Kevin was in Pakistan December of 2016 with the US Delegation. He sits down with MIT Technology Review Pakistan to discuss how to blend tech startups and social impact in order to make the world a better place.
The Pakistani startup ecosystem is evolving. Every day new ventures emerge, creating niches or fulfilling unmet demands. However, the field remains relatively new and can benefit from people who have been in the art it for some time now.
At the Small Business Festival, Kevin gave a presentation on the power of social Capital. Using the framework of who you are, an offer, and a request, valuable connections were made and entrepreneurs were able to move their businesses forward.
Kevin was featured in the Community Impact Newspaper for his work with Tech Ranch Austin and Concordia University in partnering to create the Incubator for Innovation & Impact.
“I am excited that the partnership with Concordia provides access to an untapped and fresh talent pool that can provide a new perspective not historically tied to the Austin startup community, creating a new opportunity for growth and impact,” Tech Ranch CEO Kevin Koym said in a news release.
This is a great opportunity for Kevin to collaborate with a new group of entrepreneurs to make the world a better place.
In working with now more than 5700 entrepreneurs from 31 countries, I have gotten to see the transformation of many lives and many communities. I see possibility in people. I see opportunity for all. I see a pathway forward… not necessarily an easy path, but a path that can create a world that works together.
When there is no possibility, the only result is either depression or aggression. Depression- wasting away an individual’s life who doesn’t see the action possible, or aggression- where the only path of action that the individual sees is violence.
Communities, when they organize together, can create opportunity for each other. Social capital, individuals working with individuals, creates opportunities earlier… This is before financial capital comes in to play, which sits on the sideline till financial gain can be sought. There’s a time for both, yet in the US we’ve forgotten the power of social capital because of the success of the market. This market has typically taken care of needs in the US, but has failed in being complete and solving the underlying problems that exist.
In this week’s Tech Ranch Campfire on July 22nd at 4 pm, we as a community will organize together to start addressing solutions for our community’s crises. At the center of our work will be the entrepreneurs that are taking action to make a difference. Join us in the conversation, and in the action forward. Through working together, we can make the world a better place.
In October 2015, Kevin was invited to speak at the Jacksonville Community of Entrepreneurs (JaxCoE)’s Innovation Connection Conference in Jacksonville, FL. Details of the event and audio were shared on the Tech Ranch blog and you can read them here, but we thought we’d share the text of Kevin’s closing statements here on his blog.
He said:
I’m going to actually take the platform that everyone’s said, and I’m going to actually try to present something that’s way out there. Tech Ranch was born out of tragedy. I lost a friend, and it so severely, deeply wounded me that I actually had to go do something different. I had a very normal founder kind of career until this young woman decided to commit suicide. In that tragedy and in the struggle that I had in dealing with that, I actually started having to really look at what the world could look like. I’m not an overly religious person, but I want to say this, because it actually speaks to what I want to point to, for all of u,s and not just in our local community, but actually something that’s quite profound. In the Lord’s Prayer, it actually says, “On earth as it is in heaven.” There are writers right now like Peter Diamandis that are actually saying within the next 20 years, all the world’s problems could be addressed. All the world’s problems. Can you imagine that? Within two decades, all the world’s problems could be addressed. The thing that I think is quite profound is that we actually live in a period of time where it might actually be possible.
So my prize in all the entrepreneurs that I hope to touch, in all the work that I hope to do in my lifetime, whatever I have left, is, I say, 100,000 solutions to world problems. Part of it is having Jacksonville stand up and actually say, “Hey, wait. We’re going to actually do this. We’re going to actually create this collaborative environment that’s really going to support entrepreneurs.” If we have that soft landing for the pioneers who actually don’t make it – sometimes – every once in a while – I’ve been close to bankruptcy twice during my career, and that’s not a very nice place to be. The idea is if we can actually have this group of people come together and work with each other so that there are softer landings when there are failures, and there is someone to pick you up during that Thursday night when you’re trying to figure out, “How am I going to pay my employees tomorrow morning?” Only an entrepreneur is going to be the entrepreneur that that person needs to talk to because it’s the only person that can understand. I hear the echo of my mother’s voice saying for the first 10 years of my entrepreneurial career, even after all the money I made, she said, “Kevin, don’t you want to go get a job?” We have to actually presence this idea of entrepreneurs supporting entrepreneurs to create the cooperative world to then go do what we need to do to discover in the next 20 years how we can actually solve all of the world’s problems.
Thanks to Jacksonville Community of Entrepreneurs (JaxCoE) for the invitation!