Touchstones: The secret to social entrepreneurship 

In 2019, my friend Shanthi stepped into her office as CEO of a maternal health foundation in India for the first time. She had been hired to lead an organization with a huge mandate, not enough staff, and not nearly enough money. But although she was alone at the top of the organization, she was not alone. She had Dhruv. (Note that both Shanthi and Dhruv are aliases, as some entrepreneurs requested anonymity.)

“Dhruv made many connections for me or just helped come up with ideas that gave me hope. Sometimes, that’s all that one needs. Hope, and for someone to say you got this.”

“Shanti”

Shanthi and Dhruv had met as Acumen Fellows years before and bonded over a shared curiosity and love of community-building. Now in her new role, she and Dhruv spoke often. “Dhruv made many connections for me or just helped come up with ideas that gave me hope. Sometimes, that’s all that one needs. Hope, and for someone to say you got this. And to tell you to stop whining, and get moving!” Five years later, the team was six times larger and its impact had grown by an order of magnitude. “None of this would have been possible without the people accompanying us.”

The secret ingredient

One of the greatest assets that leaders can have is a relationship that holds them to their highest selves. For those on a rapid ascension to success and fame or those beaten down by years of striving and rejection, it can be easy to forget who we are, what we stand for, and what matters. When we lose sight, who is there to remind us? What are the relationships that are strong enough, with the people courageous enough, to remind us of our best selves? 

After spending the past decade accompanying early-stage social entrepreneurs working on solutions to the toughest problems of poverty, I’ve come to learn that these “touchstone relationships” are not just nice-to-haves, they are essential ingredients for success and for survival. Entrepreneurs often talk about community as a critical input, but more from a network value perspective – a place to turn to for connections to capital, the right talent, access to platforms and power. That type of community is important, but I’m talking about something rarer. I’m talking about relationships that remind us of our essential character when it is hardest to see and hardest to believe. 

The first step of the social entrepreneur’s journey

Most of us start our days with something on our proverbial desk: a widget to be improved, a system to keep running, a sales quota to hit. People who want to build a different world start their days with an absence. A burning desire to create something that does not exist in the world. The energy required for that kind of work is more than any one soul can bear on his or her own.

Benje Williams founded Amal Academy in 2013 to help young Pakistanis acquire the skills they needed to find good jobs. Four years into that journey, he was in a dip: “The loneliness of entrepreneurship is just this feeling that, almost out of necessity, you have to be the smartest and hardest working person in the room. And that the burden therefore is always on you.” Meeting Ali Siddiq, someone who was familiar with both the Pakistan education system and startup culture, offered the “hope of alleviation” of some of that burden. Ali was interested in the business and asked lots of questions, but what stood out to Benje was Ali’s desire to engage with the real issues that Amal was struggling with: “It was just clear, like, he really wanted to get involved. He wanted to be in the weeds in ways that most advisors don’t.” 

“The loneliness of entrepreneurship is just this feeling that, almost out of necessity, you have to be the smartest and hardest working person in the room. And that burden is always on you.”

Benje Williams, founder of Amal Academy

For Ali, who had a young family to support, joining a startup was a risk. But conversations with Benje convinced him that there would never be a “right” time to take on these kinds of problems. Ali joined Amal as the Director of Operations. Benje made space for him, literally: “I shared my office, that was previously just mine, so that we could be sparring partners throughout the day.” Ali appreciated that Benje asked “a ton of questions and just forced [my] thinking to get more robust and thorough, and that has kept me very much in the productive zone of discomfort, and that’s just amazing.” 

Today, Ali Siddiq is the CEO of Amal Academy. Benje moved back to the United States and is an advisor to Amal. Both men talk about their relationship as one that changed their trajectories. For Ali, “It feels pretty amazing to be part of something that is much bigger than myself. And I have a lot of gratitude for Benje including me in that.” And for Benje, “I always thought of [Ali] as kind of like a reciprocal, someone who’s complementary and the opposite of you and completes you.”

Community gives you what even the best board cannot

Entrepreneurship is an improbable journey under the best of conditions; social entrepreneurship is a near impossible task to face alone. The moments of self-doubt, the unrelenting power of the status-quo, the frequency of setbacks — it is only natural that a social entrepreneur may lose themselves. Most worryingly, they may lose their sense of purpose and conviction, which are ironically the two most powerful allies on the journey.

When Kheyti, which sells greenhouses to farmers in India, began to gain traction, winning the Earthshot Prize in 2023, Kaushik Kappagantulu went through an identity crisis. He had been so used to the scrappy, grinding nature of being a founder and when it came time to shift into an executive role, he asked himself, “Is it me?” Am I still the right person for this? Some might say that it’s the role of the board to coach founders and entrepreneurs through this stage, but entrepreneurs also need a personal sounding board. 

A little embarrassingly, when I asked Kaushik who had helped him stay true to himself in this moment, his answer was, well, me. I’ll let him speak in his own words:

“But you approached [this moment of transition] by saying, ‘Okay, all of those things are important, but what do you need right now? What sort of leader do you want to be? How do you want to show up to these people? And how are you going to move on from this and take care of yourself and move into the next stage of your social entrepreneurship plan?’ 

And that’s what really changed [things for me]. Most of the people I was talking to were coming from a logical angle, a startup angle, a ‘what is right for the organization’ angle. But none of those conversations made me feel like, okay, I’m less alone. And all the conversations with you, especially during that leadership transition time, I think made me feel the least alone.” 

What Kaushik may not have known, what I might not have told him, is that these touchstone relationships transform both parties equally. Being in it with him transformed me, renewed my sense of purpose, and the impact continues to ripple through the relationships in both our lives.

“Most of the people I was talking to were coming from a logical angle, a startup angle, a ‘what is right for the organization’ angle. But none of those conversations made me feel like, okay, I’m less alone.”

Kaushik Kappagntulu, co-founder and CEO of Kheyti

Building spaces to be witnessed

I know of no better way to stay true to yourself than embedding in a community, one made up of relationships that allow you to be witnessed and reminded of your highest self. Honesty, reciprocity, and radical presence are how you form a touchstone relationship — the kind that holds enough love and belief that they can hold a mirror up to you to remind you of YOU. The poet David Whyte describes it as: “The ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.”

There are a lot of factors that play into the success of a social enterprise: access to capital, talent, strong feedback loops, macroeconomic factors, luck. Community needs to be added to that list, right at the top. A lot of investors will say they’re not investing in the business, but rather they’re investing in the entrepreneur. But if the business fails, it becomes all too tempting to pin the blame on the entrepreneur’s character and to say “we invested in the wrong person.” 

The truth is that character is not a trait or a state. It is a series of daily choices, and those choices are hard. Making them as your best self helps, but only a strong community can help you maintain that. This is why we invest so much energy into weaving deep, local communities at Acumen Academy, creating spaces and moments for entrepreneurs to fully be themselves and to be fully seen. Our Fellowship has forged touchstone relationships that have compounded over decades, resulting in thousands of social entrepreneurs being as committed to their purpose as those of their fellow Fellows, truly belonging to something larger than themselves. 

Shanthi and Dhruv talk less often now, but when they do, their conversations are more powerful, focusing on how they want to build a better public health sector. For Shanthi, “Those conversations anchor me. They remind me there is so much to do, and most of all, that we are not alone.”