this way, as well as give them cash with our
purchases. The downside to this approach would be that we may offer a
carrot to a company that is not the MOST socially responsible company
in it’s industry. The upside to this approach would be that this will
allow us to have much bigger impact, because we can engage with the
least sustainable companies and get them to take more drastic steps. My
opinion is that our priority should be on maximizing our impact, rather
than making sure the most overall responsible company gets the most
money. Furthermore, it would be extremely difficult to define which
company is the most responsible, overall. That is a worthwhile
endeavor, but for the time being I don’t think it should be Carrotmob’s
endeavor. So with this system, many businesses that are already doing lots of good (but who don’t bid enough to win our carrot) may feel slighted. Hopefully we will find ways to transparently acknowledge the good that they are doing without diluting the value of the carrot that we offer to the winner. However, if not, my stance would be that it’s more important to increase the positive impact of our buying power than it is to help out the most responsible business.

This is a tough call. Do you think I’m getting it right?