Will be watching how this pans out with great interest!

I want to nominate Dave McClure but wait…he is on the other side now

Cheers,
Raj

I am co-founder of a site called The Layoff Support Network. The LSN is basically a Social Website for people that have been laid off. It was designed to fill a need that was not being met by any other resource. It addresses issues that are faced when a person looses his job. It’s not a job hunting site, it’s for “layoff survival”. All those ugly little things you don’t want to think about until you have to.

The site is totally non-commercial, not even Google ads. There is nothing on the site to distract the user from accessing the resources. My partner and I both were programmers for 25+ years and there are some small innovations in the architecture, but nothing the media would report on. We do have a section called “Rescue” where people can either ask for help or offer help. Kind of a “matchmaking service”.

So, will 600,000 newly unemployed people each month for the past three months, why have you not heard of us? We just don’t meet the coolness factor. Plus we are two very low profile guys. We also were laid off half way through the project, and fund the entire thing with out own limited resources.

I do applaud your efforts and think you are on the right track. But why not have a category for the not-so-obviously cool efforts that are directly helping many people?

If you are reading this and are unemployed, check us out at http://www.layo...portnetwork.com
maybe we can help you.

Warmest Regards,

Craig Brown

1) Founders Fund awards $25k to TechFellow winners (= “grant”)
2) they in turn, direct the $25k to the startup of their choice, and receive equity for that money (= “investment”)
3) FF then matches with another $25k to that startup (= “investment”), and also gets an option to invest up to $250k at a future financing round.

so we are doing both. sorry if a little confusing, however we think the structure provides benefits to all 3 parties. however it’s our first iteration, and I’m sure we’ll learn some interesting things along the way, and adjust as needed in the future.

Esther has pretty much been active her while life on a number of intl & social entrepreneurship issues.

Joi’s full-time job (one of them anyway is running Creative Commons, which itself is a vehicle for enabling access & fair use to intellectual property by a large audience. and Joi is also incredibly involved in helping shape business, tech, and social policy in Japan.

I could go on further: Tim O’Reilly & John Battelle are outspoken advocates & visionaries for using technology for civic good & advancement. Michael Arrington has taken strong public stances on his blog in issues like gay rights & marriage, and our own Sean Parker spends much of his time with the Causes team (and Facebook app), which enables people to educate & evangelize social missions by using Facebook.

we are very inspired by the work done by our nominating committee both in the for-profit and non-profit sector. they absolutely rock the house.