How small-scale philanthropy can help Asia’s tech startups grow faster

Tech startups aiming to be different in a competitive market may often conclude that they need to pivot their product or offer a more nuanced service than their competitors. While these are important actions for every founder to consider, something that is perhaps of equal importance is a set of company values. Tech entrepreneurs, especially in emerging markets, could do well to think about how their company can improve the lives of those around them, and not just through their product’s features and benefits.

Chuck Dietrich, founder and CEO of online presentation software SlideRocket, writes in Forbes:

Technology companies of any size have the opportunity and responsibility to give back. Social philanthropy not only benefits the recipients but has innumerable benefits to the giver […] Across Silicon Valley, companies of all sizes – large or startup — are tapping into their own product DNA to create innovative ways to give back and promote philanthropy organically.

With Asia in mind, countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines have numerous problems to be solved such as poverty, hunger, and public education. This in turn creates opportunities for startups to give back as a team. Last month, the World Bank released fresh data confirming that 28 million Indonesians live below the poverty line, meaning that an employee’s total monthly income is around Rp 200,262 (US$16.60). Approximately half of all the nation’s households remain clustered around this level.

Startups can’t make it rain cash yet, but they can plant seeds

It’s true, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sets the bar high with regard to philanthropy. For this reason, bootstrapping startups with limited cash in their pockets and holes in their shoes may think their efforts will go unnoticed in a nation like the Philippines, where 4.8 million families went hungry at least once in the past three months. But there are actually plenty of ways fresh startups can align themselves with outreach causes without digging into their pockets.

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, coined the 1/1/1 model, a way that for-profit companies can give back to the world in a way that’s proportionate to their size.

“When it comes to philanthropy, I have one pitch, and it’s been the same since the founding of our company 13 years ago,” explains Benioff. Simply put, the model sets a company up to donate one percent of its employee time, one percent of its product resources, and one percent of its profits to charitable causes on a regular basis. The idea is that as the company gets bigger, so will the size of its donations. To date, Salesforce claims to have donated more than US$68 million in grants, upward of 680,000 hours of community service, and provided product donations for over 23,000 non-profit organizations. It wouldn’t have been possible for the company to do that while it was bootstrapping, but having the model in place from the beginning allowed for an upward trajectory.

Bill and Melinda Gates.

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For marketing, a little bit of philanthropic creativity goes a long way

Apart from the satisfaction entrepreneurs can get from knowing that they made an impact on society, the positive effects that philanthropy can have on a company – no matter how small the act – can sometimes even do a better job promoting brand awareness than a well-executed marketing campaign.

Dayna Steele, founder of The Space Store (an ecommerce shop that claims to offer the most NASA space collectibles, flown-in-space artifacts, and astronaut autographed items online) writes in Fast Company:

Collectively, startups can make it rain