Can Bono Invest The World Out Of Poverty?

Bono
(Photo credit – User Ambr0 on Deviant Art)

It’s hard to say anything bad about Bono. The U2 lead singer and humanitarian has been very successful in creating a foundation to fight poverty and end AIDS in Africa. And in a recent interview with the MIT Technology Review, he mentions another priority: investing in technology to solve the world’s problems.

A recent article by Kat Ascharya on Mobiledia summarizes the interview and talks about how Bono has slowly built up credibility with his investments in technology towards social and economic justice as well as the impact made through his investment firm, Elevation Partners.

Entrepreneurs Have Plenty of Available (But Scattered) Resources, says Founder of StartupAdvisor.com

Professor Naeem Zafar (Photo credit: Haas School of Business)

Not many people can claim a record of having worked with six startups directly, coaching CEOs and being a faculty member at UC Berkeley within the Haas MBA program. However, Professor Naeem Zafar can.

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to speak with Professor Zafar and discuss his thoughts on the resources that entrepreneurs and startups have to succeed. Aside from teaching, his current titles include President & CEO of Bitzer Mobile (enterprise mobility solutions) and Founder of Startup-Advisor.com (providing expert advice for entrepreneurs).

Do You Want To Scale Your Social Startup?

My last article, Are Mobile Payments Feasible Everywhere?, found me diving into the field of mobile technologies and how they’re being used to create better solutions for poverty problems around the world. As part of that, I was looking into a UNICEF platform called RapidSMS, led by Erica Kochi.

Kochi is the UNICEF’s Innovation Unit’s co-lead and is also a frequent lecturer on new product design. In a recent article on TechCrunch, “How Do You Scale Social Innovation Startups”, Kochi describes in detail the difficulty any startup has in creating traction and builds specifically on how social innovators can grow their startups in the best way possible.