How To Build an Army of Social Entrepreneurs

After selling half his company, Toms founder Blake Mycoskie is doubling down on social entrepreneurship.

- Rick Tetzeli, photo by Jenny Hueston

Last year, Blake Mycoskie confronted the one dilemma all entrepreneurs dream of: what to do with a personal windfall. In Mycoskie’s case, the $200 million (after taxes) that arrived after he sold half of his company, the buy-one, give-one shoe retailer Toms, to Bain Capital. He consulted family and friends, intending to find a philanthropic cause that he could embrace and attack, in the manner of other entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates, Mycoskie has always been an unusual businessman, a free spirit sprinting down a path of his own invention. His decision: use $100 million of his money to launch an investment fund that will back, well, companies that want to be like Toms.

Encouraging clones isn’t high on the list of strategies recommended by the world’s finest business minds, especially when, as with Toms, dozens of companies have already mimicked the pioneering idea that once distinguished your brand. When Mycoskie launched Toms a decade ago, the one-for-one approach was radical. “No one was talking about business being a force for good,” recalls Mycoskie. “Nobody was talking about social good, or the triple bottom line, or B Corps.” But now brands from Warby Parker to the Company Store offer customers the feel-good thrills of one-for-one shopping, while a host of other companies are being founded on similar principles. Threatening stuff? Not to Mycoskie. “The moment the model is not really a competitive advantage for Toms is the moment when we’ve won, society-wise,” he says.