Paul Graham, founder of ycombinator, discusses the value of benevolence when working with tech startups.

Look out for innocent’s Sustainability Manager Jess Samson who we wrote about last December.

Back in 1997, with business partner Brent Hoberman, she started LastMinute.com which became one of the hits of the UK’s dot-com era.

Since then she has gone on to start a karaoke bar business called Lucky Voice which aims to bring back the therapeutic benefits of singing and help to raise people’s spirits. She is also a director of Marks and Spencer.

In June this year she was appointed the UK Government’s Digital Inclusion Champion. She has made it her mission to get as many people as possible online before the London 2012 Olympics.

Martha has a strong commitment to charity work. She founded her own charity called Antigone and is a patron of both Reprieve and CAMFED.

In a recent interview on the BBC’s Leading Questions program, Martha talks about her success in business, her new role with the Government and her motto:

Work hard, be nice to people.

• McDonalds were named in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the fifth year straight. They take the opportunity to ponder the meaning of Socially Responsible Investing on their CSR blog Open For Discussion
• Traidcraft relaunched their online shop – we think it looks great!
• It’s official: innocent smoothies do count as two of your five-a-day
• Facebook’s PR team prove they have a sense of humour by pranking TechCrunch
• Carpet manufacturer Interface’s CEO Ray Anderson (who’s TED talk we featured back in May) has just written a book about his company’s goal of achieving total sustainability by 2020. The book is described on the described on the TED Blog as “a guide for entrepreneurs who are looking for new models of production (especially ones with environmentally friendly attitudes) in a market that’s always reinventing itself”
• Dave McClure (profile) has had a busy summer looking after the fbFund REV social incubator program:
• Seth Godin has a great little post about the importance of teaching
• It was announced on the Howies blog – Brainfood – that they are half way to getting 1 million people to watch The Do Lectures online. Why not help them out with their ambitious goal? They also laid down the rules for the first every howies raft race!
• Method (profile) score a write-up on Inhabitat. Also on Inhabitat: Skyburbs – building suburbs in the skies!
• SuperJam (profile) are offering a free jar of jam to anyone who suggests a stockist that makes an order
• Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos (profile), has been judging the startups at TechCrunch50. He’s been questioning why they aren’t trying to change the world and also whether they really need to raise money to get going:
  
• Eric Ries has a great blog post about ‘The cardinal sin of community management‘
• Andrew Warner’s recent interview with Matt Mullenweg contains, among other things, a fascinating insight into business models around open source software
• TreeHugger reports that Google is aiming to halve the cost of solar power

Fraser’s quote explains his inspiration:

“My real inspiration is Body Shop founder Anita Roddick. When she was alive she proved you can make a successful business AND make it ethical.

“The fact she gave all her cash to charity says everything. I’d like to run my business like that.”

In his talk from TEDGlobal 2009 Geoff Mulgan, a former Policy Director for Tony Blair, suggests we take the opportunity presented by the global economic crisis to consider a shift of focus towards investing in social innovation.

In the video below, the founding partners explain more:

If you know of a charity or non-profit that needs help with fundraising, marketing or communications then point them towards Beautiful World. There’s nothing to lose as the first hour’s consultation is free!

Beautiful World are also a sponsor of the upcoming NFPtweetup event.

“For Zappos, our vision remains the same: delivering happiness to customers, employees, and vendors. We just want to get there faster.”

- Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh in a letter sent round to Zappos employees and published on the company blog.

Below is a video from Amazon’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos explaining what the deal means to him:

In theory this acquisition will give Zappos some great opportunities to learn from Amazon on the technology front and perhaps some of the Zappos company culture will rub off on Amazon in return… One thing is for sure, we’ll be watching with interest! Congratulations to all involved!

Dave admits that he’s “not really a financial engineering expert” however he is “optimistic the basic ideas here are viable, worthwhile and can have substantial economic impact on society in the future.”