271 | Scaling Up Through Corporate Partnerships with Mark Horoszowski
Our guest this week on the pod is Mark Horoszowski. Mark is the CEO and Co-Founder of Moving Worlds which operates a global platform that convenes partners from all sectors to build a more equitable, just and sustainable economy.
And a special thanks to members of the Awarepreneurs Community for sponsoring this episode!
Resources mentioned in this episode include:
Interview with Mark Horoszowski on Moving Worlds and Scaling Up Through Corporate Partnerships
NOTE: While it’s not perfect, we offer this transcription by Otter.ai for those who are hearing impaired or who don’t find listening to a podcast enjoyable or possible.
SPEAKERS
Paul Zelizer, Mark Horoszowski
Paul Zelizer 00:02
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help increase your positive impact your profits and your quality of life. Before we get into these topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, it helps more people learn how to have positive impact or values based business. Thank you so much. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce you to Mark Horoszowski. And our topic is Scaling Up Through Corporate Partnerships.. Mark is the CEO and Co- Founder of Moving Worlds which operates a global platform that convenes partners from all sectors to build a more equitable, just and sustainable economy. Mark, welcome to the show.
Mark Horoszowski 00:51
Thanks so much for having me, Paul,
Paul Zelizer 00:53
really excited about turning our listeners on what you are up to, because you all are doing amazing things. To just help our listeners get a bit of perspective, Mark, what if you were to give the like, you know, shorter version of your origin story, like none of us that I did 260 Something episodes, I don't think anybody's had a linear path. But a few highlights along the way. So our listeners get a sense of like, Who is this guy, Mark? And what have you been up to? Before we get to all the awesome things that you're doing under the brand moving worlds?
Mark Horoszowski 01:27
Yeah, thanks. Thanks for asking it. You know, it's one of the things that I love about working in the social enterprise space is that you get to bring the whole human, you got to bring the whole person and I appreciate you, you asking me a question? You know, I think in many ways, my story and, you know, I'll be mindful here, I won't go I won't go too far down this path. But it really starts with my parents, you know, both who were immigrants over to the United States, they actually ended up meeting here. And I think that focus for how do you build a better future was just something that I was raised under. And especially for people that came over with, you know, nothing, and were able to build up a livelihood here, that focus on building a better future is just a big theme of, of something that I've been carrying forward since. And that meant being involved in the community, that meant spending a lot of time in different cultures, that meant being very involved and volunteering. And so when I went to college, you know, I really quickly kind of found my own foothold through volunteering, and I got very involved with the American Cancer Society, specifically initiative called Relay for Life. So I spent all this time, you know, doing community management, doing leadership, mobilizing people working with partners, trying to fundraise. And so when I got job offers graduating college with my master's in accounting, people were way more interested during the interview process, about my volunteer experience than they were about my schooling. And so I always felt that, you know, investing really heavily in in the community engaging in volunteering was actually also ended up becoming an investment in myself. And as I started to grow professionally, and of course, there's a lot of steps here, I started in accounting, then I moved into healthcare marketing to be closer to, you know, a cause, namely healthcare that I was really passionate about. And then the great recession hit. And as we saw, what I really felt was like a broken contract between employees and their employers, as well as corporations and the environment at large, right, especially coming out of the Great Recession from from 2000 789 10. Right. And thinking actually kind of crazy about the opportunity that we're while both the opportunity, the challenges where we are right now, you know, moving through that, and just seeing that the way through that was actually to roll back environmental regulation to kick start the economy, that was really a big reset for me. And it was something that I thought there had to be a better way for companies to treat employees, and for companies to grow in ways that wasn't so intensive for and on the environment and on society. So I actually ended up leaving after we made it through the Great Recession, and spent a year traveling and volunteering with social enterprises. You know, at the time, that concept of a social business was very new, right? That was the 2007 book from Muhammad Yunus. The benefit of
Paul Zelizer 04:26
launch my business in 2008, and nobody knew what social entrepreneurship
Mark Horoszowski 04:32
exactly, you know, and it just felt like that was something that I wanted to be a part of, and, and there wasn't, you know, an MBA program in it there, there wasn't a certificate course. So I just said, Look, volunteering and bypass was something that really empowered me I'm gonna go do that again. But I'm gonna do that with the social enterprises so spent a year traveling and volunteering trying to answer the question what makes social enterprises flourish and also what ecosystems are needed to help support Um, and it felt like the big challenge that everybody would talk about was capacity building and skill building and access to talent. But no one was was trying to address that challenge everybody was focused on. Okay, how do we how do we help them access impact investment capital. And I felt like, there were organizations that we're going to be able to solve the capital piece, but the access to human capital piece was not being addressed. So it was actually my co founder, Derek Nord, who came up with the original idea for moving worlds that really came out of our conversations together, how do you help social enterprises access support beyond funding in order to grow and scale? And that was, yeah, it was over 10 years ago? And then, and then here we are today?
