<story><title>Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social impact above profit?</title><text>For a few years now, there&amp;#x27;s been a rising tide of activism and talk of capitalism 2.0 -- is anyone actually riding this wave, or is it mostly talk?&lt;p&gt;If anyone is actively working on (or with) a social enterprise, or if you know of any, I&amp;#x27;d really appreciate it if you can loop me in!&lt;p&gt;Thank you in advance!</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>songzme</author><text>2016 - While working as an engineer at Google, I decided to start a free coding bootcamp on the side. I believed I could teach anyone how to become a software engineer so I made a public post asking if anyone is interested in learning how to code and about 30 people showed up at my house. While I was at work in Mountain View, 30 people strangers used my house as a coding bootcamp.&lt;p&gt;2017 - 30 students were hard to manage and students started leaving. It bothered me, so I quit my job at Google to focus on this full time. I reached out to the students who left to see what happened and one of the reasons was money. So for the students who are struggling financially, I started giving them 2k &amp;#x2F; mo stipend.&lt;p&gt;2018 - Paying 9 students 2k &amp;#x2F; month used up all of my savings so I had to look for a new job. Also started a non-profit to write off all my payments as donations. This helped alot because to keep paying the students I took out my 401k savings and the donations helped offset the tax penalty.&lt;p&gt;2019 - Students got jobs. Realized that I want to train students to become good solid engineers that I want to work with instead of gamifying the interview process. Instead of padding resume and LeetCode, our curriculum focuses on building good products with good tests and maintainable code.&lt;p&gt;2020 - Ran into financial trouble, had to let all the students go and gave them a 3 month notice.&lt;p&gt;Now I&amp;#x27;m primarily lurking on the chatroom of our final product, helping and teaching students who are following my curriculum.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;c0d3.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;c0d3.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Next year I will get more RSUs and with that money I plan to kickoff a free code house, a safe environment for students to learn (much like 42) with free food and housing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jahewson</author><text>Please stop throwing good money after bad. You’ve proven that your approach doesn’t work, stop it!&lt;p&gt;Go find yourself a more business-minded partner in this undertaking so that it can be financially sustainable.&lt;p&gt;Noble intentions are great but in the end you will be left with nothing and unable to help anybody.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Anyone a social entrepreneur, i.e. placing social impact above profit?</title><text>For a few years now, there&amp;#x27;s been a rising tide of activism and talk of capitalism 2.0 -- is anyone actually riding this wave, or is it mostly talk?&lt;p&gt;If anyone is actively working on (or with) a social enterprise, or if you know of any, I&amp;#x27;d really appreciate it if you can loop me in!&lt;p&gt;Thank you in advance!</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>songzme</author><text>2016 - While working as an engineer at Google, I decided to start a free coding bootcamp on the side. I believed I could teach anyone how to become a software engineer so I made a public post asking if anyone is interested in learning how to code and about 30 people showed up at my house. While I was at work in Mountain View, 30 people strangers used my house as a coding bootcamp.&lt;p&gt;2017 - 30 students were hard to manage and students started leaving. It bothered me, so I quit my job at Google to focus on this full time. I reached out to the students who left to see what happened and one of the reasons was money. So for the students who are struggling financially, I started giving them 2k &amp;#x2F; mo stipend.&lt;p&gt;2018 - Paying 9 students 2k &amp;#x2F; month used up all of my savings so I had to look for a new job. Also started a non-profit to write off all my payments as donations. This helped alot because to keep paying the students I took out my 401k savings and the donations helped offset the tax penalty.&lt;p&gt;2019 - Students got jobs. Realized that I want to train students to become good solid engineers that I want to work with instead of gamifying the interview process. Instead of padding resume and LeetCode, our curriculum focuses on building good products with good tests and maintainable code.&lt;p&gt;2020 - Ran into financial trouble, had to let all the students go and gave them a 3 month notice.&lt;p&gt;Now I&amp;#x27;m primarily lurking on the chatroom of our final product, helping and teaching students who are following my curriculum.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;c0d3.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;c0d3.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Next year I will get more RSUs and with that money I plan to kickoff a free code house, a safe environment for students to learn (much like 42) with free food and housing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Nextgrid</author><text>Just wondering, how do you vet the people that apply? I can imagine a lot of people would love to &amp;quot;earn&amp;quot; a free 2k a month and would happily play along doing the bare minimum amount of work required.&lt;p&gt;I contemplated doing something similar in London (not paying money per-se, but providing a location &amp;amp; good hardware for the students to use) but was kind of worried about ending up with an office full of freeloaders that just enjoy the amenities provided without caring about the curriculum itself.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve experimented with a few people I know that are stuck in bullshit jobs and gave them hardware, software and any books&amp;#x2F;resources they&amp;#x27;d need to learn programming, but while they are very grateful for it I haven&amp;#x27;t actually seen any progress or frankly even long-term motivation.</text></comment>