In a blog post today, the Twitter founder announced closing a funding round led by Spark Capital with participation from SV Angel. An elite group of individual investors also contributed, including Jack Dorsey, Bono, Reid Hoffman, Steven Johnson, Evan Williams, Al Gore, Greg Yaitanes, and Roya Mahboob.

Not much is known about Stone’s startup beyond the fact that it is called Jelly, involves mobile technology, and has something to do with promoting social good.

“As mobile devices have taken an increasingly central role in our lives, humanity has grown more connected than ever — herein lies massive opportunity,” Stone wrote. This financing will support advancing Jelly beyond the prototyping stage through hiring and product development of “what we think of as the natural next step for our connected society.”

Jelly has hired former Twitter engineering manager Ben Finkel as CTO and the man behind Twitter music, Kevin Thau.

News leaked that Stone was working on a new startup in March 2013. He and Twitter cofounder Ev Williams left Twitter and founded the Obvious Corporation, which launched in 2011 as a startup incubator and investment vehicle. In August 2012, Obvious announced a new publishing platform called Medium that encouraged medium-length, thoughtful content and was intended as a “better place to read and write about things that matter.” Williams said this would be his main focus. Now with Jelly, Stone has his own pet project and there is speculation about whether this means Stone is leaving Medium/Obvious.

Until we know more about Jelly, we must be content with details about jellyfish themselves. Perusing Jelly’s blog yields interesting information, like the fact that jellyfish brains are decentralized and “more ‘we’ than ‘me’” and a group of jellies is called a bloom.

Points of Light is a large international nonprofit organization that mobilizes people to do volunteer work. Last year, it set up a civic accelerator program to  encourage and support entrepreneurs to tackle social issues.

“Our communities face increasingly complex social and economic problems,” said program director Ayesha Khana in an email to VentureBeat. “To truly solve these issues, we need breakthrough ideas that engage people in new and different ways and can succeed at scale. We enlist entrepreneurs and support them as they tap into the world’s largest renewable resource – people and their desire to effect change.”

The recession was a challenge for many non-profits and charitable organizations who struggled to stay afloat. At the same time, consumers are expressing a greater interest in the social and environmental impact of their actions and social entrepreneurship is on the rise. The idea that for-profit companies can positively and powerfully affect change is gaining momentum,

Just over a month ago, Google and ‘Peace Corps for Geeks’ organization Code for America formed an incubator program and two MIT grads founded Tumml, an ‘urban ventures’ accelerator program. Furthermore, the legendary Ron Conway said the tech community has a responsibility to “affect positive change in our communities (so it must be true.)

Points of Light wants to build an ecosystem of entrepreneurs, investors, and stakeholders dedicated to driving social, as well as technological advancement.

“For the greater tech community/country, we are hoping to create a ‘civic venture’ lens,” Khana said. ”We are looking to prove that organizations aspiring to make a social or environmental impact must leverage people (their time, talent, voice and/or money) as a core part of the business model if they want to truly move the needle against the most intractable issues of our time.”

Points of Light partnered with Village Capital, which has launched 17 accelerator programs in the U.S. and emerging markets. Over 300 entrepreneurs have participated in its programs and its companies have collectively raised more than $30 million in capital. Village Capital cites its mission as ‘democratizing entrepreneurship’ by connecting participants with mentors and training, as well as intensive peer review. At the end of the program, the entrepreneurs select which companies will receive investment.

Points of Light will also apply this peer-based learning and investment model. Every startup is offered $10,000 in investment and ultimately peer-selected companies in the group will receive $50,000. The 12-week program kicks off in Atlanta, Georgia. Most of the curriculum is presented virtually so entrepreneurs don’t have to take time off or leave during a critical period of company development. Every month, the entrepreneurs all come together in a different location for hands-on sessions.

The Starbucks Foundation and PricewaterhouseCoopers Charitable Foundation invested in the accelerator.

The ten companies in the second class are :

EPIC: Engaging Philanthropy, Inspiring Creatives (Chicago)

EPIC empowers creative professionals to make social change happen.

GenX & Associates (Chicago)

GenX & Associates helps communities dashboard their social, economic, and environmental data online for local decision-making.