Paul Zelizer 05:44
When did you actually launch moving worlds?
Mark Horoszowski 05:47
So our first pilot goes back to let's call it 2011. And then we formally incorporated in 2012. And then we raised our seed investment round in 2014. And then we've been growing on revenue since
Paul Zelizer 06:00
God and so about 11 years, almost 10 years ago that you formally incorporated. Yeah, nice. So this idea for and let me just say, I just love that you're focused on human capital in the space, and I'm a scout for the, you know, financial capital, that's an super important part, I am blessed to help entrepreneurs, especially climate entrepreneurs, find their way into, you know, relationships with values aligned VC firms and things like that. So I totally understand and I'm with you, I'm not seeing as much conversation about the human capital in the space as I wish, and I'm just thinking like a deep value array for prioritizing that. So when you're talking about this idea, or episode, title, Mark is called Scaling up through corporate partnerships, like, if somebody's like, what exactly does that mean? And how does moving worlds think about corporate partnerships and moving the needle on impact? Enterprises goals? Talk to us a little bit about that?
Mark Horoszowski 07:07
Yeah, you know, I think there's a lot of social enterprises that start with that direct to consumer model. And there's a number that we can we can think through, but I'm a Seattle light, I'm obviously addicted to coffee as a result. So I'll start with a coffee example. There's a couple of coffee social enterprises that we started with, you know, some working on direct mail order direct to consumer coffee, some of them were trying to become the social enterprise version of Starbucks. And, you know, both were able to grow and see some traction, right? But consumer demand is really hard to generate, you're operating in a very, very competitive landscape. consumer demands can be fickle. There's lots of, you know, price sensitivity. And those are challenging pathways to grow. And both organizations, one UK based one North American base, actually found ways to grow more rapidly and consistently by saying, Hey, we do this thing really well. Right? One has farmers roast coffee, another one provides job education and financial education to people experiencing homelessness, and then helps them find jobs through the coffee industry. And in both cases, they found more predictable and faster growth streams by saying, Yes, we can work directly with consumers and sell them coffee. But there's actually bigger demand through different corporate channels, right, we can get our coffee on airplanes, like in Virgin Atlantic, we can supply our coffee into office parks, like with SAP, or in North America, we can be an ingredient in in other consumer products like daily harvest. So both are in universities, right? Think about campuses think about events. So there's actually all this pent up demand from corporations and from governments that are looking to spend money in more responsible ways. And oftentimes, that label is called Social procurement, right? Where procurement is the activity of a business or government saying, hey, we need marketing services, or we need coffee, or we need another product or service. And so they'll go in to the market melt procure it. And increasingly, they're saying when we go spend money with suppliers, a bigger and bigger percentage of that has to also achieve some environmental and social targets that we are sending out and committing to and so it's actually this like, growing pile of money. I think currently, the social procurement budget is estimated. Our friends at Yunus social business issued a report with Bain Capital that it's about $500 billion There's a year, which is more than then, you know, all philanthropic capital that spent every year, right, or all global development money spent by governments every year. So there's this huge pot of money that's actually actively looking to be spent with businesses that are socially and environmentally responsible. But a lot of social enterprises just are not aware of that yet. And their sales motions and their delivery motions are very kind of consumer based. And they're really, they're, you know, that's a challenging market. Right, all markets are challenging, right. But that's an especially challenging one. So I think that's really what we saw, as some of our social enterprises, were really using the moving world's network, to say, I'm trying to get in the door at Pepsi, or at Unilever, or at Microsoft. And they were starting to use our global network of professionals from around the world that were willing to volunteer their skills to help build the capacity of social enterprises. So our social enterprises started to use this network, not just for voluntary support, but for connection building. And I think that's where we really saw the opportunity was to say, you know, capacity building means a lot of things, a lot of amazing social entrepreneurs just don't come from these don't come from these certain networks or from these industries. And so we can actually help create a lot of shortcuts by getting social enterprises aware of the market opportunity, help them then get connected to the right people. And then when they encounter the next series of challenges, like compliance, contracting, operational efficiency, accounting, finance, etc, we can then continue to provide them ongoing support in order to really make the most of that market opportunity. Awesome.
