Can This Sustainability Challenge Help Revive a Struggling City?
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Vacant storefronts in downtown San Francisco. Photo: Phil Pasquini/shutterstock
It’s a perennial question: Can technology solve society’s many challenges — from widespread mental health crises to climate disaster? Like many people, I’m skeptical of the tech sector’s confidence in its ability to swoop in and solve entrenched problems, but I couldn’t help catching some of the enthusiasm when I attended (virtually) several sessions held during Dreamforce, Salesforce’s annual conference.
Speakers during a session titled “Building Stronger, More Equitable Communities” included representatives of Salesforce, Deloitte, the World Economic Forum and the Chamber of Commerce, all partners in something called the Yes San Francisco, Urban Sustainability Challenge.
The challenge invited entrepreneurs to submit innovations “to reimagine and transform the city of San Francisco,” according to an announcement. In a video shown during the session, Jason Girzadas, chief executive officer of Deloitte US, described the challenge as “a call to action for social entrepreneurs and the like to leverage their talents to bring sustainability to San Francisco.”
The effort was initiated by Deloitte, the World Economic Forum and Salesforce, and is backed by Citi, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and other partners. (See my recent coverage of Salesforce’s philanthropic commitment to AI in education.)
Deloitte, the giant global professional services company, has a philanthropic arm, the Deloitte Foundation; its Monitor Institute is a social impact consultancy that keeps tabs on developments in philanthropy. Last year, Deloitte committed to a 10-year, $1.5 billion social impact investment “to foster a more equitable society.” According to Kerri Folmer, managing director at Monitor Institute by Deloitte, “One goal of that commitment is to engage in place-based change in the communities where we live and work, and San Francisco is a critical city where we hope to drive impact.”
Deloitte and Salesforce are long-time allies. At Davos in 2020, the two teamed up with the World Economic Forum to create Uplink, an “open innovation platform” that highlights social entrepreneurs and connects them with sources of funding and expert support to help them establish and scale their innovations. Uplink has conducted a number of innovation challenges, which it describes as “global calls for innovative solutions to global pressing issues as outlined by the UN Sustainable Development Goals.” During the Salesforce panel, the World Economic Forum’s Jeff Merritt said that Uplink has helped channel $1.6 billion to start-ups and social enterprises since it was created two years ago. The Yes San Francisco, Urban Sustainability Challenge is Uplink’s first place-based initiative.
Escaping the “doom loop”
Yes SF challenge partners referred delicately to the “challenges” San Francisco faces today, but many pundits see something more dire, and suggest the city is caught in a “doom loop.” It’s true that the pandemic created a large number of permanently remote workers, which, combined with post-pandemic tech layoffs, have emptied office buildings and put many downtown restaurants and other shops and venues out of business.
That all means less foot traffic, more closures, lower tax revenues, cuts in public services, increased homelessness and deserted streets. If nothing is done to reverse this cycle, some believe the city will continue to devolve in a self-reinforcing spiral of dysfunction.
Can the challenge help San Francisco escape this downward plunge? That’s the goal, according to Kwasi Mitchell, chief purpose and DEI officer at Deloitte Digital. “When we launched this specific innovation challenge, we deliberately chose San Francisco for a variety of reasons,” he told the audience at Dreamforce. “First and foremost, given its journey post-pandemic, San Francisco is a city we have seen literally rise from the ashes on many many different occasions, and [it is] fundamentally so key to innovation and growth — not solely to the United States but to the globe. So anyone who is counting San Francisco down and out, we fundamentally wanted to make sure that narrative was absolutely false, and that we’re part of proving it wrong.”
Keeping it local
Since the Yes SF Challenge was announced early last summer, over 140 entrepreneurs from around the world have submitted applications. The World Economic Forum is currently reviewing the applications, and challenge finalists will be announced in October.
“From over 140 applicants, we’ve narrowed it down to 26 semifinalists,” said Kerri Folmer of the challenge selection committee. “Next, we’ll narrow that 26 down to about a dozen finalists.” Through its Impact Fund, Citi will help Uplink connect finalists to a network of investors who can provide strategic guidance and potential funding to support and scale their projects. Deloitte will soon be announcing a major grant to the challenge finalists.
