You’ve just excitedly clicked on the new Mr. Beast video, expecting to see how he recreated the new Squid Games, but before you get to the chirpy intro, you hear —
Irritated, you wait five seconds before you skip the ad and move onto the video, forgetting the ad altogether (except for the annoyed feeling you got from it). But what if ads weren’t bothersome? What if there was a world in which the advertiser asked your permission first and made the experience interactive and entertaining? On top of that, what if you would help the world become a better place?
Sounds impossible to achieve, but entrepreneur and angel investor Tarek Eldin is building this world at his new venture, Let’sGive.org. Motivated by the ineffectiveness of most ads and users’ increasingly negative response to them, Eldin finds that the ad market, worth $300 billion today, is ready for some new ideas. Most importantly, Eldin feels that consumers increasingly expect to be treated as partners rather than objects of advertising. On Let’sGive.org, users voluntarily interact with brands for about 15 seconds at a time in exchange for money to donate to a specific charity of their choice.
Eldin’s journey did not originally begin as an entrepreneur or angel investor — he started as an economist. After a 20 year career in finance, however, he shed the corporate wings and found that he wanted to create an impact on his own.
‘Ultimately, we want to alter the terms of the exchange between brands and consumers to be more fair, consensual, and engaging and thus worth the consumer’s while. We accomplish this by introducing two key elements: first, we make the process much more interactive and second, we enable both sides to support a cause they both care about,’ says Eldin.
Let’sGive.org is currently preparing its Beta phase, where they are testing different use cases of their platform. Before this stage, however, Eldin tested the proof-of-concept, or the idea’s feasibility simply by demoing the emerging prototype to as many brands, charities and end-users as possible and collecting their feedback and ideas. For the latter he resorted to a simple method: going on Craigslist, and paying people to review the app. Sometimes, the old ways are best!
During the interview, we discussed whether the prototype should go first, or the market research. In my experience running an Etsy shop that creates wall collage kits, I had already built the prototype with my own initial creations. I only had to gather data on the interest in wall collage kits, so I did the market research first. However, designing an entirely new platform or product calls for a different approach. In this case, building a prototype so people have something to interact with and respond to, and then iterating based on user input made sense.
It’s similar to the question of whether the chicken or the egg came first, but at yCITIES, I learned that many new ventures start with a low-fidelity prototype. There, you can test both user interest and the effectiveness of your venture at essentially the same time. A low-fidelity prototype takes into account the core functions of the product and the core aspects of the user experience — it’s usually simple and quickly created.
When asked about the revenue model, Eldin explained the legal format of Let’sGive.org as a public benefit LLC. While being economically viable and profitable is one of the long term goals of the company, another goal is to create a social impact — the business decisions the company makes should align with both objectives. In addition to the stated charitable donation, which goes to the non-profit in full, brands pay Let’sGive.org a fee for operating the platform. Neither end-users nor non-profits are ever charged for the service and most of the overall revenue goes to charity. In my opinion, all corporations should adopt this model, but it’s awesome that Let’sGive.org is one of the startups paving the way for making social change.
Right now, Let’sGive.org is putting together a small group of organizations and brands to participate in the beta launch and become part of this new way of finding and engaging consumers and raising funds. If you work for a non-profit or a brand with an interest in cause-driven advertising, reach out to them at service@letsgive.org!
Check back on CORE Corner to hear updates about the entrepreneurial journey of Let’sGive.org!