Yesterday SoJo hosted its second-ever team-wide meeting. The first meeting took place 5 months ago and it was imperative at getting the team better connected to SoJo, aligned with our core values and fuelled the momentum that led to our public launch shortly thereafter. For most of our team members that joined in the Spring, the honeymoon stage was now over. The Fall is always a busy time, however it was apparent that some of our team members were over-worked and found it increasingly difficult to manage their SoJo commitments in addition to other commitments.

A team meeting was long over-due. It was important to bring everyone together to welcome the new team members, get everyone on the same page in terms of expectations, re-energize the group and reconnect everyone to the greater vision that we're all working towards.

The meeting kicked-off with a surprise in-person appearance from Trevor. Being based in Calgary, this was his first opportunity to meet the team for the first time, which was motivating to the group. He used this same opportunity to formally say goodbye to the team as he heads off to his Asian adventure. While we're sad to see Trevor leave, November 1st was the first day of Zainab's full-time position with SoJo.  Jesse started working full-time with SoJo last month and it is great to have a full-time team work with me to bring SoJo to the next level. Both Jesse and Zainab opted to join SoJo full-time at virtually no pay over the stability and security that comes with full-time jobs. Although SoJo doesn't have the cash in its bank account to pay their salaries Jesse and Zainab are taking a risk and hedging their bets in SoJo's favour. Fingers crossed that our fundraising mission comes through...

It is an empowering, validating and humbling feeling to have very smart individuals who I respect greatly share a similar burden and commitment with me. The responsibilities and expectations of the full-time team members will increase which will allow us to accelerate our outputs. But it is also my hope that they their increased commitment will lead to an increased connection, excitement and belonging to SoJo!

Last week SoJo welcomed two high school co-op students to join the team for one semester. The Toronto District School Board has a co-operative education program, where high school students are given coursework credits for a placement in a job that is aligned with their future career aspirations. A handful of the SoJo team members did high school co-op over a decade ago and remember this being a great opportunity.

On the advice of one of our crowd-sourced CTOs, we reached out to the School Board to help fill some of our staffing needs. Timing was opportune, as within a week of receiving the suggestion to hire a co-op student we already had a handful of interviews lined up, with placements expected to start soon after the interview.

On face value, this seems like the ideal opportunity: an un-paid, highly motivated worker whose grade you control. Only once we went through the interviews did the risks of this recruitment strategy become apparent. It is difficult to gauge fit,  competence and aptitude within a 30 minute interview. Everyone on SoJo joined for a probationary period; where more than half left SoJo after a few weeks because it was not a right fit. In this scenario we had only 30 minutes to decide fit, and must then commit to providing a meaningful work opportunity for the student for the entire semester. Being a lean startup, there is no capacity to babysit or micro-manage a new recruit. We need to bring people who were capable and can work at the same pace as the entire organization.

SoJo put out two job descriptions, one for a Junior Developer and one for a Junior Editor. Editorial candidates were asked to bring a writing sample. Developer candidates were put through a technical exercise to test their programming skills. For Jesse, this is first time he has been in a direct supervisory role; let alone conduct an interview. As such, Jesse's interview skills were tested with a mock-interview with friends from our workspace.

Last week, we gladly welcomed Rebecca and Vithuson to the team. They both come with a lot of energy and a willingness to learn. I'm hopeful that this will be positive experience for everyone involved and may be a good recruitment strategy for the future when financial resources are tight. Both students will be invited to blog about their experiences. Stay tuned for updates.

Today I decided that SoJo will submit a research proposal to Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, due October 1. I've been told it takes about 2 months to submit a comparable type of proposal. Having never written a research grant before, let alone collaborate with academics I am seriously starting to question my sanity. Regardless, this is a fabulous opportunity and one that I am eager to take full advantage of. Although I've know about this fund for a few months, I only realized last week that SoJo is eligible and should consider applying. Late last week I approached the research office, expressing my interest in this application and requesting their help finding me an academic researcher. I received a very stern warning saying that I was endeavouring to something incredibly ambitious given then timelines and that a lot of work lay ahead of me. Being a qualified applicant, the research office had no choice but to help out. With a little persistence on my end, they sent out an email to a generic listserv of faculty members, and within 12 hours I received 7 responses. That early validation and interest in SoJo was integral to getting this process started. Because in those same 12 hours I received an incredible amount of cynicism and doubts from those around me.

