The Super Happiness Challenge!
I’ve been to quite a few pitch sessions and this was by far the most inspirations pitch session I’ve ever been to. I was brought to the point of tears many times over the course of the afternoon. To see so many people trying to do good in the world in one place was humbling and quite inspirational.
Investors Panel
A friend forwarded me a link to a pitch session yesterday morning, and as I’m in networking mode, trying to find an amazing job, I signed up and attended. I didn’t know much about the event before I arrived and the first thing that struck me was that all of the folks pitching had startups that did good things, that aimed to make the world a better place by increasing what Project Heha calls “Super Happiness.”
I’ve been to quite a few pitch sessions, and this was by far the most inspirational pitch session I’ve ever been to. I was brought to the point of tears many times over the course of the afternoon. To see so many people trying to do good in the world in one place was humbling and quite inspirational.
The Super Happiness Challenge was an international competition that started accepting applications in May 2017. There were two tracks, an Idea Track, and a Startup track. Five finalists came from as far away as Iceland and Africa to pitch. The event was hosted by GSV Labs, great people with an amazing space.
From my perspective, the winners in both categories were obvious choices, and the judges had difficulty deciding, especially between the grand prize and runner-up prizes.
All one needed to enter the idea track: “The idea track is open to individuals who have an innovative, creative solution that promotes happiness.” Most of the idea track entries were pretty far along. Many had apps or significant achievements. The winner, Smart Garbage Medical Insurance, created a micro-insurance system where slum residents in Tanzania collect plastic refuse, which widely pollutes the slum, it’s collected monthly, and turned into plastic timber, which is sold to make things like decks and fences. The proceeds go to buying insurance. So far, they have insured 75 families! It’s a triple win, people most at risk get insurance, the environment is improved, and a new building material that is much more resilient than wood is created. What an innovation!
To enter the startup track, one needed to, have a startup along the same lines. All of the startup entries were impressive, not just from their ability to do good but also from their viability. The winner, WeFarm.org, blew the top of my head off! They have created the world’s largest farmer to farmer digital network. They have over 420,000 farmers connected in Kenya, all via SMS. Farmers are rated, and AI is used to connect folks who have questions to those who can answer them. We are talking about folks who have, until now, no access to the internet and no way to communicate outside their personal networks. WeFarm is also using this service to sell supplies like seeds and insurance and plans on a peer to peer market soon.
For those of you who don't understand how big a deal this is, 80% of the folks in Africa have cell phones, and only 30% of the population has internet. Similar numbers exist for other developing regions. This demographic represents the biggest opportunity for service providers, eCommerce, and social media worldwide. It’s a nearly untapped market, and luckily the brilliant folks at WeFarm are using their foresight for good.
I’d take a job at any of the companies that presented at whatever they could pay me. They were that good and got me that fired up.
This is the brainchild of Project Heha, started by Sammy Lee. Sammy took the idea of propagating sustainable happiness to new levels and, in the course of doing so, has created a multinational, multibillion-dollar company. The phrase, “a rising tide lifts all boats,” was never truer.
We need more of this in the world!
The Myth of Pursuing Happiness
Are you trying to find happiness and success? According to Dr. Viktor Frankl, you can’t pursue them directly. You can only find them as a byproduct of other things. Dr. Frankl, a survivor of four Nazi Germany concentration camps, a neurologist, and a psychiatrist, developed a new field of psychiatry, Logotherapy, just prior to being sent to the camps. He had travel papers that would have let him leave Germany for the US, but since his parents didn’t have a way to leave Germany, he chose to stay.
In the first part of his book, Man’s Search For Meaning, he talks about his experiences in the death camps, and in the second part, he discusses his theories on Logotherapy or healing through meaning. Dr. Frankl says that our search for meaning is our primary motivation. In study after study, we find that meaning is five times more important to most people than cold hard cash. Studies done in the US, Vienna, and France across different demographics all say the same thing.
So, what kinds of things result in happiness and success? According to Frankl, it is taking selfless actions. Work without purpose or fulfillment does not qualify. Dr. Frankl quotes Edith Weisskopf-Joelson from her article on logotherapy, “our current mental-hygiene philosophy stresses the idea that people ought to be happy, that unhappiness is a symptom of maladjustment. Such a value system might be responsible for the fact that the burden of unavoidable unhappiness is increased by unhappiness about being unhappy.” The word unsuccessful could be substituted for unhappy in the previous quote.
How we deal with challenges defines who we are as people. If your life appears boring to you, chances are you don’t have a meaning or purpose behind your actions. What can you do to find meaning and help relieve boredom? You could start by finding work that would provide a purpose. If, for some reason, that’s not possible, find someplace to volunteer where people are worse off than you are if victims in concentration camps could find meaning in their lives while prisoners, there’s hope for the rest of us.