Graph Alchemist (Portland, OR)

GraphAlchemist offers Graph as a Service (GaaS) to provide data driven solutions to complex problems

Ioby (Brooklyn, NY)

Ioby builds stronger, more sustainable neighborhoods using a cutting edge crowd-resourcing platform for leaders and innovators

Neighbor.ly (Kansas City, MO)

Neighbor.ly is the funding platform for civic projects

Practice Makes Perfect (Astoria, NY)

Practice Makes Perfect works to narrow the achievement gap in low income U.S. neighborhoods through summer enrichment programs.

Public Lab (Cambridge, MA)

Public Lab is a community that develops and applies affordable, open-source environmental monitoring tools to empower citizen scientists.

The GREEN Program

The GREEN Program transforms experiential education around the world, and empowers leaders to break into and disrupt the hottest industries of our time.

Jubilee Project (New York)

Jubilee Project makes videos for a good cause that empower, enable, and inspire the next generation of changemakers

Village Defense (Atlanta, GA)

Village Defense provides neighborhoods with a real-time communications system to keep neighbors safe and connected.

King is the founder of HopeMob, a nonprofit crowdfunding site dedicated to supporting charitable causes, organizations, and individuals around the world. HopeMob primarily funds smaller scale, focused projects and provides direct aid to recipients instead of just wiring money. Despite the proliferation of crowdfunding platforms, King felt that too many people remained underserved because they did not have the tech or social media savvy to wage effective campaigns.

“We founded HopeMob to fill holes that we saw in the crowdfunding space,” King said in an interview with VentureBeat. “I don’t see our competition as other crowdfunding sites, I see it as the ills of society that cause people harm and prevent them from living their best life. A lot of people with compelling stories are totally blocked on other sites and this is often because if you don’t already have a crowd, you struggle to raise money. We flipped that on its head by building the community first around the idea that when generous strangers come together, we can get a whole lot done.”

HopeMob’s community is now 150,000 people strong and has funded over 100 campaigns, ranging from $400 for a medical procedure to $100,000 for victims of Hurricane Sandy. Before campaigns go live on the site, they go through a series of steps to make sure they are legitimate, as well as presented in the best possible way. HopeMob verifies stories that goes through the system by asking for references, conducting interviews and researching on social media. The fact that campaigns don’t receive money, but rather the actual aid they need, also weeds out disingenuousness. For example, a teacher raising money for her school receives the specific textbooks or water purifiers she needs and a cancer patient may have her bills paid for her, rather than getting a check to do it herself.

Once HopeMob approves a campaign, the user can ask for help building a compelling profile. King has extensive experience leveraging social media to achieve goals and built that into HopeMob so that if someone goes to the trouble of posting a campaign, they have a better chance of reaching their goal. Before founding HopeMob, King raised millions of dollars for the relief and recovery after the earthquake in Haiti, largely through social media, and he realized that bringing together social good with social media as “his calling.” He went on to launch an auction site called TwitChange where people could bid on the chance for celebrities to mention them on Twitter.

Along these lines, King launched Upfront today, an online community for influencers and their devoted fans. King said that the “value of fully engaged celebrities in a platform” is huge. Upfront provides opportunities for influencers to communicate with their fans through messages, photos, videos, emails, unreleased music, status updates, and live-streaming of events. Access is available on s subscription basis and a percentage of every transaction completed on Upfront goes into the Upfront Foundation to support causes they believe in.

King has played a number of roles through his life, including victim, teacher, pastor, community organizer, social media consultant and entrepreneur. He is driven by the desire to empower the downtrodden, and believes in the power of social media (and the influential people using it) to rally support for charitable causes.

After winning a competition, I had the chance to fly down to South Africa and spend three days with my idol, Richard Branson.

It all started in 2011, when Branson released a book “Screw Business as Usual,” where he argued that for-profit businesses should play a role in addressing today’s social and environmental challenges. To celebrate the release, he asked startups from around the world to submit their business model and explain how it will change the world for the better.

Over 500 companies submitted their application, and my own company Raise5 was selected as the winner. We help people sell their skills and talents in exchange for donations to their favorite non-profit.

On returning from South Africa, I put my thoughts down on paper. Here are five things I learned from the world class entrepreneur and founder of The Virgin Group:

Embrace adventure — go where others don’t

The thing that’s immediately obvious about Richard is his love for adventure. Whether it’s in the business world, or in the jungle, Richard simply loves to go where others normally don’t. During one of our safari trips, he picked up a giant millipede and giggled as it crawled all over his head (see above). I realized on the trip that while many people are attracted to the glory of being a successful entrepreneur, Richard really cherishes the process of getting there, and that seems to make all the difference.