Paul Zelizer 11:43
And if you're new here, listeners, I try to track that I'm making notes. So that report that you just mentioned, Mark, that $500 million number, that's a significant number, right? I'm going to try to track that billion billion I'm sorry, 500 dyslexic 500 billion, sorry, listeners, 500 Billions. If you're an entrepreneur, you might want a piece of a $500 billion pie. I'm gonna track down that report and put it in the show notes. Yeah. So Mark, help us understand like, alright, that makes sense. conceptually. I like Wow, you got my attention if I put myself in the shoes of a listener 500 billion. Okay. Yeah, you got my attention. Now, help us understand this idea of we introduced you by saying, moving world as a global platform that convenes partners from all sectors to build this better world, like, how does moving worlds contribute to impact entrepreneurs getting a piece of that $500 billion pie?
Mark Horoszowski 12:41
Yeah, so and I think this is why we have this kind of more, I don't know if ambiguous doesn't feel like very complimentary to ourselves for for our own messaging, but a little bit of an ambiguous value proposition because what we're really talking about here, it's systems change, right? We're trying to build and contribute to a global economy, that prioritizes businesses who prioritize fair treatment of their own employees that prioritize the environment that prioritize the not only the local community, but the national community in the international community that they're a part of. And so in order to do that, there's capacity building for social enterprises. But there's also capacity building and skill building for corporate professionals. So a big part of our work is actually partnering with corporations like Unilever, like SAP, and educating their employees on this is what social enterprises are, this is what impact investing is, this is how in your role as a marketer, as an advertiser, as an ops leader, as an HR professional, as a business executive, as a product manager, you know, go down the list, this is how you can actually integrate environmental and social good into your core work right into the code that you write into the marketing campaigns that you launch into the products and services that you design. And so we are a platform for companies to help achieve their own environmental and social and governance targets by educating and engaging their employees. And those employees come and they learn and they engage in community, they engage with each other, they have On Demand Learning, they have resources, they have guides, then most importantly, they get to learn by doing, they get to connect directly with social enterprises on the other side of our marketplace, and help those social enterprises with those social enterprise challenges, right? And in those connections, right. And we've facilitated, you know, over 1300 connections in over 110 countries. In those connections. Yes, there's a knowledge and skills transfer, but there's also partnerships that are being created right And there's networks that are being expanded. And so another important player here are also accelerators and impact investors. Right. So this is why we also convene multiple stakeholders to support this movement is because accelerators have a really big role in helping social enterprises grow. And a lot of accelerators. And investors kind of rely on the next round of funding as the finish line for the social enterprise. And the reality is, the average social enterprise will spend six to 10 years going through, you know, the messy middle, or the pit of despair, or the Pioneer gap, right. Or there's all kinds of lovely names for that phrase of what it really takes for social enterprise to go from idea into scaling organization. And so we need other partners at the table to provide that long term support to social enterprises. So we also partner with accelerators to help them find social enterprises and to provide more alumni programming to their social enterprises, so that their portfolio organizations can also benefit from corporate connections, we do the same with impact investors. And then we also help advise and contribute to intervento. intergovernmental organizations, we're an active partner with the World Economic Forum's Global Alliance for social entrepreneurship, which convenes foundations, nonprofits, corporates, accelerators, investors and other ecosystem builders. Similarly, to help connect social enterprises into non financial resources and non financial support, so it's really this global community, of investors of corporate social enterprises of passionate individuals, of funders that are really coming to social enterprises. And I think one of the things that we've, I should say, the sector, that social enterprise support sector has been well intentioned, but kind of gotten wrong over the over the past decade is a lot of organizations are launching their own programs, right? Actually, we're still seeing this today, right? A company launches their own, you know, one off accelerator or their own support initiative. And so that means if you're a social enterprise, you have to go and register on like 30, different platforms for support. And what we make it really easy for social enterprises to do is register in one place. And then from there, get access to employees from Microsoft, from SAP from Pay Pal, from Unilever, from that, you know, go down the list. And so just trying to make it easier for social enterprises to find all these resources, is why we really see our place, see ourselves as this global convening of organizations that are working on this systems change issue.
