Max Gladwell

A San Francisco start-up is combining the principles of activism, capitalism, and social media. They call it Activism 2.0. But it could be much more.

Virgance CEO Steve Newcomb is one of the most successful and savvy entrepreneurs of our generation. At 39, he’s been involved in building nine companies, creating over $3 billion in market value. His most recent exit was Powerset, a semantic search technology that was acquired by Microsoft last year. Newcomb is also chairman of Serious Business, a Facebook application company, and the founder of SF Green, a San Francisco-based event that brings together leaders in activism, business, and government. And while that’s all well and good, Newcomb clearly sees Virgance as his legacy play.

“I believe that in a hundred years, people aren’t going to look back and remember that Powerset was a new search technology, even if it was better than Google,” he says. “They’re going to remember that this was the time when a select few had the courage to begin the process that ultimately enabled us to overcome the biggest issue of our time – sustainability. That’s what Virgance is all about.”

We had a call with Newcomb last week to discuss his vision and approach. It was immediately clear that our values and ideals were aligned. Virgance consists of a talented and dedicated group of social entrepreneurs leveraging social media to achieve social and environmental objectives that are also profitable.

This approach and ideal is quite familiar and consistent with Max Gladwell, so it comes as no surprise that the brands are each rooted in epic tales. Virgance is a Star Wars: Episode I reference that means “the birth of powerful new force in nature that can be used for good or for evil.” And Max Gladwell is inspired by Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Each views the mission of sustainability as a heroic endeavor.

When we considered Virgance’s broader context, though, it occurred to us that they may have crossed into the realm of Web 3.0. It’s just not in the same way we typically define it.

Virgance is equal parts incubator, holding company, and campaign headquarters. The company starts or acquires ventures that meet the following five criteria:

1. It must lead to measurable change as directly as possible
2. It must involve lots of people via social media in making that change
3. It must use carrots not stick
s i.e. finding or creating aligned incentives rather than punitive measures
4. It must scale on a common tech
nological infrastructure
5. It must have a solid business model (healthy gross margins)

This is what happens “when capitalism meets activism,” says Newcomb, because Virgance doesn’t think of its ventures as mere companies but rather ongoing campaigns. “What Idealab was to Web 1.0, Virgance is to Activism 2.0,” he says. In other words, Virgance is starting more than just companies. It’s taking a business approach to launching social movements. And the effective use of social media is central to the viability, scalability, and profitability of each.

As Newcomb told TechCrunch, he sees Virgance as “the next iteration of what President Obama did,” referring to the Obama strategy. Because just as advertising never started a movement, no business plan has ever sparked a revolution.

The Portfolio

By our count, the Virgance portfolio currently consists of five ventures, though Newcomb says they are in a constant state of launching and testing new pilots. So that statement may not be accurate for long.

Carrotmob is social shopping meets conscious consuming meets flashmobs. It was an instant success when the first Carrotmob took place in San Francisco last year. You may remember the first Carrotmob video, where a large group of people showed up to an unassuming convenience store and bought stuff in the foreknowledge that the owner would use a substantial portion of that revenue to green their store.

1BOG (One Block Off the Grid) intends to become the consumer brand in residential solar by enabling communities to leverage their purchasing power in getting the lowest-cost solar panels possible. This can radically tip the economics in our favor, making the decision to go solar a very reasonable investment with a much quicker return.

Lend Me Some Sugar (Lend) is more of a business-to-business play, whereby companies can transform their philanthropic efforts into effective cause marketing programs. The business opportunity can be found in the fact that corporate America isn’t getting the credit it might deserve for its philanthropic work, and few if any companies involve its various stakeholders in the decision-making process, much less enabling them to allocate the funds. Lend campaigns enable this connection. They are run through a Facebook application, which generates revenue from ads. Lend doesn’t take a cut of the donation funds.

GO Media is the company’s most recent and high-profile acquisition. We interviewed GO founder David Anderson in October of last year, and we’ve written several guest posts for Sustainablog.org, which is part of the 15-blog Green Options network. Aside from the obvious advantages of owning such a media property, which claims 2.5 million monthly unique visitors, Newcomb’s mission is nothing short of saving journalism and preserving the Fourth Estate. Having been part of the GO blogger network, we couldn’t help but notice how efficiently it is run compared to traditional media organizations. And Newcomb isn’t coy about their plans to apply this decentralized editorial model to other news verticals. With Newcomb’s help, GO has attracted influential guest bloggers including San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who recently announced his candidacy for California governor via Twitter.

Finally, Greenfund is a rather ambitious endeavor that will seek to raise investment capital in small increments through a Facebook application. It’s still in the pre-launch phase.

On the Verge of Web 3.0

The typical understanding of Web 3.0 is all too familiar to Steve Newcomb. It refers to semantic technology, such as the Powerset search engine, where more meaningful and actionable insight can be extracted from information. Given what Virgance is currently working on, together with other recent trends in Web 2.0, though, we’re tempted to add to that definition and include much of what we wrote about in the New and Improved Matrix.

Web 3.0 might also encompass the merging of the digital world with the actual world through Web and mobile technologies. Web 3.0 might include applications that integrate or necessarily include the actual worldwide web—the one in which we live, the tangible web of homes, streets, businesses, and government offices. If Web 2.0 is the Internet as a platform, then Web 3.0 might be the World as a platform. And just as Web 2.0 had pioneers that pre-date the broad acceptance of the trend, those of Web 3.0 might include Meetup, Sense Networks, Zumbox (a Max Gladwell client), and several of the Virgance brands.

Companies like Carrotmob and 1BOK use online social networking to inspire offline action with measurable impacts. These campaigns provide an alternative to so-called slactivism, where taking social or political action amounts to little more than joining a Cause on Facebook, posting YouTube rants, and adding badges to your MySpace. Because moving the needle on social and environmental issues requires that we step out from behind the computer and actually do something. Fortunately, the iPhone and other mobile technologies keep us networked in the real world by utilizing the same applications.

Does this qualify as Web 3.0? Or is it just the evolution of Web 2.0? It doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that we’re adding meaningful purpose to Web technologies that are having real-world impacts. A powerful and universal new force has, indeed, been created. And from where we stand, it’s clearly being used for good.

Related Posts

• 7 Questions for GO Media Founder and Publisher David Anderson
• Max Gladwell Founder Joins Zumbox, the Paperless Postal System
• Using Social Media to Accelerate Sustainability…at #SXSW
• The Heroic Ideal of Max Gladwell and Barack Obama: Part II
• Public Relations 3.0: Media, Blogs, and Consumers