Currently in Britain, the most amount of R&D is spent on pharmaceuticals. However, advances in cognitive neuroscience are pushing research into less conventional avenues and more towards experimentation with new technologies. As a consequence, the global world is becoming less focused on pharmaceuticals and moving more towards neuro-enhancement, biohacking, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), low level laser therapy (LLLT) and nanotechnology. In fact, President Obama has said that in the next decade, treatment with pharmaceuticals will be replaced by nanotechnology and tDCS in the United States. Although universities such as Oxford and institutions such as the National Institute for Health Care Excellence have done research into these areas, the startups that are being launched with these technologies are essentially nil in the U.K., partly due to the lack of research funding and also because the U.K. is dominated by investments into the pharmaceutical sector and not towards these new technologies.

In fact, compared to the rest of the world, South Korea has spent the equivalent of 4.1pc of GDP on developing new technology and products, Japan 3.4pc, Germany 2.9pc, the U.S. 2.7pc, France 2.2pc whilst the EU average was a mere 1.9pc according to the latest OECD data from 2014-2015. In every sector, China has been driving growth in IP by launching the most amount of patents, up 4.5% from 2013 to 2014, having launched 2.68 million patents in 2014 alone. China was followed by the U.S. (578,802), Japan (325,989), and the Republic of Korea (210,292).
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One continuing trend I have noticed in regards to London's startups is that there is an air of ambivalence about intellectual property (IP) and patent generation and many startups do not consider launching patents as a necessary part of their evolution and scaling up potential.

In the last five years, more funds towards research have been spent on IT and the tech sector, mainly due to the policies of PM David Cameron; however, Britain has been behind the trend in other sectors, mainly due to a lack of R&D funding. I recently read an article by Professor Alex Edmans at London Business School recently in which he writes that British firms used to be leaders in the chemical, electronics and electrical engineering industries, but a lack of investment in R&D thirty years ago became a reason why there are currently only two hi-tech firms in the FTSE 100.

It has been an emotional week for many Brits, Europeans and residents of the U.K. during the Referendum last week on June 23rd. The dialogue by the Brexit- Leave the E.U. camp had been to consistently distort truth into rhetoric to outright lies and falsehoods that follow in the tradition of the worst American reality television series. That dialogue soon devolved into racism, bigotry and slander in the anti-immigration debate; hate-speech started popping up in discussion groups and comments under all the major news circulations in alliance with the Brexit camp; an extreme kind of nationalism, something that was eerily reminiscent of the Hitler era.
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However, despite that all the dialogue had been about British sovereignty, criticisms about the E.U., funding for the NHS, and numerous other social issues, what politicians failed to tell the public was that Great Britain was next in line to potentially hold a pivotal position as one of the largest economies in the world.

Despite being an island roughly 4x the size of South Korea, the U.K. has always been considered the financial capital of Europe, a position that attracted the 2nd largest economy in the world: China.
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It has been debated that the 21st century will belong to China, and that the 2nd largest economy in the world will soon eclipse the United States. President Clinton saw the opportunity in China, and repaired much of the U.S.-China foreign policy during his Presidency and welcomed China with open arms in the 1990s. As the number 2 holder of U.S. debt, China's influence into the United States started becoming more ubiquitous. On the other side of the Atlantic, Margaret Thatcher repaired much of the row between Britain and the United States as Prime Minister in the 1980s, it wasn't until David Cameron became Prime Minister that he too, saw that Britain's secured position into the next century would be to embrace the East; and with China, under his leadership, lead plans to internationalise the yuan (RMB) and in October, plans to launch the China International Payment Service (CIPS) in London, the gateway to the European market and the financial capital of Europe.

