LONDON - LEADING THE WAY IN TECH FOR GOOD...Those in London’s thriving tech scene may find it easy...
Transcript of LONDON - LEADING THE WAY IN TECH FOR GOOD...Those in London’s thriving tech scene may find it easy...
LONDON - LEADING THE WAY IN TECH FOR GOOD
Those in London’s thriving tech scene may find it
easy to forget that not everyone has access to the
same cutting-edge entertainment, payment and
communication services as they do. However, as
one of the world’s leading tech hubs, London has a
duty to support technologies that serve the greater
good and help the billions of people on the planet
who can really benefit from Tech For Good.
IS TECHNOLOGY MAKING OURLIVES BETTER?While many of the new services and products that we use are designed to focus on convenience - think of video-streaming platforms that let us switch between devices and pick up exactly where we left off, or payment services that let us access public transport simply by flashing our smartwatch at a sensor - could they really be argued to be a force for good?
In this whitepaper, we’ll be looking to assess
London’s role in the wider Tech For Good
movement, and how the city can continue to put
itself at the centre of efforts to use technology to
make the world a better place. We will also put
some of the London-based entrepreneurs,
organisations and initiatives in Tech For Good in the
spotlight.
Accomable is a service that helps people with
mobility difficulties find accessible properties around
the world. Its mission is to enable anyone to go
anywhere. When it was first set up, Accomable was
supported by a grant from the Skoll Foundation, a
charity founded by former eBay president Jeffrey
Skoll which supports start-ups with a social purpose.
"We kind of fell into the Tech For Good space. I have
a problem-solving background – and asked if
technology could make it better. I wanted to work on
something where you felt you were helping everyday
people," said Srin Madipalli, CEO at Accomable.
"I find assistive tech fascinating. Today's assistive
tech is tomorrow’s gadget. When I was a kid, you
would get these automations to open the curtains, or
raise the bed – they were created for people with
mobility problems. Now you stick a logo on it and it’s
a home automation system. A disabled person is a
good test bed for automation for able people. We’re
hearing so much about driverless cars – the earliest
adopters of these vehicles will be people who can't
drive, such as blind people. It’ll be the ultimate tech
for good."
Tech For Good is a difficult category to define in
just one or two sentences. Indeed, a startup that
could be considered to be part of the Tech For
Good movement may also be defined in a number
of other ways, being part of categories such as
cleantech or healthtech.
There are many environmental and societal
challenges that require technological solutions. For
example, a recent report from Parliament’s Science
and Technology Committee found that 12.6 million
adults in the UK lack digital skills. An estimated 2
billion people worldwide lack official identification
of any kind. These are the kind of problems that
organisations coming under the banner of ‘Tech For
Good’ can help.
The term can be applied to organisations that
operate in education, health, sustainability, welfare,
community, inclusion and many other areas.
'Tech For Good' is a phrase that has been buzzing around for many years, used as a catch-all term to describe any technology with a social purpose. While on the surface of it, the phrase itself is pretty simple to understand, it covers a broad range of concepts and categories.
WHAT IS TECH FOR GOOD?
However, it’s not always the primary purpose of a
company to be a force for social good - it can be a
happy by-product of their operations, discovered by
users rather than the initial intentions of the
founders. For example, Twitter began as a micro-
blogging platform but had an instrumental role in
bringing people together and disseminating
information during the Arab Spring in 2011.
“Although the tag ‘Tech For Good’ seems to refer
to interventions from organisations with the explicit
goal of delivering social or environmental impact,
there are many innovations that deliver massive
impact and come from companies seeking only to
maximise profit,” said Juan Guerra, fintech
entrepreneur and founder of StudentFunder.
Srin Madipalli, CEO at Accomable, agrees. "Some
of the most socially impactful platforms are out
there to help. I learnt to code through online
tutorials. You can learn a skill for practically nothing.
They may not have started off as a social endeavour,
but that is what they have become."
So while it is clear that not all companies in this
space have set out to win the ‘Tech For Good’ tag,
what are the criteria that an organisation needs to
meet in order to be classified as such?
The Tech For Good TV organisation defines Tech
For Good as technology to "help redistribute
power, give agency to people, help people make
more informed decisions, create ways for people to
connect, participate, address health or care needs
and save energy… it can even make life saving
information and resources more discoverable."
Tech For Good TV also outlines some of the other
questions we should ask of projects to see if they fit
the definition of ‘Tech For Good’. Questions such
as: Is it for the 99% and not just the 1%? Has it been
designed to address an issue or need? Does it give
power and agency to people?
