Meet the companies attending this year's Dublin Tech Summit...
Name of company: Tuk Tuk Cartel
Names of founders: Alain Buffing (main founder) Nanning Jacobs, Ramon Dijkstra, Jessica Heller (co-founders)
Tell us about your company...
At Tuk Tuk Cartel, we’re establishing a new kind of NGO. Through adventurous volunteer projects and a community built around generous world-changers, who focus on creativity and entrepreneurship, rather than pity and poverty-porn, we're reinventing the non-profit wheel on a global scale.
Pitch us what you do, in one line...
Our mission is to create a global community that supports projects in developing countries which focus on education, innovation and sustainability.
What makes your company unique?
Our vision is a more interconnected community where volunteers, corporates and beneficiaries alike feel empowered not only by our projects, but by the things they learn and the relationships they build during a unique experience together.
Why are you coming to Dublin Tech Summit?
So far we have received over 275K worth of Technology and Consultancy from companies like Google, Slack, HubSpot, Salesforce, Causevox, Box, TicketTailor, Adobe, and Microsoft. The rapid advancement of tech allows us to operate in a virtual environment and thus keeping operating costs to a minimum by embracing those technology solutions in the cloud. Our goal at DTS is to learn from other startups and see how they innovate and stay ahead of the curve.
What advice would you give to an early-stage startup?
Be bold.
Looking back, what advice would you give to yourselves starting out?
Advice I would give to my younger self is, "Start your project and engage others while doing so”. With my previous ideas, I was always by myself and did not engage with others in my network, nor did I actively asked friends to help or hop on-board for fear of having to share the success.
With Tuk Tuk Cartel, we grew from a one-man band to a three-person operation in a month, and from there we went to ten in three months. It’s now six months since we started the NGO and we have a team of twenty, next to an active community of more than a thousand! All the success we have gained in those six months, from fundraising projects, to flying out 880 Toy Boxes to Kenya and sending 1,500 winter coats to Syria, couldn’t have be done without the help of our internal team and having the support of an active tribe of partners.
Chris Hadfield, who was the first Canadian to walk in space famously said “Ultimately, leadership is not about glorious crowning acts. It's about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it, especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter. It is about laying the groundwork for others' success, and then standing back and letting them shine.” I couldn’t agree more.
What are your plans for the next 12 months?
At the moment we are expanding our community in three fold, via the following ways:
1) Developing, Innovate and Educational projects in Kenya, Ghana, Colombia and South Africa, like building the first Sustainable School in Kenya, East Africa and setting up computer labs in Ghana, West Africa.
2) Partnering with corporates and startup’s who want to support us and our projects by donating their: time, product or funds. Some of our current partners include Salesforce, HubSpot, Google, Slack, Microsoft, KLM, Lollapalooza and Binbao.
3) A strong crowd funding platform where volunteers are motivated to be entrepreneurial and creative with fundraising. Initiatives that are now taking place include a ‘Charity Run during the Pyongyang Marathon’ in North Korea, a ‘Stand-Up for Charity Night’ in Amsterdam, and a ‘Tattoo for Charity Event’ in Dublin.
What is the most exciting thing in tech right now?
At the moment we are using the power of social, mobile, cloud, and analytics to become a connected nonprofit. This has meant that we can stay more lean as an organization while gaining better results than some of other NGO’s who stick to the traditional way of operation. Through systems like Salesforce, Google, HubSpot, Google and Slack we have a single, unified view of every interaction with our supporters, members, funders, volunteers, and affiliates. Since we rely heavily on our tribe, we have received lots of benefits from the digital community we’ve built and that lets us engage and strengthen our relationships through collaboration, which results in lifelong relationships and secures the support we need.
Why does Dublin Tech Summit matter?
During DTS a global force of leaders in innovation, technology and business will come together to shape the future of global trends and technologies. It is our goal to be part of this force, due to innovative projects in technology and sustainable projects. For this reason we are honored to have been selected for the StartUp100 program during DTS as it will give us the opportunity to showcase our NGO and engage to more than 10,000 visitors and 500+ investors, which will hopefully lead to meet potential partners, funders, volunteers and followers for the years to come.
Tell us something that we need to know...
Even in today’s world with all these unlimited possibilities, there are still 50,000,000+ children who don't get to attend primary school.