 
Just as Britain has been looking beyond Europe for its future GDP, the east too, had been eyeing the European market and with China's ambitions to internationalise the yuan, it has been said by many economists that it could topple the US dollar from its dominant position as reserve currency, a global safe haven. 
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Many U.S. tech companies, including Google and Apple have made numerous mistakes in handling their relationship with Chinese authorities and attempting to enter their market. Recently, China has banned the Apple's iBook store and iTunes store, effectively shutting down one of their largest growing revenues and the Beijing patent office accused Apple of copying another Chinese company's patents, effectively stopping the sale of their products. All this despite Apple having just recently invested $1 billion into China's Didi Chuxing as a peace offering. Since Apple's CEO Tim Cook had announced that in the near future, more than half of its revenue will come from China, it has given the latter the upper hand in a bargaining style that most Americans are not familiar nor have the patience to deal with. Thus far, U.S tech companies have made too many mistakes in their dealings with China to possibly successfully enter the market, potentially threatening their place on the global economic stage. These are mistakes that David Cameron set out not to make, and he and George Osborne began a rigorous campaign to woo China into the U.K., and thus reciprocation of extending the reach of British companies into the much coveted China market.

However, despite China's growing presence both on the economic and technological fronts, China is not without its long history of problems and its history of human rights abuses, animal cruelty, human trafficking, illegal organ harvesting and tyrannical political regime could cause great ethical concern in the New World Order. But who better than to guide and influence China into the next century than Great Britain? Although the British have been criticised for its long history of imperialism at the turn of the century, citizens of Hong Kong have thrived under British rule and many citizens have expressed widespread sentiment that they wished Hong Kong hadn't been handed back to China in 1997. The British set up a series of laws that protected them with a Bill of Rights in the Sino-British Joint Declaration that gave Hong Kong citizens civil liberties.
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Whilst U.S. tech companies have found China a beast it cannot tame, the U.K. had every advantage as the financial capital of Europe. David Cameron and George Osborne's vision of Great Britain was to make it the centre of the global financial world and also, the technology start-up capital moving beyond the scope of Silicon Valley; in a new alliance with China; bringing more jobs to Britain, to replace the old generation of manufacturers with a new generation of technological innovators. However, now Brexit threatens to topple the U.K. into isolation towards relative obscurity; to remove its current position as a the European financial capital. Although much of the Brexit debate was about independence and not being pulled down by E.U. regulations and rules, in reality, the E.U. was the army Britain needed, and a break away has weakened Britain's position into entry in the Eastern markets. Now, as Brexit looms, Germany and France will begin the process of potentially taking Britain's position as the financial capital of Europe. It isn't the E.U. that is in threat of becoming dismantled, it is the U.K.

The Great Britain I know is also where some of the most hardworking people reside, but not at the cost of losing time with their families. It is where philanthropy is more highly regarded than egotism and selfishness; where the sense of community exists in both small villages and big cities. Although I have American citizenship, I have always felt that England was my metaphorical homeland. I'll never forget the first time I set foot in London in 2003 to do my Masters degree, I felt something magnetic, a different kind of energy than I was used to. From the city to the cobblestoned streets to the rolling hillsides and the tempestuous weather, it was where I felt I was home; that too is the feeling of many immigrants when they come to Britain, it's a kind of belief in justice and fairness in the law that so many other nations have simply given away.
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The Great Britain I know is one that is unified; one of the pivotal nations that began the E.U., a unification of Europe to move away from decades of war, prejudice and hate. Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, a British political scientist, coined the term "League of Nations" in 1914 and drafted a scheme for its organisation to prevent future wars after WWI. After WWII, european integration was seen as an antidote to the extreme nationalism which had devastated the continent, and the European Union was borne. The very kind of extreme nationalism that MPs Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage are now championing.
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The pro-Brexit Leave camp have turned their back on decades of history. They have manipulated and lied to the British people about their intentions and preyed upon the fears and prejudices of every demographic.Their campaign was never about "British Independence"; it was about sabotaging Britain's place in history in the next century for a little bit of personal glory. The E.U. was never the tyrannical despot organisation that Great Britain needed to break away from; rather the E.U., although not without its problems, has been the supporter of democracy during times of chaos. But it was more than that, Brexit also signified the end of era of peace; one that the popular and influential MP Jo Cox died for as she was assassinated whilst campaigning for the Remain camp.
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It has been said that people who forget history will soon repeat it. Thus far, 3.3 million people and growing have signed the petition for a 2nd EU Referendum.


