Premal Shah
President and Co-Founder, Kiva.org
Book Recommendations:
Recommended by Premal Shah
“Social Startup Success is a playbook I wish we had when we founded Kiva!” (from Amazon)
With business advice from an expert entrepreneur, learn how to identify and leverage the key factors that will bring sustainability and success to your startup. Kathleen Kelly Janus, a lecturer at the Stanford University Program on Social Entrepreneurship and the founder of the successful social enterprise Spark, set out to investigate what makes a startup succeed or fail. She surveyed more than 200 high-performing social entrepreneurs and interviewed dozens of founders. Social Startup Success shares her findings for the legions of entrepreneurs working for social good, revealing how the best organizations get over the revenue hump. How do social ventures scale to over $2 million, Janus's clear benchmark for a social enterprise's sustainability? Janus, tapping into strong connections to the Silicon Valley world where many of these ventures are started or and/or funded, reveals insights from key figures such as DonorsChoose founder Charles Best, charity:water's Scott Harrison, Reshma Saujani of Girls Who Code and many others. Social Startup Success will be social entrepreneurship's essential playbook; the first definitive guide to solving the problem of scale.
Recommended by Premal Shah
“A book for our times. A witty, must-read primer for every social entrepreneur and every changemaker. Practical, hard-hitting advice coupled to important ethical questions confronting our field. A refreshing, unique look at the field of social entrepreneurship. Jonathan gives us the pragmatic guideposts we all need. The book I wish I had read in college.” (from Amazon)
The Unfinished Social Entrepreneur is about powering up your social justice career. The world feels so screwed up, so unfair, so unnecessarily mean, so Trumpian. More than ever, the world needs you. This book is a book of conviction about the unfinished work of social justice. According to Lewis: "The crusty work of social entrepreneurship is as much fun as I’m permitted to have in public. It’s joyous, fulfilling and happy-making. Tackling big challenges is heady stuff. Fighting the good fight is utterly gratifying." The Unfinished Social Entrepreneur is a compendium of 21 original essays and insights - part memoir, part handbook - about the challenges and questions every social entrepreneur thinks about. For the novice changemaker, each chapter bristles with provocative tips and tools to transform your social justice career. Because social entrepreneurship is not called solo entrepreneurship, the book also contains 19 additional commentaries by other change-makers. Social entrepreneurs are a club of conscience. Sign up. Show up. Stand up. All book profits donated to social justice causes.