Entrepreneurs: Maximizing Profit Isn’t Everything
by Miki SaxonThat said, here are some stories that drive the point home.
A beautiful 23-foot air purification tower developed by a partnership of three Dutch companies that’s not for sale to the highest bidders.
“We’ve gotten a lot of requests from property developers who want to place it in a few filthy rich neighborhoods of course, and I tend to say no to these right now,” he says. “I think that it should be in a public space.”
Marco Arment built an ad-blocking app that blazed to the top of Apple’s App Store, but he pulled it almost immediately.
But he said that building such a successful ad-blocking app “just doesn’t feel good.”
“Ad blockers come with an important asterisk: While they do benefit a ton of people in major ways, they also hurt some, including many who don’t deserve the hit,” Arment wrote on his personal blog Friday.
Finally, Kickstarters founders, with the full support of their board, reincorporated the company as a B Corp, i.e., a public benefit corporation.
“We don’t ever want to sell or go public,” said Mr. Strickler, Kickstarter’s chief executive. “That would push the company to make choices that we don’t think are in the best interest of the company.”
Still for profit, but focused on something more.
Other companies, including the e-commerce site Etsy, Warby Parker, Brazilian cosmetics maker Natura, Plum Organics and Method are B Corps — and Unilever is considering changing.
Doing good by good by doing well, as Sir Richard is so fond of saying.
Flickr image credit: opensource.com