Activist Entrepreneurship, or building an Activist Startup, is the act of founding a private organization that isn't merely a typical for-profit company, but that has at its core some kind of truly transformative or democratic ownership model. For example anyone building a new cooperative is engaging in Activist Entrepreneurship.
- It is activist because it seeks to somehow transform the structure of the economy and society for the better, rather than merely trying to capture profits.
- It is entrepreneurial because it doesn't ask for permission or consensus. An entrepreneur doesn't wait around for everyone else to agree or get on board, they just get going and vow to prove anyone who doubts them wrong.
Difference from social entrepreneurship
Activist Entrepreneurship stands in stark contrast to the recent trend of bland "social entrepreneurship", in which people merely decorate an otherwise typical for-profit company with some nominal pro-social goal.
The fundamental failure of these unambitious enterprises is that they don't even try to address the core systems and power dynamics of society, which is the source of all real leverage over important problems.
Difference from normal entrepreneurship
This is obvious, since in a normal for-profit startup the entrepreneur must retain and centralize ownership and control in order to capture significant profits for themselves.
An Activist Entrepreneur gives up some portion of their ownership and control, although not necessarily all of it, in order to transform the way the economy and society is organized.
Difference from normal activism
Activist Entrepreneurship also stands in contrast to normal activism, whether in the political or social spheres. Activism changes society indirectly by changing many people's beliefs and behaviors diffusely. For activism to succeed it must necessarily gather some critical mass of changed opinions or votes, since both politics and culture are the result of electoral consensus or broad trends. Activism tries to change the minds of enough people that some other group of people who actually have power, say elected officials or executives of companies, change their behavior in order to avoid being voted out or criticized.
Activist Entrepreneurship instead tries to harness the self-interest of those it seeks to empower, by creating an organization that directly and immediately benefits them in the same way any startup creates product-market fit.
To be clear, normal political and social activism is essential and positive! Activist Entrepreneurship isn't intended to denigrate or replace it, but to complement it by making change in ways normal activism isn't suited to.