Don’t be afraid to question conventional wisdom

During one of our dinners together at Ulusaba, Richard shared his perspectives on the world, including the issues of conventional corporate culture and the failing war on drugs. We even spent some time speaking about the issues facing my birth country of Iran. Richard’s attitude was all about bringing power to the people. He is pretty much the same in person as he is on television. I would describe him as a gentle rebel. He’s kind, humble and down to earth, and yet he still loves to shake things up and openly challenge the world.

Trust and Delegate

During our trip, Richard mentioned that the job of a leader is to focus on the big picture, and delegate work to the appropriate members in his team. During the 3 days with him in Ulusaba, you would rarely see him checking his email, and making calls. Clearly, the Virgin Group is in good hands, and it’s also clear from Richard’s relaxed demeanor during the trip that he genuinely trusts the people on his executive team. He explicitly mentioned to me that a leader should be able to remove himself from the organization, and everything won’t fall apart.

Challenge yourself and redefine failure

At one point, Richard spoke about the 600 or so companies that the Virgin Group has launched over the years, and 100 of them are still active today. While some people saw this as 500 failures, for Richard, it was an ongoing challenge to improve the rate of success. He said, “You won’t know what will work ahead of time, you just have to know that as long as you keep challenging yourself, you’ll be at your best.”

Work can be fun

We should always celebrate the little things in life, and all the milestones in our businesses. At lunch, Richard read to us this email from his Virgin Galactic team on their successes in testing one of the rockets. The email was very emotionally charged and heartfelt. While reading it, you could tell that Richard was savoring the moment. Don’t just experience fun and joy after 5pm or on vacation. Love what you do!

Shayan Nahrvar is the co-founder of Raise5, an organization that allows individuals and groups to fundraise for charities and non-profits through micro-volunteering.

He is an outspoken critic of standard business practice with the belief that in addition to profitability, social responsibility must be weaved into the fabric of every business.

Palihapitiya is a former executive at Facebook. In 2011, he formed the Social+Capital Partnership to invest in companies that stand to have a lasting impact. Many of the portfolio companies operate in the health and education technology sectors, and the goal is to make a difference as well as money. Previous investments include InstaEDU, Lemon, Yammer, Alltuition, and FlatIron Health.

With this fund, Palihapitiya said on stage that he plans to make a combination of “crazy” and safe investments. Fund II first surfaced on January 2013 when Palihapitiya filed a form with the SEC marking his intent to raise $325 million. The Social+Capital Partnership is one of the main sponsors of Launch.

This guest post is by Tinia Pina, the founder and CEO of social startup Re-Nuble.

First-mover advantage remains the driving force behind much of the technological innovation we enjoy today. Venture capitalists worldwide constantly search for new mobile products and consumer web apps to finance in their quest to tap new markets.

Under this model, public good and social benefit usually take a back seat to IPO considerations and profit potential. It’s a model that works — and works very well — bringing us the likes of Angry Birds, Instagram, and countless other mobile technologies that continue to take over the world and generate handsome profits for their backers. 

I must confess that I’m shamelessly addicted to Angry Birds and want more mobile apps like it. But like so many game-changing technologies, it hasn’t fundamentally altered my relationship with the world.

From Rovio’s financing to its development to the countless hours I’ve personally spent on the app, there exist numerous opportunities in which we could have invested resources to change not only “the game” but also the entire planet.

Green technology implemented in resource efficiency and sustainability business models are prime examples of worthwhile endeavors whose profit potential attracts investors but whose track records impede actual investment.

 Just to put this in perspective:

• Total U.S. VC investments in green clean tech reached $6.6 billion in 2011
• In that same year, MoneyTree reported that VCs poured $28.4 billion into 3,673 internet sector deals

In the relative absence of a quick adoption rate, the government must step in to support green or clean tech.  However, despite numerous successes, a few high profile failures (such as Solyndra) are enough to reinforce the belief that avian iPhone apps should take precedence over saving the planet — at least as far as investment goes.

But it doesn’t have to be like that.

Enter social entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneurship is an emerging trend that marries traditional capitalist principles with more altruistic notions of societal good.

The idea is to do real good in the world, while continuing to generate profits.

According to his landmark book, How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, David Bornstein defines social entrepreneurs as those who inspire positive, meaningful change without compromising the basic tenets of good business.