Paul Zelizer 17:54
Beautiful. In a moment, I want to talk about a case study that helps people you know, understand what this looks like on the ground. Before I do that, I just wanted to share a couple thoughts mark and see if this feels accurate to you just about kind of the context and the echo system, you're operating in and jotted down three notes of trends that might help a listener like, how has this gotten the traction than it has 1011 years and we're going to talk about the company in the second part of the show where you our revenue streams, how many, you know, your team size, all that stuff, but you'll get a sense listeners, it's, it's, you know, there's something really interesting happening here in terms of scale, we'll get there in a moment. But three trends that I wrote down Mark are one, there is a global amount of interest in number one social entrepreneurship at went from, like not being part of our social enterprises. You know, the idea of using business for good has just exploded in the past 15 years. That's one trend. I wrote down number two, I wrote down the trend ESG. And if you don't know what that means, folks, that just stands for environmental, social governance. And if you look at like Google Trends, the number of people who are doing searches on ESG, it's like hockey stick growth, it's like higher than a 40, you know, 45 or 90 angle, whatever 45 degree angle, there we go. I'm just like 45 degree angle, it's a very steep curve, there is a huge amount of interest in what environmental social governance is and how to bring it into business. And then the last one is something called CSR. Another piece of lingo stands for corporate social responsibility. But like you all are playing in the confluence of those three trends. And over the past 1015 20 years, all three of them have absolutely exploded. Is that fair to say?
Mark Horoszowski 19:41
Yeah, yeah, I do think that's, that's fair to say. There's there's always like nuance in what exploiting you know, means and then it's grown.
Paul Zelizer 19:51
It's grown substantially, maybe a little, maybe a little too much.
Mark Horoszowski 19:58
No, I think it's, you know, And building on that point, I think the the explosion is there. And I think anytime there is that rapid growth, you see all these people that weren't a part of it before also come flocking in. Right. And so, you know, one of the reasons I think our team carries a lot of urgency in our work right now. And I think a lot of our stakeholders do, too, is, you know, let's take a look at ESG as an example, there's a lot of discussion debate right now, like, is ESG even a good thing, right. And there are some actors that are using ESG in a way that's actually really stalling the implementation of healthy like, world healthy environmental and social initiatives, right, but then there's others that are also using ESG to accelerate the adoption of real world positive initiatives. And so I think, what's your maybe just to kind of add this extra, like, exclamation point to that explosion is that it's, it's still shaping, right? We're like coming out of the Big Bang on this. And the question is, can we coalesce around it quickly enough, as a strong enough force to make sure that the potential of all these trends can really help us build and achieve the world that we want?
Paul Zelizer 21:19
I totally agree with that. Not everybody, not everybody who's talking about these trends. ESG, or social entrepreneurship, or CSR, is referring to the same thing. Let's just say that. And I think part of what I see when I look a moving world is you all have been around long enough and have created a sense of trust or familiarity, like, hey, these folks have been around for a while. And if we're new to this game, and we want to do it well and not be, you know, part there are certain people who are being accused and I would say rightfully so, of impact washing and greenwashing not not being genuine, yeah. In some of the ways that it's being implemented, maybe there's good intent. But you know, if a fashion fast fashion brand says were super sustainable, and people who've looked at this deeply say, No, you're not. Right, that's that there's a lot of that in this space. What's the definition? And what's the intention of using this lingo lingo? And I think your organization and moving world you have been thinking about this deeply. And again, just trying to unpack for our listeners, how have you gotten to where you are, and we're going to talk about where you are in just a moment, it would be helpful to have that context. It's this podcast a little bit like, how I built this for social entrepreneurs. And that's a context piece that I want our listeners to see. And I really appreciate you helping us nuance that mark. Gotcha. So let's do this. In a moment, I'm going to come back talk about this incredible case study you have and also just the nuts and bolts and moving worlds, what are some of the things you offer? What are some of your revenue streams? How do people find you? Before we do that, I just want to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. Do you have a business that's about making the world a better place, and you want it to grow both in terms of your impact, helping more people and your income, so you could live a good quality life? If you do, I'd like to talk to you about some research for a second. When scientists look at what actually contributes to humans reaching their goals, the single biggest predictor, whether it's a wellness goal, or it's a business school, is what they call social support. In other words, a group of people who are on a similar journey, who can help you with specific strategies that work on that journey at the time and point of development that you're on, as well as emotional support for the ups and downs of that journey. Being a social entrepreneur has highs and lows, right? If you like that kind of support, or where printers has a community called the AWARE printers community, over 270 really generous and really skillful social entrepreneurs. And that's what we do with each other. We share concrete strategies as well as emotional support for the ups and downs of the journey. If you'd like to find out more, you can take a look at where printers.com forward slash community. And thank you to everybody in the AWARE printers community who helped sponsor this podcast. Welcome back, everybody. In the second part of the show, Mark, we'd like to joke about putting on our social entrepreneur glasses. Let's get a little granular. I think we got the context and the big picture. Let's get granular and let's just jump right in with a case study. Like you all work with a very significantly sized organization and you wrote a case study about it. The organization is SAP. Tell us a little bit about the organization and how moving worlds worked with