Another of the fundamental principles outlined in
The future of ‘doing good’ in the UK report
published by the Big Lottery Fund in May 2016 is
the need to give people the ability to help
themselves, rather than simply “delivering activities
that are done ‘to’ people”. So, it’s about
empowerment, not just identifying what someone
doesn’t have and providing it to them - the ‘teach a
man to fish’ principle.
WHY TECH FOR GOOD?Paul Miller, partner at Bethnal Green Ventures cites
three main sources of inspiration for Tech For Good
ventures. Firstly, he singles out frustration -
frustration with a situation that directly affects you,
someone you care about, or someone you want to
help. Next there's combination - the combination of
seemingly unconnected ideas in order to provide a
solution to a problem. Finally, there is chemistry,
when two like-minded people come together with a
common purpose to achieve a goal.
As Ruth Shave, marketing and user research lead at
Firesouls, wrote in the Huffington Post: "Technology
can be used to cut out human bias from a process
and make matches. It can help governments work
out a way for the most people that can to get what
they want - or need."
She goes on to give the example of Alvin Roth, who
has designed a way to organise kidney transplants,
using a nationwide database of people who need
kidneys and those prepared to donate theirs - often
relatives of those in need - ensuring medically
suitable matches. This saves lives and tens of
thousands of dollars for the healthcare providers,
and is a great example of the first instance cited by
Miller.
The second instance - the combination of
unconnected ideas - is exemplified by Walacea, set
up by Natalie Jonk. As a scientific researcher, she
was aware of many exciting research projects that
needed money to get off the ground. She was also
interested in crowdfunding platforms, and came up
with the idea of combining the two.
Finally, an perfect example of chemistry is
Accomable, set up by Srin Madipalli and Martyn
Sibley. Accomable helps people with disabilities
find accessible properties around the world - not
only listing details about wheelchair access, but
availability of care assistants, walk-in showers and so
on. The co-founders met as children through a
support group for children with Spinal Muscular
Atrophy (SMA), something they both have in
common. The idea originally stemmed from the
Disability Horizons Group, an online magazine that
they co-founded in 2011. It has since become the
fastest growing disability-related lifestyle
publication with over 40,000 regular readers and
over 200,000 unique visits a year.
Techfugees is a perfect example of an organisation
that has sprung up in order to address a specific
problem, rather than as a by-product of a for-profit
service. It is a social enterprise coordinating the
international tech community’s response to the
needs of refugees. It organises conferences,
workshops, hackathons and meetups in around the
world in an effort to generate tech solutions that can
help refugees.
It's run by an entirely voluntary team, politically
independent and now has more than 11,000
members. Its five main goals are to provide
connectivity and access to the internet for refugees;
provide access to educational tools and resources;
provide identity solutions that greater facilitate
integration into host countries; provide access to
technology innovation for essential care and
specialised care for trauma and associated medical
conditions; and facilitate the social, cultural and
economic inclusion of refugees into host
communities via scalable technology solutions.
The Nominet Trust, headquartered in Oxford,
describes itself as the UK’s leading social tech
funder. It has awarded over £17m in grant funding
to UK social ventures since 2009, with the people
behind the ventures retaining 100% of the equity
and 100% of the intellectual property. It is active in
areas such as Education, Employment & Training,
Environment & Sustainability, Health & Wellbeing,
Local Communities, Open Data, Safety & Protection
and Social Exclusion.
The Nominet Trust also publishes the Social Tech
Guide, an online resource that celebrates the global
pioneers who are using digital technology to
change people’s lives for the better. It publishes the
NT100, which highlights the most innovative social
tech ventures from across the world, ranking the top
100 Tech For Good organisations in the world each
year.
Moving to London, Bethnal Green Ventures is an
organisation that has been instrumental in putting
London at the heart of the Tech For Good
movement.
TECH FOR GOOD SUPERSTARS TECH FOR GOOD TVTech For Good TV is an organisation that works in
partnership with Bethnal Green Ventures, as well as the
Cabinet Office, Nesta, Social Innovation Europe and M/A
to shine a light on the people and technology making the
world a better place.
“We want to bring to life 'Tech For Good' in the broadest
sense, from institutions to start-ups to charities. But we
always have a special focus on telling stories from the user
perspective, rather than just the founder or the
technology,” the organisation says on its website.
