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McNair Center

Interview with Dr. Armen Orujyan

Dr. Armen Orujyan
Photo courtesy of Athgo

Dr. Armen Orujyan is the founder and chairman of Athgo, an entrepreneurship platform that is in consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council, U.N. Department of Public Information and the World Intellectual Property Organization. Athgo advances innovation ecosystems in Europe and Africa and has established recurring global innovation forums at the U.N. and World Bank. Orujyan earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2000 and his doctorate degree from Claremont Graduate University in 2007. In 2017, Orujyan joined the Baker Institute’s Board of Advisors.

The McNair Center’s Diana Carranza recently interviewed Orujyan about his experience in social entrepreneurship.

What is your definition of Social Entrepreneurship?
I would characterize, albeit no longer classify, social entrepreneurship as building enterprises that create both financial wealth and communal value. The approach advances the idea that “doing good” and “doing well” can and should coexist. I just call it constructive entrepreneurship. Constructive entrepreneurs create short-term value through the provision of products and services, and long-term value through enterprise operations. Their activities incorporate two characteristics: positive net income (wealth creation) and positive net value (communal value creation). To be successful, constructive entrepreneurs expand performance criteria to measure and communicate both net income and net value.

How did you get involved in Social Entrepreneurship?
While in college after doing advisory work for U.S. political campaigns, including Vice President Gore’s Presidential run in 2000, I led a human rights movement that brought over 40,000 young people and concerned citizens onto the streets of Los Angeles. Leveraging the power of social media and the convening power of youth, the movement has since turned into an annual observance, attracting in effect of 160,000 people.

The experience of passionately following a vision and watching tens of thousands of people from all walks of life join to pursue a common objective was humbling and at the same time powerful and enlightening. I began seeing that with a slight push, direction and a compelling story, not only I, but also all individuals on the margins, especially young people, can realize their potential.

The success of the movement was emotionally gratifying and intellectually fulfilling, and it paved the way for my next phase in life. I wanted to do well in life by empowering young adults avoid many of my own past challenges and encourage and aid those with great ideas.

Athgothon 5 brought budding entrepreneurs and students from over 50 universities in 35 countries to the World Bank headquarters in Washington D.C. in 2013.
Photo courtesy of Athgo.

There are three ways of living: 1. Live aimlessly, 2. Live for a purpose and 3. Purposefully live. I went with number 3 and founded Athgo as a nonprofit that provided a stage for young people pursuing common objectives but lacking direction, access or means.

We launched with a small program at UCLA with 20 students, but Athgo quickly evolved into a global entrepreneurial platform powered by a proprietary quantitative behavioral framework and with recurring Innovation Forums at the United Nations and the World Bank headquarters as well as in Europe and Africa.

Over the years, the Organization, has provided intellectual, networking and financial opportunities to over 10,000 young adults from over 600 universities in 80 countries while building support from Fortune 100 firms and cultivating partnerships with leading academic institutions and the United Nations system.

What are the current misconceptions about Social Entrepreneurship? For example, there is a general association of the term social with not-for-profit startups.
This is one of the reasons why I stopped using ‘social’ and instead use ‘constructive’ to classify our work. Constructive enterprises produce both positive net-income and positive net-value, whereas nonprofits are not structured to be profitable, essentially relying on donors’ buy-in to be successful.

What are the current main areas of focus and challenges for social ventures?
The challenge becomes incorporating both of these features, net-income and positive net-value, into project and management performance measures. While each constructive enterprise must create financial success and communal value, there are varying definitions and varying degrees.

In the case of not-for-profit ventures, how can success be measured?
The nonprofits predominately focus on producing social impact at all costs, as long as it is within the allocated budget. The concern with this is that the budget allocations for many of these initiatives are done subjectively rather than based on deep market analysis. The question has been whether the efforts of the nonprofits are established based on a ‘need’ or a ‘desire’ of the organization to produce the value.

How can ecosystems address the need of social entrepreneurs?
In order to successfully execute constructive enterprises, there must be an effective management reward structure that incorporates both communal value and financial success. Without clear definitions of how performance will be measured, management will be conflicted between competing goals.

Existing performance measures do not always support this enterprise type. Attempting to create a management reward system based on blended return without performance measures can lead to conflicting goals, which will threaten viability and undermine long-term stability.

These performance measure limitations lead some enterprises to produce superior revenue accentuation and some entities superior value accentuation. Ecosystems should have a system in place that promotes and rewards a pre-established balance between revenue and communal value. It ought to establish for companies both financial hurdles and communal value hurdles. Managers then will look to achieve a pre-established balance between revenue and communal value.

Are there niche entrepreneurship ecosystems for social ventures?
We are what we observe ourselves to be – a rock star or a rock under a star – our choice. It really does not matter where you are geographically. Companies such as Tesla, Facebook and ERI are successfully operating as constructive enterprises away from federal and state capitals. Yet, if we want to promote more rock stars, the ecosystems would need to implement favorable legal frameworks, which will reward the constructive approach. For the time being, this is still a dream.