Pioneers in the field enjoy first-mover advantages just like their counterparts in the consumer tech sector. But they don’t view new opportunities exclusively through the lens of technological innovation. In fact, many social entrepreneurs actually embrace proven technologies that have already existed for years. The advantage comes from how they choose to apply and scale established tools.  In other words, the scope and reach are unprecedented, not the actual technologies themselves.

From microfinance to organic recycling to sustainable farming, social entrepreneurs continue to expose the false choice between corporate profits and good works, concepts that share equal footing once you begin internalizing the benefits (rather than externalizing the costs).

But if one no longer has to sacrifice profitability for societal good:

• Why hasn’t the greenclean tech movement taken over Silicon Valley and Wall Street?
• Why do we continue to rely on government intervention to develop solutions that benefit investors and the planet alike?
• Why do we accept low success rates for consumer tech start-ups, but continue to hold green tech start-ups to a different standard in which a few notable failures can tarnish the entire industry?

As a social entrepreneur, I have many more questions than answers.

Maybe we simply need more high profile successes to attract VC interest.  Or perhaps another Hurricane Sandy will help highlight the consequences of continued inaction.

What I do know is that the transition to a more sustainable global economy is inevitable.  And with so many separate environmental and social challenges to tackle, there are an infinite number of green clean tech first-mover opportunities from which investors can choose.

Tinia Pina is the founder and CEO of Re-Nuble, an organics-to-energy sustainability social enterprise.  Tinia founded Re-Nuble with a mission to “Redefine Waste” within local, urban communities.  She frequently tweets as @viare-nuble.

Photo credit: NASA

Every 20 seconds, a child dies from a water-related illness. Startling statistics like these can make it hard to stomach the millions of dollars funneled into the latest social networking or e-commerce app, but a new wave of social entrepreneurship is taking on the idea that doing good and making money are mutually exclusive concepts.

Hydros manufactures reusable water bottles with built-in filters. Reusable water bottles are hardly innovative but Hydros’ unique approach to social entrepreneurship and use of internet platforms to spread its mandate is.

The water crisis is a massive global problem. 1 in 7 people lack access to clean water and 3.575 million people die each year from water-related diseases. Furthermore, 38 billion (billion!) water bottles are discarded into landfills every year. After learning about these issues, founders Jay Parekh, Aakash Mathur, and Winston Ibrahim forsook traditional career paths to tackle the crisis head on.

The water bottle is the consumer product that funds Operation Hydros, “the movement to fight the global water crisis.” For every bottle purchased, $1 dollar is contributed to a rural water project. The company is still in the early stages of distribution, but has already helped implement a water piping system in Cameroon and a sanitation project in Kenya. Hydros recently partnered with Engineers Without Borders to ensure each water system is implemented effectively and well maintained.

“People think there is either the nonprofit world where you won’t make any money, or the business world where you won’t do anything good,” he said. “I want to dedicate my life to proving this wrong.  I want to prove you can create a successful business that returns money to founders and shareholders, while still addressing a social issue.”

Ibrahim was raised in Silicon Valley and leveraged his knowledge of the entrepreneurial ecosystem to get Operation Hydros off the ground. He reached out to investors, recruited renowned entrepreneurs to the advisory board, and spearheaded digital sales and marketing efforts. Hydros has received investment from angel investors, venture firms, and from crowdfunding site Fundable to bring the product to market.

Now, the company is starting its major distribution push. It is sold in Whole Foods in certain markets around the country and has worked with tech startups and other organizations on “cobranding” initiatives. The bottles are also available online on e-commerce sites like Amazon and Groupon. There are even potential celebrity sponsorships in the pipeline.

The bottle itself filters out toxins and chemicals in 20 seconds. Hydros also seeks to combat the water crisis by promoting more eco-friendly habits, like cutting down on bottled water waste. Ibrahim said there is strong interest amongst consumers for this type of product and business model.

“A feature of our generation is to care about the broader world,” he said. “Millenials were raised in this internet age, we have so much access to information and see the issues that are going on. There is opportunity inherent in problems of the word. Our generation is primed to see lack of food, lack of water, lack of jobs as a chance to create benefits for society and cause change.”