CLEARLYSOClearlySo is a London-based impact investment bank
founded in 2008. ClearlySo works exclusively with high-
impact businesses, charities and funds, supporting their
capital raising activity through financial advisory work, and
introducing them to institutional and individual investors
who share their objectives and values. To date, its clients
have raised more than £108m in investment.
Among its clients are: Eyejusters, which creates self-
adjustable eye-glasses for people in the developing and
developed worlds; Gojimo, a mobile-first revision app that
helps students prepare for exams; and Fuss Free Phones,
which makes easy-to-use mobile phones for the visually
impaired and elderly people.
It describes itself as an accelerator for people who
want to change the world using technology,
providing an intensive three-month programme for
those seeking to build solutions to social and
environmental problems. It invests £15,000 in each
team, taking 6% equity, for which the teams get
access to a network of more than 200 mentors,
weekly progress meetings, a tailored programme of
workshops and talks, meetings with investors and a
Demo Day at the end that allows the teams to
present their ideas in a public forum.
Bethnal Green Ventures also helps to organise the
Tech For Good meetup group in London - currently
numbering in excess of 3,750 members - where it
brings together hackers, coders, developers and
designers with people who want to build digital
solutions to social challenges.
While Tech For Good is not as clearly defined a movement as fintech, for example, there are several organisations promoting the movement based in the UK. A handful are highlighted below but these are by no means the only key advocates of Tech For Good in this country.
There is no shortage of statistics that quantify the
size of London’s tech industry. London is the fourth
largest tech ecosystem in the world, and the largest
in Europe, with an estimated value of $44bn. In the
past five years, the number of digital technology
businesses in London has increased by over 12,000,
with around 40,000 businesses in the capital at
present, according to research from Oxford
Economics. A report from CB Insights says that
Venture Capital investment into Britain’s technology
sector has reached a record high with London-
based companies securing 62% of the $3.6bn
raised by UK firms in 2015.
However, due to the difficulty of defining what
exactly does and doesn’t come under the banner,
quantifying the size of London’s contribution to the
Tech For Good movement is a much tougher task.
And while London is well known for being a hub for
tech startups in specific verticals such as fintech and
app & software development, there is some debate
as to whether the city has made a significant
contribution to the the Tech For Good movement.
Writing for Tech City News in June 2015, Kirsty
Styles asked: "tech for good sounds, well, good on
paper, but when it gets down to it, it’s not clear
whether London’s techies, leaders or workers, yet
buy into good industries, good workplaces or good
hiring policies.
LONDON’S ROLE IN A GLOBAL MOVEMENT"We may celebrate being better than Silicon Valley
on areas like diversity, but that’s hardly good, is it?"
But Paul Miller, partner at Bethnal Green Ventures,
believes that London is the Tech for Good capital of
the world. Writing in the Huffington Post, he
outlines why the capital city is so important to the
movement, citing the tendency in the US for large
individual donors to dominate philanthropic capital.
"Europe’s more comfortable relationship with the
welfare state made it a stronger place to innovate
around social issues. London is a unique city where
finance, technology and social policy work side by
side - which puts it in a perfect position to take
advantage of the Tech For Good movement,” Miller
wrote.
The Nominet Trust’s NT100 list supports Miller’s
assertion that London is leading the way in the Tech
For Good movement, with 20 startups from the
capital making the 2015 list, up from 19 in 2014.
Compare this to San Francisco’s 15 in 2015 and 13
in 2014.
what3words is a universal addressing platform
founded in London and was highlighted in the most
recent Nominet Trust NT100. Originally conceived as
a way of helping festival organisers get their kit and
talent to the right place, many of the ways in which it
is now used put it very much in the Tech For Good
category.
The system is a location reference platform based on
a global grid of 57 trillion three-metre by three-metre
squares, where each square has a unique pre-
assigned three-word address. The solution helps
everyone who needs to share or find a location,
whether they are a refugee, a small business or an
aid organisation.
It's being used to deliver parcels and post in Rio’s
favelas, medicine in South Africa’s Townships and
solar lighting in the slums in India. It was used in
Tanzania to monitor outbreaks of violence in the run
up to recent elections and as well as a cholera
outbreak in Dar es Salaam. The United Nations has
also built three-word addresses into its disaster
reporting app UN-Asign.
