André Eikmeier is the founder of Good Empire, after success launching and scaling the online wine company Vinomofo, André is now doubling down on impact.
The team’s mission is to gather, unite and empower 100 million people and 100,000 organisations, and they’re moving fast.
What does your business do, and who are your customers?
Good Empire is a next generation Impact Engagement Platform that challenges us to level up for people and planet.
More than just a software tool, we’re building a marketplace – a movement of aligned individuals, organisations, and impact projects and their beneficiaries.
For organisations, it’s a powerful SaaS platform to help companies engage their people to amplify their social and environmental impact.
For individuals, it’s a personal impact app that brings all of your good together:
- Set personal impact goals aligned with the SDGs and connect with projects you care about in the world
- Take action in global and local impact challenges, and see the impact you’re having in real time
- Capture and share through your socials, challenging your friends to join you, and watch your ripple grow as you inspire others to action, and level up for people and planet
For NGOs, charities, nonprofits – anyone with a project that effectively contributes to one of the Impact Goals aligned with the SDGs, the Good Empire platform can open up a whole new world of engagement, advocacy and fundraising.
What’s your mission?
Gather, unite and empower 100 million people and 100,000 organisations to fund and support 1000 projects across 17 impact goals by 2030 to help save the f**king world.
- 1 billion trees planted
- 1 billion tonnes of CO2 saved
- 1 million women and girls empowered
- 1 million people freed from hunger…
And 11 more goals, all aligned with each of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
What does it mean to you, to be a ‘social enterprise’?
It is to be a business with a core offering that is good for people and planet.
Can you scale a mission? Are there challenges around growing your business, while also staying committed to your impact thesis?
Of course you can! I think the goal for a social enterprise should be to have a sustainable business model that is 100% aligned with your impact goals. For us, orgs pay a subscription per user (like Trello, Slack or Canva, but for impact engagement). And the app is free for individuals. So the same drivers of revenue growth = drivers of impact growth = more users!
But you do have to set your impact metrics at the top of your core business metrics/OKRs/KPIs. Revenue and profitability should be serving growth, which serves impact.
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How have you seen investor sentiment change over the past 5 years, when it comes to recognising the value (or cost) of being mission-led?
It feels like it’s gone up the list of priorities 10-fold, even in the past two years. Not only is it a mandate for investors, it’s also a market opportunity.
Was there a business (either local or globally) that influenced the development of your organisation?
Yes, we worked closely with global gamification leaders The Octalysis Group (Tesla, Lego, Ideo, Amazon) to design a gamified system of engagement and tracking that has the potential to be the catalyst, the measure, and the reward for all things impact.
We wanted to create a profoundly connecting and impactful experience, optimise engagement at the point of commitment to an impact project, connection with the cause and the beneficiaries, and validation of the user’s contribution and the impact they’ve helped make.
What’s in store for your business in 2022?
We’ve just launched our product for orgs, and that’s seeing really good early traction, so this year is largely focused on getting to 500 organisations and our first 100,000 users. Building up the dev team, developing the app and the web platform, and cranking up our marketing. That’s the plan!