This grant is a collaboration between an industry partner (SoJo), College partner and University partner. I was confident that a researcher from Ryerson University would come on board based on initial interest. SoJo has had a longstanding relationship with the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) and I eagerly approached the Dean of the Design Faculty to get onboard. To my negligence, OCAD is actually a University, so that early excitement led to even greater disappointment and embarrassment. I was now without a College partner (when I told the University partners that I had one. This is my first lesson is real-time negotiation). And so I did what every entrepreneur does: hustled with relentless energy and optimism. People raised their eyebrows as soon as I mentioned the October 1st deadline. I simply responded with confidence and shared the vision, and that was enough convert many skeptics. I called upon everyone I knew, asking for a huge favour to facilitate introductions with demanding turnarond times. I approached strangers and asked them to vouch for me. Lucky for me, SoJo has great credibility and has an awesome project -- but it was a stretch to say the least.

Need I note that the first two weeks of school is the busiest time for anyone at an academic institution, let alone deans and professors. Here I am making demands and asking senior and very busy people to clear their schedules.

After a couple of conversations with the key collaborators, this morning I got the green light from the both the College and University collaborators. I just came out of our first meeting with a list of things to produce for the next 48 hours (I'll be away from my computer for 36 of those hours, let alone my existing busy schedule). I'm ecstatic that SoJo is going ahead with this, and will let this positive glow overpower any doubts or reality checks that arise over the next 10 days.

In the words of of the lead researcher: "It will be a miracle if we get this application in on time. It'll be an even bigger miracle if we are successful." This is coming from someone with a 100% success-rate with such types of applications with NSERC and who administers millions dollars worth of research annually.

Start-ups are run on miracles, and history leads me to believe that miracles do happen. So there is no reason to stop believing / hoping... Its going to be a long week and a half ahead of me and this team. Wish us luck!

Disclaimer: What I'm about to share is highly experimental and is not grounded in any theory or practice.

SoJo has many exciting product development decisions to make. Based on early insights from the strategic planning process, SoJo needs to improve the navigation, usability and interface of the public site. In parallel to making these improvements, SoJo is building its first-ever enterprise-level software product. The stakes are much higher now, and decisions have greater implications. I was able to guide the team to building a content site using a Wordpress framework in its most basic functionality. This next phase of growth is much more complex, and beyond our current capacity.

SoJo has great development team. When given proper direction and structure, they are able to execute above and beyond. That being said, both developers are fairly junior and SoJo is the largest technical project either of them has worked on. Trial by fire has been our methodology thus far,  however it can be a hindrance in moving SoJo forward. The entire organization needs to work at a more accelerated pace to achieve these next set of milestones.

When seeking advice, my challenges around the gap that exists between translating business requirements into functional requirements, the need for a CTO (Chief Technical Officer) came up quite often. Most successful technology companies are co-founded by a technical person, who becomes the CTO. Bringing on an external CTO at this stage of our development will be challenging. We have no intentions of selling SoJo for millions of dollars in the coming years, and the financial payout seems be to be a large motivator to attract good senior technical talent.

Technical recruitment has always been a challenge. Linus and Jesse joined SoJo right before major product launches. For the past 8 months, I've been keeping my eyes peeled for a technical partner. After 3 intense and focused months of searching for a technical team member, I've learned that effort will not always equal result. With the inability to offer a 6-digit salary and a highly competitive market, finding the right person will remain an ongoing challenge for us.

SoJo is in a conundrum where it needs a CTO to grow, however is unable to find one -- therefore the only logical solution is to create one. To fill its technical deficiencies, SoJo will be crowd-sourcing its CTO. This is highly experimental in nature. I have not found any successful case studies and I am still figuring out what it will look like.