Azimo is a startup founded in London that has set
itself the mission of helping the world's poorest
people by making remittances - payments made by
migrants back to their families overseas - much easier
and reducing the fees involved. While international
aid provided by governments trickles down from the
top - often never reaching the people it is intended
to help - remittance payments work in a 'bottom-up'
way, with money reaching the poorest people directly
before working its way into the local economy.
Remittance payments make up a very significant
proportion of GDP in many countries - in 2014, they
were equal to more than 20% of GDP in 10 nations,
according to the Migration Policy Institute.
International migrants remitted more than $582
billion in earnings in 2015, of which $432 billion was
to low- or middle-income countries.
Azimo's low fees in comparison to services such as
Western Union and high-street banks has seen it gain
recognition from the UN and it has recently received
investment from e-commerce giant Rakuten in order
to help it expand in Asia. It also gives users the
option to donate some of the money they save to
charity, and donates 10% of its profits to Operation
Smile and ActionAid.
"As one of the world’s most vibrant, forward
thinking cities London should play a big part in the
Tech For Good movement. Its diverse population,
deep expertise and rich history all feeds into an
innovation melting pot which has developed some
of the world’s most impactful and inspiring tech
solutions. London should be a beacon of good
practice and the benchmark of how tech can be
used for good, not only in the UK, but right across
the globe," said Chris Howroyd, service
development director at SH:24.
Juan Guerra, fintech entrepreneur and founder of
StudentFunder, said: "London has huge potential to
generate disruptions in financial services, education,
healthcare and energy, not least because of its
privileged access to human capital - knowledge
workers, entrepreneurs - as well as venture capital."
And looking beyond London, the UK has a lot it can
be proud of too. A government survey from 2015
found that Britain’s 70,000 social enterprises
contribute £24bn to the economy and employ
nearly a million people. But while regional and
national pride in our contribution to the Tech For
Good movement is all very well, it should be
recognised that the overall movement has a greater
reach - both in terms of those who need help and
those who can help.
"Tech For Good is happening across the world, so it
is global. Whether it is a ‘global movement’ yet is
another matter – this inherently relies on people
across continents agreeing some common
principles and then committing to use them as a
collective network; sharing approaches, learning,
outputs and outcomes to maximise impact and
optimisation. Local movements, whether they be in
man-made cities or hubs should be an integral part
of the global movement - a cog in the bigger Tech
for Good machine," SH:24’s Howroyd said.
Paul Miller, partner at Bethnal Green Ventures,
certainly thinks so. "London has the most vibrant
impact investment scene in the world," he says,
pointing out that a new breed of funders who
valued profit as much as purpose emerged after the
financial crash of 2008.
Entrepreneurs who have sought funding for Tech
For Good projects agreed with Miller. "Like any
investment, there has to be a return that matches
the level of risk. For most investors, financial returns
are a hygiene factor and the impact of the venture is
a differentiator, but some investors will accept lower
financial returns in favour of higher social or
environmental returns of a specific kind," said Juan
Guerra, fintech entrepreneur and founder of
StudentFunder.
And while investment is a key factor to the success
of many of these ventures, it is by no means the
only factor. "Many Tech for Good companies
require significant support from charities like
Nominet Trust and UnLtd to get to the point where
they can gain traction and become profitable or
investable by business angels or VCs. Accelerators
such as Wayre Social Ventures and Emerge
Education also play a big role.
So for startups in this space, is London the best place in the world to be?
THE INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY
"It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes a
whole ecosystem to raise a venture," Guerra
continued.
But while London is certainly a focus for the Tech
For Good movement within Europe, can it really
compete with Silicon Valley? Srin Madipalli, CEO at
Accomable, thinks that a change in mindset is
required by institutional investors.
SH:24 works in partnership with the NHS to make
sexual and reproductive health services more
accessible and easier to navigate. It offers STI testing
and other services online, making for a more
convenient and empowered experience. On the
other side of the coin, it also saves the NHS time and
money, enabling highly trained doctors and nurses in
traditional bricks-and-mortar clinics to concentrate
on more complex cases.
"The fundamental principles of the Tech For Good
movement are to support, foster, empower and
enable organisations and individuals alike, to tackle
challenging issues by applying tech in innovative and
novel ways, to disrupt and support. Tech For Good’s
relationship with economic growth should be equally
straightforward – if wealth is generated, it should be
as a by-product or a necessity for sustainability,
rather than a principal driver," said Chris Howroyd,
service development director at SH:24.
In order to make the environment better for Tech
For Good ventures, more support for angel
investors would be welcome, as they are more likely
to recognise the hurdles that these projects are
likely to encounter.
