At eBay Inc. headquarters in San Jose this week, there was a special opportunity to meet entrepreneurs representing fourteen innovative social enterprises from around the globe. The entrepreneurs were in Silicon Valley for a one-week bootcamp, the culmination of a ten-month long accelerator program operated by the Global Social Benefit Institute (GSBI) at Santa Clara University.
eBay Foundation is a partner of GSBI, which engages an international network of businesses, investment capital, and technical resources to build the capacity of social enterprises around the world.
The event in San Jose included a fireside chat roundtable discussion with an employee panel featuring Tom Allason (eBay), Josh Bleecher Snyder (PayPal), and Lauren Moore (Social Innovation, eBay Inc.)
The roundtable discussion included many notable insights on running startup companies. For example, participants took note of the frequent appearances and disappearances of the whale in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. The entrepreneurs noted that running small startups and interfacing with large companies that may have interests in them is a bit like being on a ship and looking out to sea wondering when the whale might appear again.
“If you are going to work with big companies, whether willingly or unwillingly, be ready for a lot of uncertainty,” said PayPal’s Josh Bleecher Snyder, who arrived at eBay Inc. through its acquisition of startup company Card.io.
You can find out more about eBay Inc.’s partnership with GSBI in this story, and click the photo above to watch a video featuring some of the social entrepreneurs who attended this week’s event in San Jose.