Andy Keller on Creating a Benefit Corporation
In this interview Andy discusses the intricacies of creating a benefit corporation.
A benefit corporation is unlike a nonprofit due to two critical factors.
Benefit corporations aim to make a profit.
Benefit corporations are not tax exempt.
Despite the fact that benefit corporations do not operate like a nonprofit, they are still a great opportunity for running a business with purpose. Andy Keller demonstrates that you can change the world without being a nonprofit through his company, ChicoBag. The first step to starting any purposeful business is finding your passion. For Andy, his passion was eliminating single use waste from landfills and oceans. After seeing hundreds of thousands of bags blowing around, he decided to make a change and found ChicoBag, a reusable shopping bag company that aims to eliminate plastic shopping bags littering the earth. His goal is to leave the earth better than he found it. However, it isn't common that you'll get it right on the first time. Andy's ChicoBag had a 40% defect rate when they first started shipping out, and were wrapped in plastic during shipping. It took him about 9 months to start selling the bags, and worked multiple jobs to support himself during the process of establishing his company. Now he has been in business for 14 years, and has won awards for being in the top 10% of the world's earth-changing corporations.