​By Sierra Choi

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• 5. Team Morale and Focus: Over the first month – sit with each of the team member as they do their jobs and question them on what is working well and what is not. See who your champions are and focus your energy on them – they will grow under you. Focus on getting your ideal team in place quickly and set up as you wish – if you don’t do this straight away you will get caught up in the day-to-day and struggle to get hiring done. You need an experienced accountant in charge of producing your statements. If the one you have is jaded or being running bad accounts - replace.

Being an interim CFO, much is expected of you – you must quickly get a grasp on the figures, the finance team and the strategy and start adding value to the CEO. Outside of the above - as much time as possible should be spent with the CEO and other C-Suite privately to see where the finance team can help ease their pain. Your business instincts should then kick in to lead you to the major issues – then you really roll your sleeves up.


By John Rowland

John is currently in Nairobi, Kenya as interim CFO for Bridge International Academies

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I was listening to an interesting podcast on soundcloud last week from NextView ventures,  a Boston/ New York based fund that is focused on seed funding, on a segment featuring the co-founder of Dia & Co., Nadia Boujarwah, as she gave a very harrowing and detailed account of what it was like shopping as a plus sized woman.

Her account was one of essentially being treated like an outcast. In any brick-and-mortar shoppe, the models and window dressings all catered to thin figures, and the main stage of presentation was towards the same type; and to the top, away from all the flirty advertisements and seasonal marketing dalliances of colour, shapes and textures, was a section set aside by plain, unadorned, grey walls, into an isolated maid-like attic on the top of the building, where all the plus sized clothes were kept for people who didn't fit into smaller sizes.

This sort of journey for her was partly emotional; Ms. Bourjarwah has never been anything below a plus size all her life, and she has also never had a period when she wasn't interested in fashion. However, she realised that she was never the apparel market's primary customer nor focus demographic, despite the fact that the average U.S. size for women is actually a size 14 (UK size 18-20) and in fact, 67% of the women in the U.S. are above a size 14+ (UK size 18-20+). The rational side of her gave her the impetus to begin her journey to launch Dia&Co, an eCommerce subscription service, similar to BirchBox which focuses on beauty products, but for plus sized women to receive a monthly box of clothes and accessories to try on in the comfort of their own homes and then decide whether they would like to purchase the items or send back. 

Another company Eloquii, a fast-fashion eCommerce site for plus-sized ladies has also recently raised $15 million just this past April. The ready-to-wear trend seems to be that "conventional" sizes no longer apply to the women of America or elsewhere. US sizes 0-8 (UK size 4-12) are clearly in the minority when the average size of the American women is a size 14 (UK size 18-20) and the average size of the UK woman is a size 16 (US size 12). Debenhams was one of the first UK department stores to display size 16 mannequins in an effort to break away from standard size 10 (US size 4) models a few years ago.  However, the majority of the fashion industry still focuses on standard US sizes 0-10 with runway models averaging a US size 0 (UK size 4).

The history of ready-to-wear is an interesting one that launched due to an international conflict. The introduction of factory made clothes with standardised sizes began with the production of military uniforms in the War of 1812 between the UK and the US. However, during that time, the apparel market mainly catered to the upper classes; for women and men with means who could commission custom-made clothing and the rest of the population kept up-to-date by adding accessories, such as neck collars, ribbons and sashes to secondhand dresses.

The entire fashion industry was turned on its head by Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, when she moved away from the ornate dresses, corsets and petticoats of the era into more comfortable clothes that "liberated" women with androgynous styles and fabrics borrowed from traditional menswear by giving women the first skirtsuit in the early 1900s. Funded by the Wetheimer brothers, Chanel lead the U.S. ready-to-wear market after WWII, and the era of mail-order catalogues and factory made clothes started to take flight, with many designers following suit. 