Mark Horoszowski 24:54
your SAP has been one of the early movers and I think trendsetter It's on corporates supporting social enterprises. For over a decade now, they've been working on different initiatives to support the social enterprise movement. And a big part of that, and their justification of it came from the leadership development, right? Europe, compared to the US tends to be quite a bit more progressive and ahead of the curve on implementing some things around environmental, social and governance factors for corporations, and SAP, you know, read the read the future while and focused on ensuring that they were building their own company in a way that was going to be more sustainable and more equitable. And, you know, no, no company is perfect, but SAP is an example has really led the literal charts on different sustainability measures, including being the the number one DJSI, the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. Company for for I believe that that long. And they believe that if you help people see the power of social entrepreneurs, people as employees, and employees can connect with social enterprises, volunteer with social enterprises learn from social enterprises, that employees are going to build skills that will help them be more collaborative, work better across an increasingly diverse and interconnected world, and also build products and technology for the future. And that investment in its own people and building the future leaders of an organization that will also think about what the future world will need, right, including environmental and social good as part of daily operations for business. That that would be an investment not only in its people, not only in its business growth, but also in its really strategic relationships and partnerships with other corporations, Unilever, or even governments. And so, SAP has been on this journey to really help create a number of opportunities so that employees no matter how busy they are, no matter what their schedules are, like, they can find ways to learn about social innovation, they can find ways to volunteer with social innovators. And they can find ways to both amplify and also read the story so that they continuously have access to ideas and insights that can fuel innovation. And I see SAP came to us with kind of a challenge to say, you know, we have employees across, you know, almost every continent, right? Not Antarctica, right? We have employees everywhere. We have presence in well over 30 countries, we have partners in well over 30 countries, as in other business partners. And we also have customers in in almost every country. So we want to find ways where we can engage more employees from around the world in one place, where they can learn where they can connect where they can trade ideas, and where they can further support social enterprises. And along the way, we combined forces with them, as well as a couple of other organizations, including your lever to launch what we call the transform Support Hub, and the transformed Support Hub, if you will, for everything that we've talked about. So far. It's a branded kind of program, if you will, that does everything that we've been talking about. So for social enterprises, it's the hub that people it's the we call it, kind of an on demand accelerator, but it's the on demand accelerator that social enterprises register for, they can take an assessment on scale up areas, you can access learning, access peers, access experts, and also access the pro bono network of volunteers from around the world. Similarly, employees from companies registered via the transform Support Hub to connect with the social enterprises and to also engage in learning. So SAP helped us launch that in partnership with Unilever and transform, and some other stakeholders. And then on top of that, so you know, now we have we have hundreds of employees from from SAP that are coming into the program that are learning that are attending live events and workshops with experts that are hearing the stories of amazing social enterprises as well as professionals, and that are also volunteering and connecting directly with social enterprises. And then SAP launched internally their own programming that they call the acceleration collective, to mobilize even more volunteers, and to help create a little bit of a kind of internal energy around being an internal to SAP At Work of employees that are joining this acceleration collective, in, you know, one hour a month in, you know, one hour a week and one hour a day in different increments, but all with this shared commitment to help create a more sustainable, equitable and just economy. And the other thing that's been really, really fun and and impactful of working with, with SAP here as the idea of social impact is becoming so ingrained in the organization that we are working with C level executives in programs we're working with, you know, directors, with mid level managers, and even new hires that are all engaging in the program in different ways. And one of the things that we outlined in our case study that will be published soon here, as other business units within SAP are now coming, right like in kind of the corporate CSR and ESG world, you know, you have this like loan sustainability person, or this one, like, Corporate Social Responsibility person, like going around trying to convince everybody to like to give some money or to volunteer to donate or to do