Ibrahim recently visited the White House as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week, “the world’s largest celebration of the innovators and job creators who launch startups that bring ideas to life, drive economic growth and expand human welfare.” The massive growth of this event (115 countries; nearly 24,000 partner organizations; more than 37,000 activities;  directly engaging more than 7 million people” is a testament to the growing belief around the world, amongst entrepreneurs, business people, politicians, and development agencies, that startups can cause widespread, meaningful change.

It’s not nearly often enough that we hear about startup ideas that address global hunger, fuel inefficiency, or support the deaf and blind.

This week, Intel threw an event to do just that — to uncover these ideas from research labs, and provide them with funds for launch in the global market. This is the eighth time that the computing device maker has hosted the global business plan competition. This year, it was held at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and the finalists received $100,000.

The winner?

Greenway Grameen Infra (GGI), a team from India that produces efficient, biomass-based cooking solutions to replace indoor open fires and traditional mud stoves.

The flagship product is the Greenway Smart Stove, which incorporates a unique air-flow generator to provide clean and efficient combustion, saving up to 65 percent of fuel and resulting in a 70 percent reduction in smoke. The team piloted the stove in India; sales topped 12,000 units through rural retail outlets. The team received $50,000 from Intel’s Foundation.

“The Intel Global Challenge inspires and rewards great entrepreneurs who bring the best science and technology innovations from universities around the world to market for the benefit of us all,” said Andre Marquis, executive director, Lester Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation at UC Berkeley. Marquis said it has bolstered the school’s efforts to build a network of entrepreneurs around the world.

The runners up include Dreambender, an Indonesia-based startup that has developed an innovative sign language system; it uses Microsoft’s Kinect as a motion sensor, enabling users to practice gestures based on video examples until they have mastered them. ISkyTracker, a Russian technology, enables people to connect to the Internet anywhere. Its system provides automatic searches for telecommunication satellites.

Read more about the recent Tech Laureate awards (another recent competition to reward “tech for good” ideas) here.

Top image courtesy of Alexander Kirch, Shutterstock

The Boston-based Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur are putting high tech into high gear with an initiative to bring cell phones, laptops, and other tech products to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Sisters have been making regular trips to the region since 1984. Through donations, they have been able to maintain 10 mission centers in Africa with schools, health clinics, water purification equipment and round-the-clock electricity.

Recently, they noticed a growing demand for use of their personal computers.

To provide equipment and an Internet connection to the local people, they solicited the help of the Alliance for Global Good‘s Innovation Fund, which provides funds to nonprofits that combine a mission and business model for sustainable social good. The Sisters were awarded $20,000 in funds.

“A few of our locations are so remote that using Skype is the only method of voice communications. One older man walked 80 kilometers to be able to talk with his son via Skype,” Sister Lorraine Connell, the general treasurer for the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, told me.

“[During] a visit a couple of weeks ago, three whole schools came out to welcome the team of us who were upgrading the lightning protection and the data logger systems. They sang greetings and welcomed us with flowers, a traditional Congolese welcome,” Sister Lorraine said.

The nuns told me they are using the grant to build new Cyber cafés in which people can use computers, printers, and the Internet for a small fee, and will continue to provide education and access to disease-free water.

Since they launched the project a few months ago, several micro-businesses have developed, including phone charging stations (pictured, left).

According to Sister Lorraine, villagers walk long distances to visit the Cyber cafés because they heard they can “talk through the air” to their children who are living abroad. Members of other religious organizations, school facilities, healthcare workers, and NGO representatives will also travel for several miles to access these Internet cafés.

The computers are already making a difference in the community: Teachers use them to access information that is more reliable and current for students, and local leaders are surfing the Internet to research business opportunities.

The nuns’ ultimate goal is to help the local population become self-sufficient. However, they have needed to be sensitive to the country’s cultural limitations related to women operating businesses. To ease acceptance, they framed the Cyber Initiative under the heading of the local ministry.

With four of the new computers operating for three hours per day (the current capacity of the cafés), the revenue being generated is $360 per month. The Sisters hope to expand the project — additional computers would generate thousands of dollars per year and further bolster the community’s economic growth.

LendUp, a website and mobile app where people with poor credit can apply for short-term loans, wants to help people crippled by debt.

Launching today, the San Francisco-based startup is using technology to experiment with lower interest rates and ensure that loans are a way to help people move up the ladder. Unlike other small-dollar lenders, there are no hidden fees or rollovers, and loan decisions are instant.