Traditionally, crowd sourcing implies reaching out to the public for assistance. In this case, I will be reaching out to a closed network, seeking referrals to source individuals looking to commit their skills and experience to SoJo. Since SoJo is not building any unique technology, all development related activities can likely be covered by our existing development team. What we need instead is support in project management, information architecture, decision making and industry insights. Most of these skills come from experience, and so it makes sense to leverage the experience of many professionals, most of whom can complement one another. In addition to benefiting from the skills and expertise of experts in their respective fields, not having someone in the daily grind of the business can also provide fresh perspectives.

Product vision and business requirements will continue to come from me, so the crowd-sourced CTO will be used for technical guidance.

This approach is highly risky for many reasons:

Lack of ownership and accountability
SoJo will not the first priority of any of the individuals. Being a secondary activity, they may not dedicate the mental energy or time required for this role. A dedicated CTO invests in the company, both with their time and expected payoff. It will be difficult to hold a crowd-sourced CTO accountable to the advice that they provide, as the consequences of their advice may not directly impact them. Beyond goodwill and the opportunity to shape an organization with huge potential for impact, there is not much more that I can offer to our crowd-sourced CTOs in terms of compensation.

Effectively communicating the problem
A crowd-sourced CTO will not be able to get into the trenches or depth of problems. Only someone that works on a project day-in and day-out will understand all of the intricacies of certain technical issues and implementation problems. When only providing incomplete information, we risk getting incomplete or misleading advice.

Fragmentation
With multiple brains giving out different pieces of advice, it is likely that we will receive conflicting and incomplete advice. Distinguishing between everyone's bias can result in a lot of inefficiencies or lead us down a wrong path. Similarly, the different features and technical elements to our products are all intrinsically linked. Each crowd-sourced CTO will likely look at their own issues in isolation. Without taking into account the technical inter-dependencies of each of the solutions, it is possible that solutions to one problem create bigger problems elsewhere. 

Time
Having a dedicated CTO will free me completely of all technical related activities. With less focus on the product, I'll be able to dedicate my time to equally important CEO-type activities, such as getting funding, building the brand and supporting other functions of the organization. In addition to coordinating the schedules of the CTOs I will still be primarily responsible for relaying that guidance to the technical team.  

Risks considered, I'm quite excited about going ahead with crowd-sourcing SoJo's CTO. This could be an experiment gone wrong, in which case we know that we exhausted every option. On the other hand, this can potentially be a new model for what is possible, given limited resources.

When meeting with this advisor about 2 months I shared some of my challenges, and on top of mind was sourcing a technical partner. 6 weeks ago she introduced me to Jesse, who was interested in learning more about SoJo. I was in the thick of recruiting for a freelancer and excited for this prospect. I looked at his CV once and quickly dismissed it as a viable prospect. Jesse's work experience has been in hardware infrastructure and IT support. Without a single web development skill listed on his CV or extracurricular leadership experience, and a degree in astronomy and physics, I assumed Jesse did not have the skills needed to lead our technical implementation, let alone take the content site out of Beta (which was my primary priority at the time).  

Out of courtesy to the advisor who connected us, I agreed to meet with him yesterday. From the impression that I formed from his CV, I honestly did not think Jesse would be a fit. Going into this interview my best-case scenario was that he would know someone who was a better fit. Over the course of our conversation, Jesse surprised me in many ways. I learned that he has been building websites since grade school, is entirely self-taught programmer and that he is currently building an educational mobile application on his own time. Although not reflected in the CV, Jesse has everything I am looking for in a candidate: skills, initiative, work ethic and a sincere interest in our vision.

In-line with my initial plan, we agreed to bring Jesse on the team to oversee the product launch, and then evaluate fit and interest with staying on board with SoJo. Upon further reflection, I realized that I already judged Jesse without even meeting him. Had this CV not come through a referral, I would have never suggested an in-person meeting. Had I met him when we were first introduced, I would have saved myself hours of painful freelancer interviews and brought him on the team sooner.

Being pleasantly surprised when you least expect is an incredibly uplifting feeling. That being said, it is a much greater risk to let opportunities that are presented right in front of you slide. Finding the right balance between accepting everything that comes your way and exercising discretion to fend off lower-value activities will remain an ongoing challenge.