something. And now, what's happening is, we have leaders from across the enterprise, coming to us saying, I'm training our next generation of sales leaders. And, you know, instead of like kind of a fictitious project internally, can they actually connect with social enterprises and help support the sales efforts of our social enterprises, the same thing is happening with technology teams, same things happening with HR teams, leadership, development teams, even executive readiness organizations. And so it's been really cool to see how this one initiative right to be able to create an ongoing and on demand network where professionals from companies can come can learn can volunteer can support social enterprises can work on its own. But on top of it with a little extra programming, you can actually within the bigger corporation build really strategic alliances with key business functions. And with just a little bit of customization help engage people from those different business units to support the social enterprise movement. And then when they go back to the business they're pulling social enterprises in. And I think that's one of the most exciting things that we get to see. Because some of our social enterprises end up talking to a sales expert, they get some sales support, and then that sales person is like, Hey, let me open my rolodex. Let me connect you to somebody at Home Depot. Let me connect you to somebody at Amazon, let me help you get in the door where you didn't have connections before. And I think that's one of the longer tail benefits of this network is that you're creating these connections across industries and across sectors and across geographies. And that's exactly how global supply chains and value chains work right now. And so by creating those connections, we're helping social enterprises plug in, you know, not only to SAP in a unilateral, etc, but through their entire network of suppliers and distributors. And I think that's really powerful. Such an
Paul Zelizer 33:13
exciting example. And I know I understand correct, Mark, it's in process of being written. So we're kind of getting a sneak preview. It's not done yet. Is that my end? Or maybe it'll be done by the time we go live? Where's the actual case? Study out right now?
Mark Horoszowski 33:27
Yeah, yeah, it's going through some final editing. So it's real close.
Paul Zelizer 33:31
Okay. Awesome. So a peek here. Yeah. So by the time this goes live, or very soon after, it should be live. And we'll put a link in the show notes, we'll also put a link to the transform Support Hub, one of the wonderful programs that you all offer. So help us understand a little bit more mark, like, what's the size of the team at moving worlds right now? What would you say are like your primary revenue streams?
Mark Horoszowski 34:00
Yep. So our primary revenue does come through our corporate partners, right? They're interested in partnering with us to help them really solve three main problems, right. One is leadership development, how do we build the leaders of of tomorrow. And as I shared earlier, you know, both kind of, in earlier comments, as well as the SAP case study, the data of engaging people in actual social enterprises as volunteers, when you accompany that with the right kind of stage setting, and with some reflection processes on the back end with a little bit of education around it as well. Some nice some Well, time nudges, right? Which, which are things that are called Automated by our platform, you really see a pretty incredible learning and development left. We consistently hear comments like, you know, it's the best program I've ever been a part of. This was more transformational for me. In my career and in my MBA program, I mean, it's it's really, really powerful stuff. So leadership and development is a big one. The next one is is supply chain. So you have companies like Unilever that have made commitments, that, you know, by 2025 unilateral spend 2 billion by itself, just with diverse owned and social enterprise businesses. SAP is committing 5% of its budget to diversity and, and 5% of its budget to social enterprises from its procurement budgets. And so companies are saying I need to be able to find and connect with social enterprises that are at a level of capacity that they can plug into, into my into my business. And then third one is really business model future, right. So we're seeing executives sponsoring initiatives like this, because it's helping them get insights and build partnerships to help build the business models of the future. You know, two weeks ago, I was in New York, it was the United Nations General Assembly, it was the World Economic Forum, sustainable development impact summit climate week, it was all these things. And Global Compact, was was having convenings. And there were some per this left and right, there's a number of closed door leaders where, you know, CEOs only are CFOs, only heads of sustainability. And everybody's talking about social enterprise. I mean, this is coming up in almost every conversation. And the reason why a CEO and a CFO cares about this, right? Because they're not they're not talking about nonprofits in these meetings, right on these closed door business development, you know, future business conversations, they're talking about social enterprises, because social enterprises have demonstrated that you can build a profitable business that takes care of its employees, the managers, its external externalities, and actually creates good through its through its operations, right? It's not just seeking, seeking profit. Awesome. So please,
Paul Zelizer 37:02
yeah, I was just gonna say, so if I'm somebody like an employee, or a leader at SAP, or Unilever, a really large company, I think our listeners in that situation, understand, Okay, here's what you can do for me, and why I might want to consider that nudge my leaders, or if I am the leader, pick up the phone or send you an email, say, Hey, you're talking my language? Talk to me, if I'm a listener, who's a founder, who's got an impact startup, and like, what can you do for me? And how do I get involved? If I'm that person?
