Welcome to our very first entry in our Social Enterprise Stories series. Every week for the next twelve weeks, we’ll highlight a different social entrepreneur to learn more about how they use their social enterprise to create a positive social or environmental impact right here in Connecticut.[/lead]

[lead]This week, we interviewed Leslie Krumholz, Co-Founder of Good Streets. Good Streets is an online review site that allows consumers and businesses to open a dialogue that allows for honest feedback and trouble-shooting before reviews of the businesses are posted.

Why are you operating in Connecticut?

My partner, Josh Lipschutz and I are CT residents. I have lived in the state since 1992 and Josh has lived here since 2005. We both are proud CT residents and want to do what we can to make our state the best in the nation by improving our local economies and by creating more jobs!

Why did you decide to start a Social Enterprise?

Throughout my career, I have gotten the most satisfaction from working with others to address community issues. Because of problems that I saw in my local community, I started and ran two non-profits: a progressive preschool and an educational foundation. I have held other non-profit positions as well and I have seen first-hand that change does come when people come together.

Good Streets is my effort to respond again to an issue that is important to me and to try to fix it – The work that non profits do is very important but I don’t want to be dependent on philanthropy to make an impact this time around. I want to use market forces to do social good.

What is the community you’re trying to have an impact in?

Not only do I want to help local communities become stronger economically, my concern is also about the impact technology is having on our relationships in the marketplace and in our communities. I believe by that providing an online experience, that values accountability and transparency at its core we can hold true to old fashioned values of trust and the importance of real relationships while strengthening our local economies and helping our local businesses thrive.

How do you/will you achieve that impact?

With advances in technology, consumers have enormous power as influencers. Their ability to share opinions, complaints, compliments and other forms of feedback socially about businesses in any town or city should come with some accountability. This social feedback can have a lasting effect on Main Street businesses and can live on the web indefinitely.

There are two sides to every story and present review systems fail to acknowledge this. Many business owners are left vulnerable and voiceless and consumers often get inaccurate information. Our process helps improve consumer and business relationships and strengthen the businesses that make up a community.

To help strengthen our local economies, we encourage “buying locally” and “sharing locally.” We are an online review site that has created a feedback loop between businesses and consumers to provide more accurate reviews and to build local relationships. With honest feedback businesses can provide better customer service and products, bolster their online presence and build real customer loyalty; and, consumers will get more accurate information when making their purchasing decisions. When businesses are successful communities thrive and everyone benefits.

What is also really important is that we value our users as customers not products. Monetizing user data is not part of our business model. GoodStreets is built using Privacy by Design, a set of privacy principles that have been adopted by the international community to ensure that privacy is being built into a website’s DNA. We’ve built a GoodStreets “Privacy Center” to inform and educate users about consumer privacy. We believe it’s really important to get educated about the use of consumer data in the marketplace, and we’ve taken this very seriously. We hope to be a good resource for people as we expand this vision.

Additionally, we hold our users to the same standard of behavior that we expect in our real life relationships. In other words – don’t say anything online to a person that you wouldn’t say to their face. Our intention is to build a community of good people who value honest dialogue. We believe it’s okay to set and enforce community standards online.

How do you balance purpose and profit?

That’s easy for us. From the beginning, Josh and I have been a great team because “I want to do good and he wants to do well”. We believe that GoodStreets has great potential to scale while at the same time we intend to have a real social impact. We have created a sustainable business model that sells business member subscriptions in return for services and features that are valuable to our paying customers. We need consumers on the site as well, but when we say it is free for them to use it, we actually mean it! When we are successful, we will be making a profit, and helping our local economies prosper through an online community that values accountability and transparency at its core.

What have been your biggest challenges thus far?

Our biggest challenge has been getting our site to market. Although we beta tested a MVP [Editor’s note – MVP refers to a “minimum viable product“] for a year, once we decided what we needed to do, we had to start all over again and build the site from scratch. We have a lot of businesses that are interested in joining us but we don’t want to put the site out there until we feel confident that it is working well enough. There is this constant challenge of finding the right balance between just “going for it” and the old adage, “slow and steady wins the race”!

What is the most rewarding thing to you about operating a social enterprise?

Without question, it has been meeting other people who believe in the importance of social enterprise. When I first started on this journey, I didn’t know anyone in the startup community. Slowly I began attending some events, especially once CT Next started up. But it wasn’t until I met the people at reSET that I felt like I had found a real community of people that I could relate to. It’s great being among other people who are mission driven and have passion beyond the sole purpose of making a profit –but who also understand, that for good or for bad, it’s profit that can help achieve that impact. I have made some great friends in the social enterprise community and the support that we get from each other is what keeps me going.

Why do you want to incorporate as a benefit corporation?

I believe so strongly that the Benefit Corporation legislation is crucial. Giving legal status to corporations that want to operate both on purpose and profit is very validating for founders. And if founders truly believe their business should have a social impact then they should also hold themselves to the requirements of a legitimate legal structure, otherwise it’s too easy to lose site of the mission. For me personally, forming as a Benefit Corporation would add another level of accountability for GoodStreets.

We need to “walk the walk, not just talk the talk”. It’s really easy to say you want to have an impact but to actually have to show progress and figure out how to measure that impact would be a challenging pleasure. If I can prove that I actually have made a difference, then that would be the most satisfying outcome of all.