MATCHING EXPERTISE WITH PURPOSE
TO DRIVE THE PACE OF IMPACT
We pair top business and technology experts with innovative, rapidly growing social ventures around the world. Beyond advising, RippleWorks is real problem solving: volunteer experts work with ventures to jointly solve an immediate and critical scaling challenge.
ACCELERATING THE WORLD'S MOST PROMISING SOCIAL VENTURES
Massive impact can come from massive scale, and funding no longer is the biggest barrier to scale for many social ventures. Ventures that have raised funding are primed to scale their business and impact, but require access to specific expertise along the way. Silicon Valley experts are poised to help.
Many in Silicon Valley and the larger tech sector hold the valuable expertise that will scale and accelerate impact around the world. What if they could drive impact while keeping their day jobs?
RippleWorks provides these top professionals with a well-defined, high-impact opportunity that redefines the idea of volunteering.
“I’ve deeply enjoyed learning about the challenges and projects that these ventures are tackling, and it’s a pleasure to see them make progress.” – Chris Kanaan, Expert-In-Residence & Ripple’s VP Engineering
RippleWorks supports ventures that are creating products and services that have the potential to empower millions in a critically positive way. Our ventures build and provide solutions that enable access to everything from affordable energy, to micro-insurance, to small-business financing.
As with all startups, hyper-growth is no small task. Our social ventures require top expertise around specific challenges, both operational and technical, to ensure that they scale properly.
“RippleWorks has been a game changer for us.”
– Xavier Helgesen, CEO, Off.Grid:Electric
YOUR SKILLS CAN UNLOCK FURTHER HYPER-GROWTH
Expert volunteers work with innovative social ventures that are well on their way to solving some of the world's toughest challenges. By applying their skills and experience, experts play a critical role in empowering these ventures to scale their business and impact.
KOPO KOPO
Nairobi, Kenya
Kopo Kopo is the world’s first merchant services platform built for mobile money and offering a full-suite of payment, credit and marketing tools.
Kopo Kopo has built the largest independent merchant network in the mobile money industry. As it grows beyond East Africa to other parts of Africa, South America and Asia, it requires a new strategy around its cloud-based architecture.
OFF.GRID:ELECTRIC
Dodoma, Tanzania
Off.Grid:Electric is a massively scalable solar leasing company offering radically affordable energy for the 1.6 billion people who don’t have access to electricity.
The customer base is growing in the hundreds of people per day. As a “solar as a service” company high-quality customer service is essential. How does it maintain quality service with a huge spike in new customers?
RUMA
Jakarta, Indonesia
Ruma empowers 30,000 trusted community stores to provide over 2 million customers a month with easy access to online payment services and to shop for goods.
As demand for its services soars, the Ruma team needs assistance on how best to scale its architecture and organization. How can it ensure that in 5 years the system will scale to meet its rapid growth?
WE TAKE CARE OF THE DETAILS SO
YOU CAN TAKE CARE OF BUSINESS
RippleWorks offers a well-defined and high-impact program. Our simple four-stage process guides both expert and venture from application through project success. Our team ensures an immersive experience in which an expert's time and contributions are maximized for impact.
APPLY
PARTNER
SOLVE
MEASURE
Both experts and ventures must apply to the RippleWorks program.
For experts, we look for those who have demonstrated substantial success in their field of expertise as well as soft skills that will ensure a productive collaboration in a new environment.
For ventures, we look for venture-backed start-ups with significant market traction and a commitment to a social purpose.
Once selected to the program, we pair expert and venture based on the venture's most pressing scaling challenges and the expert's domain expertise.
Projects are jointly defined by both expert and venture, and structured with specific goals and milestones.
We quickly zero in on and define the imminent and mission-critical challenges facing ventures.
We design and optimize the entire experience to be efficient and easy for both ventures and experts; from getting started to offering best practices to drive a successful project, to arranging and paying for any travel.
We bring a results-orientated approach to every engagement.
Each project's success will be measured against the milestones that were agreed upon at the beginning of the engagement.
A successful project will be one where you see your ideas and solutions being implemented and the venture scale.
Ready to test your skills, scale a startup, and drive real impact?
READY TO GIVE BACK WITH YOUR SKILLS
IN A MANAGEABLE, MEANINGFUL WAY?
Apply now to start pushing the pace of social innovation:
If you are a venture interested in the RippleWorks program, please email us at ventures@rippleworks.org.
