Part 3: Google.org and Virgance

Visited Google.org and Virgance during the 1 week as well- two “technology companies” doing good. Was extremely taken by their work and their structure- they represent a departure from the usual social change models we are used to. Innovation meets social change, and they are the product.

Google.org would better be named philanthropy@google.com, and google donates 1% of equity, 1% of profit, and 1% of employee time. Given google’s sheer scale, this is still a huge amount. They use the sheer power of technology and money to do good- they fund so many amazing things. They have interests in clean energy, global health, and information services; you can see the list of projects here. Some of the projects they do are simply amazing, such as the tool which predicts flu trends 2 weeks before it strikes. It also funds Dr. Nathan Wolfe of TED fame, whose work you can read about here.

Virgance is “Activism 2.0″, and uses web technologies and the silicon valley energy to empower activism. It has pretty amazing projects, like the 1BOG (One block of the Grid) which uses a combination of collective bargaining and solar power to take “one block off the energy grid”, promoting solar power. They shared many new ideas with us; though I had some reservations about the effectiveness of some ideas it was refreshing to see someone bring such a breath of fresh air into an otherwise stale industry devoid of innovation.

I was particularly interested in what Virgance’s founder Steve Newcomb had to say about his company. He had been in 5 startups, and just sold Powerset to Microsoft. He talked about his HR strategy: to get hired at Virgance, you had to have all the current staff there unanimously decide that you should be hired, after a 1 month trial “interview”. The idea was that he only wanted “A team” people, and that a strong, united team would move faster than a disunited, bulky one.

He also had a “handshake agreement”: he believed that all the people he hired were so good, that he knew he would lose them eventually. Thus employment was more of a 1 year contract, for his employees to give him their very best, and then leave. In turn he would train and mentor them from his experiences in startups for that 1 year. Virgance was also a “teaching company”, where everybody taught the others what they knew, so everybody would be well rounded. They had common lunch discussions, open workspaces, dorm-room like offices. Interesting culture of an interesting organization.