The founders want to replace payday loans altogether and help people who banks typically decline. For a first-time borrower, they charge a maximum of 15 percent of the loan amount plus fees and offer opportunities for customers to get discounts for paying on time, paying early, or for completing the company’s online education courses.

Small loans are defined by LendUp as under $250 for under 30 days. They have a centralized pool of convertible debt to lend, which was recently raised from local venture capital and angel investors.

What’s interesting is that the company pulled in some of its funding from Kapor Capital and Bronze Investments. Stephen DeBerry, an investor at both firms and an advisor to the company, is a major force in “social entrepreneurship” circles. In previous interviews with VentureBeat, DeBerry, an avowed mission investor, has said that startups need to aspire to do more than make a billion dollars.

Social entrepreneurship is a term that refers to startups with social or environmental missions. Read more about social entrepreneurs here.

Jacob Rosenberg, LendUp Cofounder

According to LendUp’s founders, technology can make a difference for people in need. “We have a way to help our customers actually build credit where traditionally other short-term lenders have been an entry point into a vicious cycle of debt,” cofounder Jacob Rosenberg told me.

When a debt is repaid, the borrower moves up a rung in the ladder and can access better terms. It’s still in the early stages, but the hopes is that interest rates will be as low as 2 percent per month.

To keep interest rates low, the team of engineers have developed a “big data” analytics engine to get a better picture of the borrower. As well as demographic information and credit history, the algorithm also pulls in social data (from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc).

“These machine learning techniques aren’t present in the industry,” Rosenberg told me during our phone interview. LendUp isn’t the only tech startup to experiment with new financing models. SoFi recently pulled in $77 million for its new lending model for students.

The ideal borrower, according to the founders, is a single mother with a poor credit history, who has to “wait on a street corner behind bullet proof glass” to take out a loan for groceries.

LendUp has been testing the concept since February this year and has only accepted 15 percent of applicants. At this stage, it has kept the sample size at a thousand people to ensure that it can offer a hands-on customer experience. The founders told me they personally respond to queries and are always looking for feedback.

The step-brothers behind the startup are Rosenberg, the 80th employee at Yahoo and CTO of Platform at Zynga, and Sasha Orloff, who worked at the Grameen Bank, whose founder was Muhammad Yunus. Yunus (a Nobel Peace Prize winner) is an advocate of socially conscious business. The founders will make money by taking a cut of the interest, but there are no late fees.

LendUp is a Y Combinator alumnus that pulled in its first round of funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, Kapor Capital, Yuri Milner’s Startfund, Google Ventures, Thomvest Ventures, Data Collective, and others.

Image via Shutterstock

In Silicon Valley, we understand how to market a new iPhone app or game to millions of people in a matter of weeks. What if we applied these principles to support a good cause?

Bay Area tech founders and venture capitalists gathered today to hear a presentation from the United Nations Foundation about its plans to make its charitable work more relevant to young people. The nonprofit organization launched the Global Good Challenge this fall to encourage people to take action on the world’s most pressing problems and engage via their social networks.

It’s not a fundraising effort. The Global Good Challenge is an educational game that is already spreading on Twitter and Facebook.

Former Senator Tim Wirth, Kyri McClellan, CEO of the San Francisco America’s Cup Organizing Committee, Jimmy Spithill, Veteran Yachtsman

Zaw Thet, a veteran entrepreneur who started his first company as a teenager, told VentureBeat that was inspired to create the game that could educate people about how to empower young girls in developing countries, prevent diseases like malaria, and combat global poverty. He approached the U.N. Foundation with the idea six months ago, and he interviewed dozens of friends in the tech community for their advice on developing a “viral” social campaign.

Click here to play the game. Sign in via Facebook to unlock prizes like a trip to Africa or a VIP tickets to a Stevie Wonder concert.

“Instead of donating money, we want people to donate their social media influence,” Thet told me. Last year, Thet (one of the youngest people to graduate from the Stanford Graduate School of Business) was selected as one of 10 entrepreneurs to serve on the U.N. Foundation’s Global Entrepreneurs Council. 

Serial entrepreneur Zaw Thet.

Thet told me he was inspired by a mobile game that is educating female players across the world about different ways to prevent pregnancy. This is one of many social and educational games that are popping up on the market. The team behind the initiative also borrowed from the “gamification” trend. In Silicon Valley, tech companies like Facebook and LinkedIn are finding ways to leverage game mechanics to influence user behavior. (Read up on the “gamification” trend here.)