In the mid-1990s, "fast-fashion", a business model developed by Zara radically changed the apparel industry via its utilisation of cheap labour in third world nations in an ever-continuing stream of weekly new inventory that could be easily disposed if unsold and many of the dominant retailers, including TopShop, H&M, The Gap, Banana Republic et al embraced that model for its short-term profits and quick return on investment. Their business model is one that is held up as a model study at top business schools, but also one which has gathered international criticism for its devastating effects on the environment and the millions of women and children it would exploit in the decades after. I have previously written about the challenges facing fast-fashion here. The post-1990s era would become the "sweat-shop" era in our apparel landscape. 

​Now what used to be mail-order catalogues in the early 1900s has become eCommerce for us today which curiously takes us to this next stage of evolution in ready-to-wear. Currently, most eCommerce companies are focused on getting rid of inventory through hard sales tactics, although many companies, such as the Gilt Groupe have discovered, women are not really persuaded to buy things via the aggressive psychological emailing campaigns of Sale! Sale! Sale! and that people prefer a customised shopping experience.

Dia&Co and Eloquii are two startups that focus on solving an aspect of the ready-to-wear in our current retail landscape by catering to a disenfranchised population that has been previously ignored in the previous eras of the thin physique. I think though the deep-seated problem of sizing remains unresolved, and has not been addressed by many eCommerce companies that exist today - in that although the larger sizing issues can be partly addressed by including those larger sizes in an eCommerce site, women and men tend to have different body shapes that do not all uniformly fit into a particular size in the first place. ​

Although the clothing and textile industry is fragmented and diverse, and the global apparel industry makes more than $1 trillion annually in revenue, with the entire apparel industry given a valuation of $3 trillion, it is clear that simply aggregating inventory is not a viable long-term strategy for the typical eCommerce startup focused on apparel and accessories. Instead, we need to look deeper into how we can solve the complex issues that surround the production line from start to finish that will concomitantly have a positive environmental, economic and sociological impact. And it might just mean that perhaps this is the beginning of the end of ready-to-wear as we know it. 


By Sierra Choi
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These days, when we think of companies, corporations, or even startups, we often think of technology companies. If we take a closer look at long term trends, currently, we are nearing the end of the Information Age and moving into the Diamond Age (a term borrowed from Neal Stephenson's book of a future world in which nanotechnology has infiltrated all aspects of life).
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One interesting long-term trend to note is that although we often think disruption happens very quickly, such as in the case of the mobile devices and the smartphone, often the technological advancements of disruption often take between 45-55 years in gestation before we see mass distribution within the population. For example, during the period of the Industrial Era when many companies were founded based on light, electricity, telecommunications, sound and printing such as GE, Xerox, Bell Labs and HP; however during this era, the initiation and development of computers, electronics, mobile phones and biomedicine were already in gestation, setting the stage for the next wave of companies which would become Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Sun Microsystems, Cisco et al.
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​First Wave: Dawn of the Industrial Age (1740-1890)
First oil well and refinery 1745
First automobile 1768
First locomotive 1784
First bicycle 1817

​Second Wave: Industrial Age: Light, Sound, Printing, Manufacturing (1890-1945)
Gestation: Computers, electronics, mobile phones, biomedicine
GE 1892
Xerox 1906
(Discovery of vitamins 1912)
Bell Labs 1925
HP 1939
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Third Wave: The Digital Age: Hardware and Software (1945-1990)
Gestation: 3D printing, Fiberoptics, electronic communication (email), GPS, holography, nanotechnology
Intel 1968
Microsoft 1975
Apple 1976
Sun Microsystems 1982
Cisco 1984
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Fourth Wave: The Information Age: Internet, Social Network and AR (1990-2040)
Gestation: Nanofactories/ molecular assemblers, Wireless Energy, Hover Cars, Molecular (DNA) computing
Google 1998
Facebook 2004
Twitter 2006
Magic Leap 2010
Meta 2013

Fifth Wave: The Diamond Age: Transportation, Energy and Nanotechnology (2040-2090?)
Hover cars
Wireless energy
Nanofactories/ molecular assemblers
Closing the recycling loop in waste
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Sixth Wave: The Space Age: Interplanetary travel (2090-2200?)
Return to the Silk Road era of commerce and trade between many nations
Interplanetary trade agreements with Kepler's habitable zone planets and beyond?