From the start, the challenge partners have worked with local officials, including Mayor London Breed and her staff, as well as local nonprofits and other organizations. In their challenge applications, entrepreneurs were asked to show how their innovations will provide local jobs and stimulate the economy.
“About a third of the applications came from the Bay Area or surrounding California communities,” Folmer said. “The goal is to impact the Bay Area, and specifically downtown San Francisco; that could mean that innovators bring their solution to San Francisco, or locate their business here.”
Challenge partners have also been brainstorming how to create pathways from local community colleges to prepare students for new sustainable jobs.
Folmer is excited about the applicants and their innovations — and also about the power of the partnership of organizations backing the challenge. “The innovations are amazing and so inspiring, and it’s also inspiring to see this coalition that is committed to supporting them and the community of San Francisco,” she said. “It’s an example of philanthropy and practice and business coming together to create a very energized group that continues to grow.”
A (more friendly) Shark Tank for social entrepreneurs
One semifinalist in the Yes SF Challenge uses technology to recirculate shower water, reducing energy and water use by 80%. Another, an urban farming company, was originally created to provide food for refugees in the Middle East; the company has developed technology to grow low-cost, nutritious produce indoors. (Learn more about Yes San Francisco Challenge competitors and their projects on the Uplink website).
To learn more about other innovations in the works, Folmer urged me to watch a video of another Dreamforce session, sponsored by Salesforce and Deloitte, that featured competitors in an earlier Uplink challenge. At the session, “Dreampitch: Calling AI Heroes,” a friendly sort of Shark Tank competition, three entrepreneurs made pitches for their innovations. All three of the entrepreneurs were women, which was notable; women-led startups receive less than 3% of all venture capital investments, according to the Harvard Business Review, and funding for Black and Latina women founders is even harder to find.
During the session, Jo Aggarwal made a pitch for her project, Wysa, a platform that provides AI and virtual therapy to people all over the world. Aggarwal, the company’s founder and CEO, is from India; she pointed out that there is less than one psychiatrist for every 250,000 people there. Wysa has helped 6.5 million people in 500 countries, and Aggarwal believes they are on track to help 50 million by 2030.
Next, Elizabeth Hunter talked about Treeswift, the company she cofounded, which uses AI tools and robotics to help foresters and landowners inventory forests, one tree at a time, to make them easier to manage and protect.
Ellie McKay made the final pitch. Her company, Ellipsis Earth, created a technology that can inventory trash and waste down to a single plastic water bottle. It conducts waste audits on highways, cities, rivers and coastlines. The data helps inform governments, communities and brands how and where to focus their cleanup efforts, allowing them to identify the source of pollutants and to reduce ocean-bound plastic and other waste.
The pitches and ideas were evaluated by a panel of judges as well as the Dreamforce audience, and there was a lot of enthusiasm, cheering and tears. McKay won the competition and received $250,000; Hunter and Aggarwal came in second and third and both received smaller cash prizes.
These entrepreneurs are impressive and Deloitte, Salesforce and the others deserve kudos for backing them, but I’ve lived in proximity to Silicon Valley long enough to be a bit jaded by extravagant tech promises. San Francisco has repeatedly been wooed by big tech companies that have promised jobs and economic abundance in return for tax breaks and prime real estate. Then, when their profits slow, the tech companies lay off thousands of workers and leave (or vacate office buildings) without turning out the lights.
Meanwhile, today’s brand of corporate philanthropy — much of it fueled by tech — often serves to pad bruised reputations and back causes that align with firms’ for-profit priorities. That doesn’t always lend itself to delivering on what was, for a long time, a staple in corporate giving: aiding and enriching the places where companies put down roots.
Still, it was exciting to learn about so many promising ideas from young, creative entrepreneurs — and about funders willing to support them. The experience made me wonder again if we can “tech” our way out of the many challenges we face — in San Francisco and around the globe. Technology is likely not the only answer, but maybe it’s one answer — and we need as many of those as we can get.