“People involved in the gaming industry are thinking about how to create social good,” Rick Thompson, the founder of Playdom, told me. Thompson, an adviser to Thet, was an attendee at today’s presentation alongside about a dozen other Silicon Valley big-whigs.

Read more about social entrepreneurship, and the tech startups that want to change the world.

Another highlight of the event was that the announcement of the latest prize. One lucky player will be selected to be the guest racer in a sailboat competing in the upcoming America’s Cup in San Francisco. Veteran yachtsman Jimmy Spithill attended the event to deliver the news in person– ladies, trust me, you will want to win this one!

The U.N. Foundation is currently working on the mobile version of its game, which will be released in the coming months.

Top Image via Shutterstock 

Certainly there are dozens of Bay Area tech accelerators, but few would exclusively fund startups that make the world a better place. Even fewer would handpick entrepreneurs with no concrete notion of how to make money, and train them to become social business leaders.

At the Hub Ventures’ demo day last week, seven companies pitched their ideas to Bay Area investors, with the intent to solve problems around healthcare, education, civic engagement, and the environment. This week, two of the startups — StreetOwl and CheckInOn.Me — received financing from Lakeland Ventures, and DIIME, a medical advice maker for Africa, is also under consideration.

It was refreshing to hear pitch ideas with more substance than a geo-located mobile app, and we’ll keep tabs on the graduating class. CheckInOn.Me is a particular favorite of mine — it’s a personal safety app for the iPhone that alerts friends and colleagues to check in when you’re in a vulnerable situation like a late night walk home or an online date.

Wes Selke, Hub Ventures

I caught up with Hub Ventures’ founder, Wes Selke, also an investor at Good Capital, to chat about the program, what they’re looking for from the next batch of entrepreneurs, and the future of this booming space known as social entrepreneurship.

To read more about mission investment and technology for good, click here.

VentureBeat: Wes, how would you sum up Hub Ventures’ vision?
Wes Selke: Hub Ventures is a startup accelerator that provides funding and support to high caliber entrepreneurs building scalable, for-profit solutions to global challenges ranging from poverty to environmental sustainability.

VB: How does it differ from your typical accelerator?
WS: We take the best of the tech accelerator model (seed funding, mentorship, community, perks, etc.) and apply it to impact startups to help these entrepreneurs build their companies better and faster. We’re filling a gap in the marketplace and catalyzing early stage impact startups that otherwise aren’t getting the funding and support they need to take their companies to the next level.

VB: Can you tell me more about the kind of companies that you’re looking for?
WS: What differentiates us from other accelerator programs is our focus on impact companies – to get into Hub Ventures, you have to be solving a big global challenge rather than a trivial “problem” such as a better way to share photos online.

During the program, we help our entrepreneurs design their companies for maximum impact from day one and help them fully integrate that impact into their business models, so as their companies scale, the impact scales also.

VB: Why did you choose these seven companies?
WS: The seven startups in the current class are the cream of the crop, and they have what we look for:  really strong teams, scalability (most are tech focused), and potential for big world-changing impact.  The teams are impressive and include a serial entrepreneur (Ofer Raz from StreetOwl) who built an industry-leading transportation company that is backed by Benchmark Capital and plenty of entrepreneurs with strong pedigrees – MIT, Berkeley, University of Michigan, and solid skill sets in engineering, computer science, business admin, international development, and mobile banking.

VB: How many applications did you receive? Is this a hot space for entrepreneurs?
WS: This year we received 209 applications for the seven slots in the program, up 300% over last year and only a 3% acceptance rate. So, needless to say, we had our pick!

VB: I enjoyed hearing the pitches and meeting the startups at Investor Day. How do you think it went?
WS: Investor Day was a huge success, with a packed room of over 200 investors and exciting pitches from our seven startups. Since the event, investor interest in our startups has been high – a few already have firm commitments, several have verbal commitments, and all have had numerous investor meetings since last week. I’m optimistic that they will all raise capital in the weeks and months ahead. Additionally, we’ve had good investor interest in our fund — we’re currently fundraising for our next cohort in 2013 — and from experienced folks who are interested in mentoring our next class.  All in all, it was a successful event.

Upon acceptance to the program, each company will receive mentorship, training, and $17,500 to $20,000 in convertible debt note financing. To learn more about the program, click here.

[Top image credit:  Robert Kneschke/Shutterstock]

---

Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

---