The two most commonly asked questions SoJo gets are :

1) How do you make money / what is your business model?
2) What  are you / what is your legal structure?

Our business model is constantly evolving, however I can finally announce our legal structure :
a Hybrid Social Venture.

What does this mean?
SoJo (http://theSoJo.net) is being created and delivered jointly by two different entities: SoJo Ventures Inc. and SoJo Education.

In Canada there is no legal structure that recognizes a social enterprise. You are either a for-profit or non-profit. There are advantages and limitations to each legal structure. When it was time to formally incorporate SoJo, open a bank account and have a legal framework to build its product, we deliberated long and hard between a for-profit and non-profit structure.

Decision to go for-profit
A year ago, SoJo Ventures Inc. was incorporated as a for-profit corporation in Canada, assuming that it could develop and deliver SoJo's online learning tool and community of social innovators as a for-profit. Our rationale at the time for pursuing a for-profit legal structure over a non-profit included:

- Set a precedent: We want to be trail blazers by showing our community that it is possible to create a financially sustainable venture that delivers on profit and mission. With the shrinking pool of resources available to non-profits, we want to lead by example in demonstrating that there is another way of satisfying mission, while sustaining your costs.
- Protect the Intellectual Property and technology developed: For-profits have fewer restrictions on how assets get allocated and used.
-Access to research grants and funding available to corporations for developing new technologies and innovations.
-Fewer restrictions on how we can raise capital, spend our resources and conduct business operations.
-Be respected as a legitimate member within the technology community: almost all technologies are developed under for-profits, and we did not want any biases imposed on us by the tech community if we were not a for-profit entity.  

Unfortunately over the past few months SoJo experienced significant limitations with the for-profit legal status, where we faced unnecessary obstacles and were forced to turn down some opportunities as a result of formalities. There have been instances where organizations and individuals were excited about SoJo and eager to work with us, however upon learning about our legal status, the conversations quickly changed. Somehow, everyone assumed SoJo was a non-profit, and when told otherwise, people grew suspicious about supposed ulterior motives. I didn't realize that taking the 'high road' and delivering a service which was traditionally delivered by a non-profit, as a for-profit would receive so much backlash. Almost all of the organizations we work with are non-profits, and some did not understand why a for-profit is the one bringing everyone together. Based on my interactions with other individuals in the sector, there still exists a lot of misunderstanding and stigma towards mission-driven for-profit corporations. SoJo's vision is ambitious enough. Does it make sense for us to go up additional uphill battles for reasons of "morals" and "precedents"? 

Decision to go non-profit
Every conversation that forced me to question my decision of our legal structure was an additional drop in the bucket. The bucket tipped when a significant partner made it very clear that they could not work with SoJo under its for-profit legal structure, as it is written in their mandate that they cannot support for-profit corporations. This partnership will give us a boost in credibility, build our community, and give us access to several valuable networks. I could not justify letting this partnership go, therefore exactly one year later, I went through the process of incorporating SoJo Education, a non-profit organization.

Why create two legal structures?
Yes, SoJo will be delivered jointly by a for-profit corporation and non-profit. I am very well aware of the redundancy that exists with having to maintain two organizations, two bank accounts and two separate governance structures, however we were really left with no other option. Until Canadian legislation catches up with evolving needs of the Social Enterprise sector, many people such as myself will be forced to be creative in order to deliver value to society today. This is not the perfect solution, however this dual-structure model best meets our needs today.

As far as I'm concerned, the hybrid legal structure will have little effect on SoJo’s end product. Our primary goal is to make SoJo a robust platform that is accessible to as many people as possible -- and we took the entrepreneurial approach of doing what was necessary to achieve this goal. Given that there is no legal recognition in Canada of a social enterprise, we decided to adopt an alternative arrangement: the hybrid social venture. This will allow us to reap the benefits of both legal structures.