A TECH SECTOR TALENT NETWORK TO
HELP SOCIAL VENTURES SCALE FASTER
Based in Silicon Valley, RippleWorks' leadership and volunteer experts bring extensive start-up experience and expertise, starting and scaling scores of successful ventures.
Doug Galen
Co-Founder & CEO
In addition to RippleWorks, Doug is a Lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and sits on the non-profit Boards of Heifer International and Positive Coaching Alliance.
Prior to RippleWorks, Doug served as Shopkick’s Chief Revenue Officer, Shutterfly’s SVP of Business and Corporate Development, eBay’s VP and GM of New Ventures, and employee #3 as Vice President of Sales and BD for publicly traded E-LOAN.
Chris Larsen
Co-Founder
Chris Larsen is the Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Ripple, creators of an open-source distributed payment protocol, and was formerly CEO.
Chris also cofounded and served as CEO of Prosper, a peer-to-peer lending marketplace, and E-LOAN, a publicly traded online lender. During his tenure at E-LOAN, he pioneered the open access to credit scores movement by making E-LOAN the first company to show consumers their FICO scores.
Michelle Munoz
Human Capital Adviser
Michelle Munoz is a Human Capital adviser for RippleWorks, playing a pivotal role in growing the RippleWorks Expert Network and placing the right expert with the right project.
Michelle is an Executive Recruiter at Omidyar Network, where she manages full cycle executive searches, and provides executive coaching for hiring and talent strategies. She previously spent over ten years as a senior recruiter for leading tech companies such as Apple, eBay/PayPal and Google.
Tim Kunihiro
Head of Venture Development
Tim Kunihiro joined RippleWorks after serving as CEO for a SaaS startup incubated out of Barcelona, Spain, that offered an interactive sales solution for ecommerce companies.
Tim previously held key leadership positions at TaskRabbit and eBay, leading various teams in operations, international expansion, business development and product. Tim was the first product manager at eBay to focus on Trust & Safety solutions, including combating fraud, IP infringement, and risk management.
Rick Levenson
CTO in Residence
Rick Levenson is an engineering leader and a long-time denizen of Silicon Valley. Rick has led many teams in settings ranging from nascent ventures to Microsoft divisions.
His tech leadership experience includes Sun/Javasoft, Tellme, Microsoft, Polycom and a variety of startups. Most recently, he was at Kiva.org, leading the engineering effort to help alleviate poverty through the power of crowd-lending.
Sarah Burch
Senior Portfolio Manager
Sarah Burch specializes in helping emerging market social enterprises grow and generate sustainable impact. Before RippleWorks, she helped launch Development Innovation Ventures (DIV), one of the first VC-style impact funds in government.
At DIV, Sarah led the due diligence and closing of over 20 deals, aggregating $22 million in over 10 countries. She managed 30 of the organizations in the fund portfolio, covering areas such as energy, water access, and health care.
Pradeep Suthram
Director, Product Experience
Pradeep Suthram most recently served as Process Lead at VMware, and previously consulted for venture capital firms in Washington, D.C. and Bangalore.
Pradeep’s product management experience spans his time at SomeoneWith, where he developed the initial design, experience, and business model to provide financial services for cancer patients and their families, and at PICnet, where he worked to deliver affordable web applications for 300+ non-profits over 5 years.
Jay Lee
Growth and Community
Jay Lee joined RippleWorks after serving as a senior social impact fellow at the New Sector Alliance, where he worked with military veterans nonprofits based within the VA healthcare system to develop more integrated business development and fundraising strategies.
Previously, Jay worked in various editorial capacities for Major League Baseball Advanced Media, including leading the digital front-page web strategy for MLB.com and the 30 official club websites.
Sara Johnson
New Initiatives
Sara Johnson previously ran her own consulting firm where she advised social enterprises, funders, and corporations on how to maximize impact and effectively deploy capital. Prior to that, Sara managed operations at a Zambian agriculture start-up working with small-scale farmers.
Sara has also managed Mulago Foundation’s Rainer Arnhold Fellows Program, helped launch the Entrepreneurship Database Program at Emory University, and served as Village Capital’s first full-time employee.
Shannon Galea
Office Manager
Shannon Galea is RippleWorks’ Office Manager and Executive Assistant, helping to ensure that daily operations run smoothly.
Shannon previously was an Executive Assistant at Shutterfly, where she supported senior executives including the CTO, CHRO, CFO, and SVP of Operations. Shannon has also worked as an Executive Assistant at several other leading Bay Area companies, including Genentech and Williams-Sonoma.