We are also curiously close to the end of the Information Era, and nearing the next Fifth Wave of companies in which the technology for hover cars, wireless energy, nanofactories have long been in gestation.
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Since the average lifespan of a contemporary mobile app company is around 3 years, it is sometimes difficult to look beyond short-term trends and population growth/ decline and look further out into the next 50 years and beyond. Nic Brisbourne wrote an interesting post recently regarding lessons for the startup ecosystems from the history of Silicon Valley in which he excerpts from Nicolas Colin's Brief History of the World (of Venture Capital).

In summary, Silicon Valley embraced military funding for nascent technologies and often funded startups based in research universities such as Stanford. Their goal was to reach out to prospective military customers and develop a prototype in Stanford's research laboratories:

This is actually often the opposite approach in many nations, such as in South Korea, in which when a nascent technology is developed by a researcher, often the company or technology gets usurped or absorbed into a larger corporation, and you never hear about the Founders again. Silicon Valley set an interesting precedent of letting many technologies exist in a state of gestation but develop in parallel with military technology. I think that is one of the many reasons why in the Third and Fourth Wave of companies respectively, in the Digital Age and the Information Age, we saw an explosion of small businesses focused on technology that would become part of the start-up ecosystem.
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There were many search engines before Google, but what Google did differently was the ability to track and individualise each user's search results. This sort of customisation allowed for more information to be known about user behaviour, something that didn't happen before the pre-Google era, and everyone's search results were the same.

Likewise, there already existed many social networks before Facebook, but Facebook was the first to utilise a tagging feature that allowed people to be visually identified- which culminated in their acquisition of the Israeli facial technology company face.com. If we carefully examine all the startups out there with viable IP- IP that the military wants, those are the companies that eventually move past the startup phase into the global corporation phase. As a bit of a tangent, former Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) director Regina Dugan has worked for Google, and just last month, now is a key executive at Facebook. In Silicon Valley, military spending co-exists with the startup ecosystem, and the United States has often been criticised due to its multi-trillion dollar defense fund, the largest in any single nation.
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Despite the social argument for whether this large defense fund has inevitably lead to a disproportionate society of economic inequality in the US, what makes the UK different from the US is that many UK-based startups are moving towards becoming independent from military resources and influence. Although London's DeepMind had been acquired by Google/Alphabet in 2014, two of the conditions set forth by CEO Demis Hassabis was that their technology not be used for military applications and that there would be a diverse Board of Ethics to guide their next steps. 

However, there is also a dark side to San Francisco as well. The criminal gangs, the homelessness, the growing, unchecked elitism of many communities were pervasively destroying what San Francisco and Silicon Valley used to be. Although San Francisco has always been a melting pot of immigrants, much of the sense of community has been eroded by a sense of elitism; of reverence towards people with Stanford and MIT engineering degrees to assert their wealth and privilege. "Glassholes" became a common way of describing Googlers who walked around wearing Google Glass with their sense of entitlement. How dare anyone study anything outside of engineering and how stupid was it for anyone to be different? became part of the commonly heard dialogue. San Francisco and Silicon Valley's philosophy changed from innovation to ultimately becoming about uniformity, and perhaps even propagating greed and the advent of paper billionaires. San Francisco wasn't what it used to be, when I was hanging out with videobloggers and future YouTube stars changing the landscape of journalism in 2005, nor when we were just hanging out at local pubs and restaurants where a lot of the initial dialogues about the beginning of iconic new companies began. Something permeated the landscape after 2005, and San Francisco was no longer that place where innovation happened; much of the dialogue became more about fame and money, jumping from one job to another that offered the most benefits and stock options, and people no longer cared about creating long term value- rather it became more about following the ranks of popular people in the media, the necessity to become a billionaire before the age of 30.