The Hybrid dispelled:
"The hybrid uses a series of contracts and agreements to combine one or more independent businesses and nonprofits into a flexible structure that allows them to conduct a wide range of activities and generate synergies that cannot be done with a single legal entity. The guiding principles dictate the relationship between the corporation and nonprofit. The entities that generally make up a hybrid are distinct for legal purposes, and each is responsible for compliance with the laws and regulations that govern it, but when properly structured, the legally distinct entities can behave much like a single entity. The purpose of the contract hybrid is to create an ongoing, symbiotic relationship between a nonprofit and a for-profit to accomplish mission and business objectives on a long-term basis. It allows synergies that simply aren’t possible with the other models, because both the nonprofit and the business are free to pursue their activities in a way that is most likely to be successful within the legal, financial, and regulatory framework that applies to it, without being bogged down in the limitations and regulatory burdens of the other party. Yet they are tied together in a way that allows the whole structure to leverage the strengths of each organization."
Source: Adapted from Allen R. Bromberger's article in the Stanford Social Innovation Revue

How will SoJo's hybrid operate:
Each entity has their own purpose, and collaboratively they will deliver http://theSoJo.net. SoJo Ventures Inc.'s primary responsibility is to develop the technology and backend support needed to power SoJo. SoJo Education's primary responsibility is to make the content freely accessible, and build the community associated with SoJo.

Both entities will be linked by partnership agreements, created in accordance with a series of guidelines and policies, ensuring a legally sound and transparent relationship. You can view the guidelines here.

In addition to the paperwork and administration costs associated with creating two legal entities, I expended an incredible amount of time researching possibilities, talking to experts and deliberating -- this process was incredibly tedious, and was a huge headache. SoJo's legal structure has been over a year-in-the-making. I wanted to wait until our documents were reviewed by lawyers, and that most of our internal controls were in place before publicly announcing our legal structure. SoJo is committed to being transparent with sharing our story, and hopefully this post helps you better understand the thinking that led to this important decision. Please share your thoughts, concerns, and questions. I may not have all the answers, but am open to the dialogue.

5 years ago I wanted to be a lawyer. After all the time spent reading dense legislations, including the Not-for-profit Act and Income Tax Act, researching options, and speaking with legal professionals, I am further reassured that not pursuing a career in Law was the right decision for me. Legal stuff is not written in an accessible format, and is subject to a great deal of interpretation. Further validated by this journey over the last year, SoJo is committed to publishing content on all of these topics in a friendlier way. Please be patient, as it will take time to gather this content, however rest assured that it is coming.

Sources:
Social enterprise in Canada : Structural options
A New Type of Hybrid – Social Entrepreneurship + Business Equity via Stanford Social Innovation Revue

Today I was asked to tell an editor at Canada's largest daily newspaper about SoJo. A great opportunity for coverage, I attempted to depict SoJo in 10 pictures and 6 words (no internet, no computer). See below.

SoJo has the ambitious goal of being the ubiquitous source of support for social innovators to take their ideas for social good into action, which includes revolutionizing the way in which online learning happens. In a world where we're told to use a slide-deck and bright shiny objects to sell our vision -- I opted for the basics: a whiteboard and a marker.

Over the past few months, I've consistently struggled to explain SoJo's vision, our solution and value-add, the status of our Beta and distinctions between those three elements. When talking about this challenge to a supporter, he in return asked me to draw out SoJo on a whiteboard. After a few attempts, I quickly realized there was no cohesion in how SoJo was explained and a great need to clarify and simplify our message. That same afternoon I hashed out what our whiteboard pitch looked like. It got tested with fellow SoJo team members, other entrepreneurs and staff in the Digital  Media Zone (gotta love a collaborative workspace), however today the whiteboard pitch got its debut. My lack of confidence in my drawing abilities (I will work to improve my stick figures) was offset by my excitement to share SoJo's vision in a more interactive and engaging manner.

In my opinion, this pitch is effective for two reason: simple and interactive. We're all overloaded with information, so it is my intention that saying less will allow the audience to retain more. Secondly, by being able to draw SoJo's story in real-time, it keeps the audience engaged, allows me to control how the message gets perceived and hopefully store a mental image of this whiteboard in their head.

We'll see how successful the pitch was and if a follow-up call comes for a story. If not, it was great practice.