The startup incubation scene is seeing a meaningful shift, with new models emerging to prioritize social impact. Charity Entrepreneurship (CE), the inventor of one of these new models, stands out with its unique approach: launching high-impact ventures committed to generating both profit and positive change. What’s distinctive about CE is its core principle: portfolio companies pledge 50% of their exit value to effective charities, creating an engine for doing good.
CE’s incubation program ensures that startups’ financial success directly supports further philanthropic work, creating an ongoing cycle of giving. This commitment sets CE apart from traditional incubators, which typically prioritize maximizing financial returns for investors and founders.
A new equation: Profit with purpose
CE’s model is built on the ‘effective altruism’ concept, emphasizing evidence-based strategies and cost-effective solutions. The incubator offers a unique opportunity for entrepreneurs to develop valuable skills, advance their careers, and achieve significant social impact.
I had the opportunity to attend CE’s demo day and witness firsthand a range of compelling ventures – from AI solutions for chronic disease and healthcare fraud to platforms for finding technical talent and automating environmental assessments.
What I saw and heard made me sure of one thing: This approach clearly has enormous potential.
Prominent changemakers from the first cohort
The first group of startups from Charity Entrepreneurship shows a diverse mix of innovative ventures, all focused on using technology and AI to tackle important challenges. Here are some of the noteworthy initiatives that caught my interest:
Bluestamp Health
Fighting healthcare fraud and waste with AI
Bluestamp Health is tackling the issue of fraud, waste, and abuse in the U.S. healthcare system by developing an AI co-pilot for health insurers. Their solution aims to help insurers understand risky claims, prioritize investigations, and automate processes.
Bluestamp Health points out that U.S. insurers lose over $145 billion each year to fraud, waste, and abuse, even though they spend over $10 billion on prevention tools, and that investigators often use more than 20 different tools. Bluestamp’s AI is designed to “think like an investigator, speak like a human & learns like a system”.
Bluestamp Health plans to expand its solution beyond insurers to include doctors and patients, with the long-term goal of offering “verification-as-a-service” for U.S. healthcare.
Entrova
Connecting global companies with engineering talent
Entrova is addressing the shortage of engineering talent worldwide by building an AI-powered platform to connect companies with highly skilled engineers in emerging markets. Their goal is to simplify the hiring process, lower costs, and reduce employee turnover by providing a complete solution for talent matching, onboarding, and payroll.
Entrova’s platform uses LLM-powered matching to connect companies with the top 8% of AI and technology talent and uses AI agents to automate operations. The global hiring and payroll market is substantial, estimated at $1.8 trillion, with a 30% annual increase in AI and engineering talent demand.
Genesis Systems
AI-powered care for chronic health conditions
Genesis Systems is working to solve chronic diseases by using AI to analyze real-world data, with a mission to provide AI-powered care for these conditions. The company points out that current treatments for chronic disease often focus on symptoms rather than the underlying causes, which leads to long wait times, high medical costs, and a disjointed healthcare system that struggles to keep up with new AI technologies.
Genesis is developing an intelligent health agent to provide continuous, personalized care outside traditional clinics. This agent will collect health data, analyze it using AI, and offer actionable insights. Initially, they are targeting chronic skin conditions, a $75B market (within the larger $4.5T market for all diseases), citing the high costs of specialists, frequent misdiagnoses (50%), and the fact that these conditions are data-rich and often preventable.
Genesis uses a dual-revenue model: Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) for 85M patients with chronic skin conditions and Business-to-Health Plans (B2B) targeting $22B in annual spending.
DoneThat
Making work visible
DoneThat offers a platform designed to make work visible, allowing individuals to track and showcase their activities to gain insights into productivity and performance. In essence, DoneThat helps users understand where their time is going and what they’re accomplishing. The application is designed to be cross-platform, available on Mac, Windows, and Linux operating systems, as well as accessible through the web. This broad compatibility streamlines the integration of DoneThat into existing workflows, regardless of preferred device or operating system.
DoneThat has achieved a positive gross margin from a business standpoint, indicating that their core business operations are profitable. This is a significant milestone for an early-stage startup, suggesting they have established a viable business model. In terms of partnerships and user traction, DoneThat has secured one live design partnership, demonstrating that they are collaborating with other organizations in their development process. Additionally, they have four pilots in the pipeline, suggesting active engagement with potential customers to refine their product further and explore its application in different settings.
PlanningPilot
Accelerating planning approvals with AI
PlanningPilot is using AI to speed up planning approvals for property developers. The company is tackling the problem that 93% of developers consider delays in planning permission a major issue, and obtaining approval can take over 18 months. Their solution reduces the time and expense of obtaining approvals by automating the complex documentation process.
The UK market for planning consulting is estimated to be worth over £2B. PlanningPilot’s approach differs from traditional consultants in three ways: speed (they take hours, consultants take months), cost (they are 50% cheaper), and accuracy. Also note that the team brings together 13 years of expertise.
Volitor
AI co-pilot for financial analysis
Volitor provides an AI co-pilot for financial professionals, assisting with fundamental and financial analysis. The platform ensures factual outputs and protects data privacy.
Volitor is tackling the issue that investors and analysts are often reluctant to use AI tools due to concerns about data privacy and the reliability of AI-generated information. Volitor guarantees factual responses using sources like SEC filings and company call transcripts, with outputs that directly reference these sources. They also encrypt user data to ensure privacy.
Volitor’s founders note that AI agent capabilities are doubling every four months, suggesting that AI could handle most investment and business analysis within ten years. The company has confirmed the market need through user interviews and launched an MVP, building a waitlist of financial analysts.