Mark Horoszowski 37:33
Yep. Great. So social enterprises can register on the platform. You know, we we know the definition of social enterprise, little, little flexible geography. So we've got a really transparent process there, and really aimed towards inclusion. So you apply it's pretty light application, once you're in, it's a little bit of a choose your own adventure, we call ourselves and ongoing and on demand accelerator, right, we're with you for the next five to 10 years. So we're here when you need us, we won't bug you when you don't. But once on, you can directly make requests and support for strategic connections, you can request support for a mentor, a coach, somebody would come in and train your team, to me just give you like 30 or 60 minutes of advice on a particular topic. Or you can look for an individual or a team that can actually help support you on a direct project. So social enterprises will use us to find a leadership coach, some will find us to, you know, they've got a new head of growth or head of marketing, and that person is looking for a mentor. So how, you know, multiple team members from the same organization will join and find mentors to support their growth. Others will build their their sales team for the first time and they need to train them. So they'll look for somebody that can come in and lead to sales training. or somebody's maybe, you know, a founder is like, Who do I hire? Next? I need to we need a salesperson, do I need a business development leader? Do I need a marketer? And what's the difference between all of these now there's these people we call the growth hackers who I hire, so we can connect you to somebody who knows the industry and just 3060 minutes can give you some of that really tailored advice. Or the last one is, hey, we're working on this big deliverable, right, we're updating our manufacturing, or we're going after this certification, or we're launching a new system, or we're building the next feature. And we really need some focus, additional hands on deck that can help both build the skills routine, but also kind of get their hands dirty a little bit help us over the finish line on something. So that's that we call it experts hearing, you know, people volunteering their expertise. And and so you can access that. The other key benefits is you can come in and access peers. So we have a number of social enterprises that are expanding into new markets, and they just want to talk to other social enterprises that have been there and done that, or potentially even find partners in order to do that. And then there are some social entrepreneurs that kind of go through these growth and scaling motions for the first time, and they're trying to think of, you know, they've got 100 things on their plate, everything feels like the top priority, we have an assessment that helps social enterprises think about where should they focus next in their growth journey. And then we provide really relevant resources so that entrepreneurs can pull that down workshop with their team, on either building out a sales strategy, or a marketing plan, or their business plan or their HR plan, right, kind of these core functions of business. So they can pull down these resources, they can work shop on it with their own team. So you don't have to hire consultants to do that, which many can't afford. And then if they need help, right, then you can kind of connect right back into that professional network that's willing to volunteer. So those are, those are the a few of the main ways, the more than anything, I'd say, you know, we're here to help help our social enterprises. And so you register sign up. And if you don't see it, immediately, they have option, just ask us for help on whatever it is. And we've got a pretty great team from Seattle, to Pune, India, and a bunch of bunch of places in between, that would be really honored and excited to support Jeff. And this is a free service for social enterprises.
Paul Zelizer 41:17
Awesome. So again, we'll put a link in the show notes. And please go use it people. I'm a big believer in the power of ecosystems, it's the single biggest predictor about whether humans reach their goals, whether their fitness goals, learning goals, or business goals. So please go check this out. Mark just told us it's free. Some are given at this quite some time, you've had a front row seat to this, like, steep growth, I won't say explosion in social entrepreneurship. And, like, give us what are you seeing for moving worlds, like five years down the road? What do you think the next five years looks like for you?
