social impact

Collaboration is the new competition: that was French entrepreneur Lucie Basch’s philosophy when she approached a group of Danish founders who happened to be working on a similar food waste reduction app. 

Before long, Lucie and her new co-founders joined forces to create Too Good To Go, an app that enables restaurants and grocery stores to sell leftover items in ‘surprise bags’ at a significantly reduced price. Since launching in 2016, Too Good To Go has raised over $30 million dollars and has expanded to 17 countries, including the U.S.

This week on How I Built This Lab, Lucie talks with Guy about her company’s work to leverage the ‘horizontal power’ of consumers to collectively chip away at global food waste. She also discusses the emergence of social enterprises like hers, that fill the gap between charitable and purely profit-driven organizations.

This episode was produced by Sam Paulson, with music by Sam Paulson and Ramtin Arablouei.

Edited by John Isabella, with research help from Lauren Landau Einhorn.

Our audio engineer was Neal Rauch.

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It can be easy to overlook the people behind all the technology we use. But a startup based in India called Karya is putting them front and center, both in its method and its marketing. The company’s stated goal is to alleviate poverty for Indians living in low-income communities by paying them approximately $5 per hour, a wage that’s higher than the market rate, to create data. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Vivek Seshadri, Karya’s chief technology officer and co-founder, about how his company fits into the lucrative data collection business.

Stephen Satterfield, the host of Netflix docu-series “High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America,” thinks the bananas in the U.S. are gross. Sure, they’re convenient to produce and ship commercially, but they’re fibrous, bland and maybe worst of all inescapable! They’re also just one example of how what we eat is shaped by culture, politics, and history. In this episode, Stephen explains why he uses gastronomy as a way to understand the world and shares how we can use food to empower people who grow and consume what we eat. For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts

The principle behind E.S.G. is that investors should look beyond just whether a company can make a profit and take into account other factors, such as its environmental impact and action on social issues.

But critics of that investment strategy, mostly Republicans, say that Wall Street has taken a sharp left turn, attacking what they term “woke capitalism.”

Guest: David Gelles, a climate correspondent for The New York Times.

Background reading: 

• How did environmentally conscious investing became a target of conservatives?
• Republicans are likely to keep making E.S.G. a political punching bag.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

J+M kick off the show by discussing the reaction to Adam Neumann's $350M raise (1:40), before covering Boom Supersonic's new deal with American Airlines (24:59), and a Startup of the Day. (41:55) Jason wraps the show solo for part 6 of The Blueprint, where he covers getting ahead of trends! (48:06)

(0:00) J+M intro today's segments!

(1:40) Thoughts on the reaction to Adam Neumann's $350M raise from a16z, including a NY Post article that Jason was quoted in

(12:45) WorkOS - Go to https://workos.com to learn how to make your app enterprise-ready.

(14:14) Was the negative reaction to the fundraising warranted? What is the counter case?

(24:04) Visa - Learn more about Visa’s online Small Business Hub at Visa.com/smallbusinesshub

(24:59) American Airlines agrees to purchase up to 20 jets from airplane startup Boom Supersonic, J+M do some math on ticket prices

(34:13) Brave - Download today at https://brave.com/twist to browse faster, search privately and so much more

(35:33) Does the world need supersonic passenger jets?

(41:55) Startup of the Day: Goodfellows helps elderly people and young people foster connections

(48:06) The Blueprint Part 6: Jason explains how he gets ahead of trends

Jason's Howard Stern/Spotify blog from 2015: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/howard-sterns-easy-billion-dollar-pay-day-courtesy-app-calacanis

A branch of philanthropy led by philosophers is dedicated to finding the most impactful ways to help humans survive and thrive. Anyone can find that agreeable, but it can be tough to hear it also means your donations to local charities are kind of a waste.

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This is one of the most pressing conversations of the moment. 

The extent of childhood hunger and food insecurity that exists not in third world countries, but here in the UK. It is absolutely astounding that 1 in 8 people are food insecure coupled with the fact that a third of food is wasted along various parts of the supply chain.

To open up this discussion I’m inviting representatives from 2 incredible organisations working to tackle these issues in their unique ways, for a fairer and more compassionate society. One where nobody is left unseen nor hungry.

Rather than complaining or pointing out a desperate situation I want to shine a light on these incredible charities

First I speak with Alyson Walsh, Commercial Director with responsibility for Fundraising, Marketing Communications and Volunteering at Fareshare. With 25 years’ experience in the food and retail sector, Alyson possesses a wealth of industry and consumer knowledge,

Later in this pod, I also speak with Emily Frezza (a former primary school teacher) and Alysa Remtulla from Magic Breakfast, a registered charity providing healthy breakfasts to children in the UK who arrive at school too hungry to learn. We talk about the foundations of the charity and the scale of the issue of food insecurity amongst children in the UK. 2 million children in the UK suffer hunger and Magic Breakfast extend their expert support to their partners across 960 Primary, Secondary, ASL/Special Educational Needs Schools and Pupil Referral Units in disadvantaged areas of England and Scotland. They reach around 167,000 children to ensure they start their school day with the energy and nutrition they need to be able to make the most of their morning lessons. 

On the pod today we cover the following:

• Overview of the problem
• What is Food insecurity – what it is, how much of an issue it is, how it’s increased since the pandemic.
• Food insecurity is a pre-pandemic problem
• How to tackle the stigma surrounding food insecurity
• The logistical issues surrounding food redistribution
• How to get involved with both Fareshare and Magic Breakfast

Please do check out The Doctor's Kitchen Website for full show notes and details on this and all other podcast episodes

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