"I think the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme
(SEIS) is a step in the right direction - but how do
we expand that? Our investors are very
entrepreneurial – and I think early stage startups
need entrepreneurial investors because they need
people who understand the challenges," said
Madipalli.
"London is the best place in Europe by a country
mile – but I don’t think we’re there yet when
compared to Silicon Valley. The question is: 'What
can we do to be better than them?' In the US,
people are more willing and open to higher level
risk. In the UK, they want to the market proved
whereas in the US they see that lack of validation as
an opportunity, rather than waiting for the
bandwagon to roll. And by the time it’s a
bandwagon rolls, the space is already dominated,"
said Madipalli.
SalaryFinance is an organisation that aims to help
employers improve the financial health of their
employees. Co-founded by the former MD of
Google UK, Dan Cobley, the company helps
employees pay off their existing debt quicker by
consolidating it into a single, low interest loan, at one
third of the market average, with repayments
collected from payroll. The interest rate is fixed and
is the same for all employees, regardless of credit
score or income. By collecting repayments directly
from salary, rather than direct debit, SalaryFinance
also reduces risk and cost to the lender, allowing
these savings to be passed on to employees.
Cobley’s co-founder was Asesh Sarkar. Genuinely
concerned about the financial well-being of UK
employees, Sarkar was inspired to start SalaryFinance
after finding out that his son’s nanny was desperately
struggling with unmanageable, high-interest
personal debt. Offering to help by paying off the
debt himself and then taking manageable
repayments directly from her monthly salary, he
realised the same model could be applied across
thousands of UK businesses.
Firefly is an online tool that brings together teachers,
students and parents. It gives teachers more time to
teach, helps students learn more independently and
collaboratively, and allows parents to be involved in
their child's learning.
Founded in 1999 by Joe Mathewson and Simon Hay
while they studied for their GCSEs. It was initially
focused on solving a problem for their own school,
but Firefly is now trusted by hundreds of schools
around the world and has a fast-growing team based
in offices in London, Brighton and Sydney.
In 2011, amidst unrest in Egypt, Firefly helped the
British International School in Cairo tackle numerous
challenges ranging from internet and telephone
outages to evacuations and school closures. Nine
hundred students and teachers were able to access
vital learning resources via a tailored central
communication system.
"There is a massive skills shortage. We’re trying to
hire developers but it’s really hard. There’s a real
dearth of engineers – and I’m not sure how to fix
that. So we either need to get more people to
choose it as a career – or get more people to move
over here with the skills," Madipalli said.
However, Chris Howroyd, service development
director at SH:24, believes that London is in a
strong position to forge ahead as a world leader in
Tech For Good.
"The future for the movement in London can only
be good. There is so much talent in this city it would
be a crying shame if some of it was not directly
working towards making a real difference to real
people’s lives. The more inspirational projects will
help drive awareness and ultimately demand, or
rather an expectation among people that the
products and services they come into contact with
should have an inherent social or environmental
cause behind them.
"In health particularly, the recently formed Digital
Health London accelerator and soon-to-launch
incubator Health Foundry will provide spaces for
collaboration and shared learning so it will be
exciting to see how they develop," said Howroyd.
In order to remain at the front of this movement, the
principle of innovating to solve real-life problems
and make people’s lives better needs to be at the
forefront of our minds, argues fintech entrepreneur
Guerra.
“For me the important thing is to keep innovating
and providing services that significantly improve the
planet and the lives of people. Our intentions -
whether we do this with a social or environmental
purpose or purely for profit - are not nearly as
important as the impact,” he said.
THE FUTURE FOR TECH FOR GOODThere are other challenges for London if it is to establish its position as the main hub for Tech For Good. Like the wider technology industry in London, a shortage of the appropriate skills is one of the most acute problems.
And it should also be accompanied with a sense of
wonder, says Billy Dann, grants digital innovation
manager at Comic Relief, writing in the Huffington
Post. Our natural curiosity to see just how far
technology can go to improve the planet on a local
and global scale can be a driving force for good
“Funding programmes that support Tech for Good
will play a central role in helping us ensure we
achieve the greatest possible impact around the
world. We have already seen the impact
technology has had on modern life and how
harnessing this influence can really deliver ‘tech for
good’. As these developments continue to evolve,
we’re excited to see where Tech for Good will take
us over the next few years and see its life-changing
potential help disadvantaged people here in the
UK and around the world,” he said.