As progressive as the San Francisco/ Bay Area/ Silicon Valley was in terms of liberal views, the pervasive attitude of "entitlement" overshadowed its previous successors: the pioneers who made San Francisco the left capital of the U.S.; instead it became a place where people who thought that poor and depressed people deserved to be poor and depressed because they didn't work hard enough to overcome their circumstances. San Francisco was no longer the centre nor place of innovation, where people supported each other in the development of ideas. The mentality of SF became that the weak and underprivileged should die; no one supported the underdog with disruptive ideas anymore. People who didn't support the same politics should have their car vandalised. People who were depressed should commit suicide and jump off buildings. It's "might-makes-right", it's a "dog-eat-dog" world. People who were disadvantaged- whether in psychology or economics should be left to suffer. Recently one of the lowest paid employees at Yelp wrote an open letter crying out for help and she had been subject to online public humiliation and was later fired by the Yelp CEO, Jeremy Stoppelman for simply writing about her economic woes. The San Francisco Bay Area was no longer the same home of my childhood; the sense of good will that used to be part of the population no longer existed in the same concentration.
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Instead, that good will became replaced by a sense of entitlement, one that has been reiterated in popular Silicon Valley leaders; in the essays of Paul Graham, one of the founders of Y-Combinator, who has written that "economic inequality is good" a sentiment that is reminiscent of the "greed is good" mantra of the 1980s.

Paul Graham says that every city has a particular calling and that: "In Silicon Valley, no one is impressed if you inherited a billion dollars (whereas New Yorkers are)." I wonder though if Mr. Graham has ever spent time in Nob Hill, Pacific Heights or the Marina? Or perhaps even Atherton, CA? It appeared to me that San Francisco and Silicon Valley was just as obsessed with inherited wealth as anywhere else in the world, if not more so. However, I suppose being quarantined on Sand Hill Road, perhaps many people there would be even more impressed by self-made millionaires and billionaires, since the majority of the people in California with inherited wealth didn't dare traverse into Palo Alto anyway outside of the Stanford campus; however I think he unfairly paints New York City in a negative light when really many parts of the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley also have this pervasive view of something beyond elitism: hatred for their fellow humanity. Hatred for anyone who isn't an engineer working for unicorn companies.

Who really cares if a wounded U.S. veteran who did 4 tours in the Iraq War can no longer afford his house because his modest pension doesn't pay for the rising housing costs in SF? Who cares if many people are living in their cars or can't shower? They deserved to be homeless because they didn't study engineering and end up working for Google or Uber.

In my mind, the foremost question remained, How could a city that is home to the most number of American billionaires allow so much of their population to exist in poverty and homelessness?
Don't get me wrong. I love so many things about San Francisco, and the education I had received in the Bay Area. I could not have had a more liberal, experimental and oftentimes, surreal education. My high school wasn't anything extraordinary- it was an ordinary American public high school filled with primarily middle class and working class students. One extraordinary thing about my high school was that there were no bullies at my school. We were strangely, a group of very progressive students who were accepting of everyone's individuality- even the girl in my biology class who told us in class one day that she had an extra chromosome which made her seem "more masculine" as we were studying the chapter on genetics. In our minds, this was perfectly normal; in the sense that everyone was "similar but different." We embraced our individuality. We weren't all born to become engineers and doctors nor forced to think so. My history teacher was also the first to tell me, "History books don't always tell the truth. Books are re-written by the victors." It was something that would've never occurred to my 15-year-old self, to question authority, yet my education there instilled in me, that very value: To forever question authority.

However, when I walk around San Francisco, and see so much homelessness, crime and despair, I can't help but wonder, Where did we go wrong?
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So it was a surprise and pleasure to become acquainted with Doniece Sandoval, the Founder of LavaMe, one of the true pioneers of San Francisco.
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Doniece is a San Francisco based entrepreneur who had come up with innovative strategies to help the homeless population in novel and creative ways. Doniece is also, the type of person whom you can never forget. She makes a permanent mark on you, and you can't but help but become influenced by her optimism and positivity. I have previously written about LavaMae here.

