I had the privilege to attend TWiST, an online-broadcasted show hosted by founder of Mahalo.com and prominent angel investor, Jason Calacanis.  TWiST, or This Week in Start-Ups, provides an overview on the news related to start-ups and a dialogue with an established entrepreneur or venture funder.  This week’s episode had Jason inviting George Naspo, CEO of IKANO Communications, and their dialogue offered much in the way of insights that people can take when starting their social enterprises.

Here are some key points that will be of benefit to your social enterprise:

1.  Be Flexible, and Test. When a caller had questions about his website, Jason brought up this valuable point.  Social entrepreneurs in the web space would do well to pay attention to this.  First, you can’t get attached to any one design.  Leave your ego at the door.  What matters is functionality and the user experience.  To that end, Jason brought up the notion of listening labs.  A listening lab is when you hire someone to go through your site, and all the while they are commenting verbally on what they see:  their likes, their dislikes, the interface, functionality, etc.  A user sitting costs about $20, and you are getting incredibly valuable feedback on what works and doesn’t on your site.

Related spinoff idea from Auren:  When you’re getting funding, be sure to budget for multiple iterations of your site.  The first version will NOT be as good as it can be, and you’re going to want to test it multiple times to maximize your conversions (signing up for your email list/Twitter, inviting their friends, making a purchase/donation).

Jason also brought up the notions of A/B testing and multivariate testing.  If these words scare you away, learn to feel the fear and do it anyway.  Testing is simply a must to maximize the value of your web property.

2)  Testimonials/Word of Mouth Drives Your Business:  Jason received a call from a person who’s business is Mac support.  Jason’s advice?  Offer some of your services for free, but on condition that the user let’s you Livestream it or make a YouTube video.  Offer services free to get testimonials you can put on your site.  Offer services for free if people will Tweet about it.  The future of business is social.  Even credit card purchases will soon be publicly shown (with Blippy, topic of a forthcoming post).  In this new economy, you need your consumers/constituents taking actions and making it public.  Orient your marketing strategy around maximizing that word of mouth.

3) Your People are Everything:  When George Naspo looks to buy a company (and he’s  bought several), he’s looking for a solid customer base, solid earnings/revenue from the past 2 years, and then – the people.  In his words, “the people are who you’re really buying” when you buy a business.  In Jason’s words, what’s important is having people who are entrepreneurial by nature.  Bringing ideas to the table.  You want people in your company creating ideas and content.  So much value in that.

4) Scale is What Business is About.  Great, so you’ve set up a tutoring program in one city in Brazil.  I applaud you.  Now, can you do it in 50?  Naspo isn’t a social entrepreneur; his focus is the bottom line.  That said, this insight he had was brilliant and is probably worth reading this article just for this one line:  You spend the same amount of time on your business if it’s making $1 million or $100 million. Think about that from the perspective of social entrepreneurship.  You’re spending the same amount of time whether you’re doing good for 100 people or 10,000.  Maximize the good you can do by ensuring that your business is scalable, and then working to bring that scale to bear.

5) Take the Gladiator Challenge.  Now I don’t know about this one personally, because I believe in love, and kindness, and peace (the shoes I’m wearing today are covered in peace signs).  But Jason Calacanis’s prescription for the aspiring entrepreneur?  Watch the fight-scenes from Gladiator every day for a week.  Not the entire movie – just the fight scenes.  It was funny when he said it, but I get the feeling he’s actually dead serious.  In his view, you’ve got to be ready to fight.  You’ve got to be a warrior in fighting for your business.  And you know what?  He’s right.  The status quo is fine with rural villages in abject poverty.  With children struggling through violence and sickness in slums and favelas.  If you’re a social entrepreneur, you’d better be fighting for your cause (fighting with love).  If you must, take the Gladiator Challenge (warning: violent).

6) Never lock yourself into a contract.  This is valuable advice that is painful not to heed.  Please don’t overlook this.  If a company is trying to lock you into a 2 year service agreement, in Jason’s opinion, they don’t trust the value they offer.  A company worth your time will give you options to opt-out.  Now – when the time comes – you’ll do what you have to do.  But keep this maxim in your back pocket, because as an entrepreneur you need to be flexible to make the decisions for your social enterprise as new challenges arise.  And if you’re locked into a contract, you can’t be flexible.

You can check out TWiST’s weekly broadcasts here: http://thisweekinstartups.com/

Jason’s Twitter account here: http://twitter.com/Jason

And his Open Angel Forum here (deadline to submit your LA pitch is December 23rd): http://openangelforum.com/

As always, I appreciate your comments and feedback on the site!  My tone is personal, but the insights I write about I hope to be valuable.  My utmost goal is to help social entrepreneurs learn lessons and insights that can lead them to success.  So please let me know how you think the tone affects the conveying of the messages I truly hope can be heard.  Thank you, and you can find me on Twitter at @socentex.