Mark Horoszowski 41:59
Yeah, you know, it's, it's I'll answer it two ways, right? I'll give you I'll give you the first honest answer. And then I'll give you the hopeful answer. So the honest answer is that's a great question. And we talk about a lot, I totally know. But the way that we're thinking about it, and this will kind of go to our second question, or my second way of answering this, which is, let's start with our social entrepreneurs and work backwards from there, right? Where are social enterprises going to be in five years from now we know a couple of things, right? One, they're still going to struggle to access enough capital to grow their organizations to, they're still going to be founded and primarily operating in areas that are not within the networks where you see a lot of business happen. And then third, there's still going to be building teams. And those teams are going to need support with skill building connections with mentoring coaching. So where are we going to be five years, we're going to stay laser focused on solving all those issues, right, helping social enterprises continue to access the support, they need to build their own leadership capabilities and the skills of their teams, so they can continue to grow and make their world changing impact. Secondly, we're breaking down barriers, right, we're helping social enterprises getting more rooms, get connected to more decision makers, so that their voice can be amplified, and that they can be interacting more easily and more directly with buyers with influencers with politicians and others. And then on the on the funding side, we're going to be building more partnerships to make it easier for social entrepreneurs to access different types of financing, because traditional kind of, you know, equity based financing. You know, we're seeing that that experiment is powerful for 10% of social entrepreneurs, but it's leaving 90% behind, right, so what else can we do to help social entrepreneurs access the capital that they need to grow when they need it. And that's going to be primarily through partnerships. Right, and the, the one thread across these all is, we can only continue to provide that support if we continue to focus on adding value to other really important stakeholders that we that we work with, right? Other impact investors, other accelerators, right, making it easier for them to find social enterprises, or to to offer their social enterprises post Investment Support. And then of course, the corporations, right. A lot of corporations have made big 2025, big 2030 commitments around certain environmental and social and governance targets. And if they're going to achieve those targets, they're going to need access to those, those same social enterprises. So continuing to work with corporations, helping them educate their employees, helping them build and connect with social enterprises to build new revenue models to improve their own supply chains to improve their value systems. And, you know, for us, you know, moving worlds, right, you know, to do this in a way that continues to grow an organization that like on a personal note, like I really, really want to be proud of, right? I, I worked in that corporation where employees were just treated like, you know, cogs and yelled out when they did something wrong, right? I think for us, you know, that's not, that's not the type of way to make a positive impact, right, you got to take care of your own employees, as much as you have to take care of your stakeholders. So, you know, benefit, the social enterprises add value, our stakeholder partners, continue to help corporations really use their capital and their force as a, as a, as a force for good. And then build an organization that we're all really, really proud to, to, to work in. And I know that can take a lot of different forms over the years. And we'll continue to keep innovating and experimenting, but that's our compass.
Paul Zelizer 45:48
I love that answer, Mark. So I can hang out with you all day, and you're a busy guy. And our listeners are really busy, too. If there was something mark, you were hoping we were going to get to today, and we haven't talked about it yet, or there's something you'd like to leave our social entrepreneur founders, with some a suggestion or resource, a tip, some encouragement, as we start to say goodbye. What would that be?
Mark Horoszowski 46:13
Sure. You know, the one, the one tip, right? Maybe it's more of an insight than a tip, right? Is the working across these ecosystems, right? Is is challenging, right? We're unifying investors, accelerators, in our governmental agencies, corporations, social enterprises all together. And I think that the reality is, for any social enterprise, it's also building, you know, going through some of these motions of working with corporates for the first time, or moving beyond their first one or two or three pilots into their next phase is that, you know, these, these take time, and it takes time to validate the market opportunity. And then it takes time to seize the market opportunity. And, you know, so as an entrepreneur, if you're like, hey, this, this sounds compelling, I want to I want to tap into this opportunity. Just, you know, go into that with, with a lot of optimism, you'll need it, but also, you know, balance some patients in there and make sure that you have the support network, right, whether that's coming through the transform Support Hub, or whether that's coming through your own mentor or ecosystem. You know, there's a lot to kind of make these partnerships work. But when they work, they can, they can really, really shine. So it's, you know, just like entrepreneurship, it's not the easiest road. But what we're seeing is that it's really, really paying dividends, and know that you're not going to be alone on on that long and windy and sometimes very challenging road, there's just, there's a lot of organizations and people around the world that are that are rooting for you and standby to support you on it.
Paul Zelizer 47:53
Mark, thank you so much for being on the show today.
Mark Horoszowski 47:56
My pleasure, I'd really appreciate the opportunity.
Paul Zelizer 48:00
So listeners again, check out the show notes, we got lots of links for you and go check out the moving world site go sign up, it'll cost you nothing, or at least go check it out. Please. Before we go, I just want to remind you, we love listener suggested topics and guests. If you have an idea, please go to the where printers website and on our contact page. It has the three simple criteria, we try to be really transparent. We can't say us to everybody, but we try to give you a sense, here's what we're looking for. If you've got a story that you think would fit those criteria, please send your idea and we love hearing from our listeners. So for now, I just want to say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care in these intense times. And thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world.