Doniece grew up in Texas, and her father had worked on the War on Poverty progamme under President Johnson's administration. Her mother had also always been involved in charitable organisations. When you first talk to Doniece, you have a feeling that she is someone who is both young-at-heart and an old-soul; she is wise and all-seeing. She is the type of person whom you can go to with all your problems, and she will say, "OK. Let's solve this."

​So it's sort of a surprise when she tells me that she had always been self-conscious as a kid. She has always been tall and ethnically ambiguous looking, always aware of other people's perceptions and commentaries about her ethnicity (ie, Spanish/Native-American/Indian on her dad's side and French/Spanish on her mother's side).

One of the defining moments in her life was when her family had almost lost everything. Her father had been a risk-taker as an entrepreneur after his government service; however, like many families in California at the time of the real estate bubble, her family had fallen on hard times, and if it weren't for the help and financial intervention of her grandparents, Doniece tells me, they would've been homeless. So LavaMae is a startup that resonates closely with her heart. One of the powerful moments that she remembers is when she was taking a cab through the Tenderloin district in San Francisco, the cab driver turned to her and said,"Welcome to the Land of Broken Dreams."
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It was then then Doniece realised that she had to do something. She was just one person, but she had to do something. She remembers talking to a young homeless girl one day and she had told Doniece that she would never be "clean"; that so much of identity and opportunity was due to the fact that one was "clean and presentable". Later, Doniece saw in the paper that old Muni buses were up for donation, and suddenly, the many interconnecting pieces in her mind's eye fit together in which she came up with the idea to transform these old buses into mobile shower stations for the homeless.

I asked Doniece, "Do you think it’s ironic that San Francisco is home to the most number of American billionaires and unicorn (billion+ valuation) companies, yet the city is plagued by such a high percentage of homeless people?"

Doniece laughs, an ironic sort of laugh that is bittersweet. Her laughter is akin to a Shakespearian character in a play in which there is no distinction between tragedy and comedy. She pauses for a moment and then tells me diplomatically that, "the level of compassion in San Francisco has eroded; hatespeak and vitriol of the political process had taken over, personified by Donald Trump." However, Doniece tells me that although, "There is a strong voice of hatred and level of apathy present here, there's also a lot of compassion and large/ small acts of kindness on a daily basis. Our volunteers/supporters for example give tremendously of themselves in many ways. There are everyday heroes throughout this city; they, thankfully, keep the spirit of SF's patron saint alive and well."
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I have written previously that the rising cost of housing is actually the cause of many people to become homeless in many cities such as San Francisco and Seattle, and that many homeless people are actually women and children leaving abusive homes. I think because many of us only are aware of panhandlers on the street that we erroneously believe that that they are homeless due to being "lazy" or not being hardworking. Many homeless people also become homeless also due to being handicapped, are U.S. veterans and cannot live on their modest pensions, in addition to the majority of people who cannot live on minimum wage. It's not that the homeless are lazy, but that they have no other viable choices.

When you have a city with so many billionaires and multi-millionaires, $75K cannot afford you a living income for a family where the real estate was exploding into the millions for a simple 3-bedroom apartment.

Currently, Doniece is also furthering the goals of LavaMae with pilots of a new programme called, "Pop-Up Care Village" in which LavaMae will host quarterly services providing hygiene, development, veteran services, and free access to public defenders for people on the streets to get their lives back together.

"Homeless people often get citations, just for being on the street and being homeless," Doniece tells me. "When they acquire 23 citations, they can no longer be eligible to go to shelters or get a driver's license at the DMV. Our "Pop-Up Care" services will help them get access to a public defender that will remove all their citations so that they may get a clean slate to start a new life free from barriers."
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In our conversation, I was altogether awestruck by the anthology of Doniece's wisdom, compassion, empathy and business sense. What is the advice you would give to social entrepreneurs? I asked her.

​By Sierra Choi