Would YC ever fund a not-for-profit startup, as a form of philanthropy?
Part of the reason I ask is that for-profit and not-for-profit organizations have different kinds of leverage, and for some activities not-for-profits have big advantages. It's striking that some major success stories like Khan Academy and Wikipedia are not-for-profit.
I imagine that having a YC-like model applied to not-for-profits might produce some remarkable new startups, maybe even entirely new types of startup.
Any YC partners who wanted to do this could set up a parallel not-for-profit or charity. That organization might benefit from some of the easily scalable benefits of YC (say, providing access to the YC alumni network), but would be independent. It wouldn't even necessarily need to be funded by YC partners - there are foundations which might be interested in partnering with an organization like YC to fund this kind of thing.
Although non-profits has good tax breaks, it's much more difficult to get funding since it's "non-profit", hence no return for the investor capital. Why not try to create a social enterprise instead? You can still get a bit of tax breaks, AND you can earn profits for yourself and investors.
The term "social enterprise" is used in many ways, and doesn't seem to have a clearly accepted legal definition. Without clarification of what you meant, it's difficult for me to comment directly on your suggestion.
However, with that said, I'd just like to emphasize that I'm certainly not criticising for-profits. I'm saying not-for-profits are different, and have a whole different set of advantages and disadvantages than for-profit enterprises.
That's certainly true. Many models of social enterprises exist and some of them are no more of a regular business that so happens to deal with "social" issues.
I guess the point I was making is that the advantages that a non-profit has ultimately (feel free to correct me, or add new ideas that I neglected) are a) tax incentives, b) helping the world or altruism, and c) zero or very low price for the goods and services offered for most of the customers. Having never really worked in the non-profit sector, aside from working during my years in college, those are the only benefit that I can generalize for non-profits. Both a) and c) can be replicated in for-profit firms. And social enterprise, depending on the sector that it's in, can capture b) as well to an certain extent. Hence as long as the people running the company has the right attitude and has good goals, running a non-profit really isn't necessary.
What were the advantages you were thinking of? I would be very interested to hear your take on it.
Part of the reason I ask is that for-profit and not-for-profit organizations have different kinds of leverage, and for some activities not-for-profits have big advantages. It's striking that some major success stories like Khan Academy and Wikipedia are not-for-profit.
I imagine that having a YC-like model applied to not-for-profits might produce some remarkable new startups, maybe even entirely new types of startup.