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Accelerators McNair Center

MassChallenge: Connecting Startups and Big Business

Corporations and startups are moving toward early stage interactions. MassChallenge, a highly successful nonprofit accelerator, has been connecting corporations and startups since its 2010  launch in Boston. MC has several US and international locations, which accelerated 372 startups in 2016.

MC delivers positive results and has been listed among the Best Startup Accelerators by the Seed Accelerator Rankings Project, led by Baker Institute Rice faculty scholar Yael Hochberg.  There are over 1,000 MC alumni, who have collectively raised more than $1.8B in outside funding, generated $700M in revenue and created over 60,000 jobs. According to a 2016 MIT study, MC startups are 2.5 times more likely than non-MC startups to hire at least 15 employees and three times more likely to raise $500,000 in funding.

With seven years of history, notable MC alumni includes Ginkgo Bioworks, which designs custom microbes to produce chemicals, ingredients and industrial enzymes. As a startup, Gingko Bioworks raised $154M in funding and signed a deal for 700 million base pairs of designed DNA — the largest such agreement ever made — with Twist Bioscience. Other remarkable graduates of the program include Ksplice, Turo, Sproxil and LiquiGlide.

An Attractive Alternative for Startups

MC is similar to other startup institutions such as Techstars and Y-Combinator. However, the nonprofit differentiates itself by not taking equity. Entrants to the accelerator must be early stage startups, defined as companies with no more than $500K of investment and $1M in annual revenue. As part of the four-month program, selected startups receive mentoring, co-working space, access to a network of corporate partners, tailored workshops and the chance to win a portion of $2M in zero-equity funding. Additional prizes are provided by partners such as The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) and Microsoft’s New England Research and Development Center.

For entrepreneurs in regions with mature ecosystems like Silicon Valley and Boston, MC is one option among an array of accelerators and informal networks. This  density of resources is called  agglomeration, a geographic concentration of interconnected entities increases interactions and the productivity. The MIT study suggests MC acts as a complement to the prior advantages of startups in established ecosystems by providing key resources and access to social capital  and also found evidence that startups founded in regions with higher access to early stage investors had on average higher quality ideas, but that their chances of success were not higher conditional on the quality of their idea.

For startups in nascent ecosystems the resources provided by MC can become the only option to pitch their ideas to investors and advance their company at no cost other than the time invested on the program. Of equal value is the endorsement received as a MC graduate inferring the quality of the startup venture.

A Model Built on Strategic Partnerships

As a nonprofit, MC depends on the support of a network of public, private and philanthropic partners, with the vast majority of their funding coming from corporations. Governments and philanthropic foundations fund MC with the goal to foster regional economic growth. Founders John Harthorne and Akhil Nigam, former consultants at Bain & Company, garnered early support from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, successful entrepreneurs and large corporations such as Blackstone, Microsoft and the nonprofit Kauffman Foundation.

MC could have faced financial challenges by providing accelerator programs at no cost and with no equity commitment. However, MC was able to become a bridge between large companies’ need for innovation and startups’ need for capital. Large companies have the scale of resources, customer information and market experience, but may lag in innovation. Startups, on the other hand, lack the resources but innovate with sometimes disruptive and successful ventures, frequently taking incumbents by surprise (Airbnb, Uber).

MC serves as a channel between startups and established companies to meet the need for fast-paced innovation. Companies like Bühler and PTC partner with MC to source high-potential startups for the development of advanced technology. Companies can also source tailored programs or tracks for specific needs.

A study done jointly by MC and innovation firm Imaginatik looked at how startups and corporations interact in new collaborative ways. The research team surveyed 112 corporations and 233 startups from various industries. 82 percent of the corporations considered startup interactions important, and 23% stated that these interactions are “mission critical.” Startups have a high interest in working with corporations with 99% stating it is important for them to interact with potential corporate customers, marketing channels and strategic partners.

Expansion

MassChallenge was located at One Marina Park Drive until 2014.

MC communicates its impact and vision to donors by demonstrating the cost-effectiveness of alliances between startups and corporations. A solid accelerator program, global vision, robust network and a sustainable funding strategy have set up MC for success. As stated in the MC Impact Report 2016, the accelerator is committed to running 12 locations annually by 2020, including at least one on each populated continent.

Before establishing an MC accelerator, the metropolitan area is evaluated for the quality of its research universities, urban setting, level of entrepreneurship opportunity and investment capability. As government and private stakeholders partner, a sense of shared ownership becomes crucial to consolidating efforts. This engagement guarantees that the resulting ecosystems are seen as a shared legacy.

The next MC sites are yet to be announced. Currently in five locations with global impact, MC’s 2020 vision is on a path to become a tangible reality.

The author and editor would like to thank Tay Jacobe for assistance with researching and drafting this post.