Keeping Up Acquaintances

Hawking tees that change the world, with a little help from famous friends.

If anyone knows the value of a good network, it’s Pankaj Shah. In fact, the 35-year-old Palo Alto entrepreneur has launched three companies based on what is, fundamentally, nothing more than a system of connections. His first, MetroFi, is a wireless broadband company that provides entire cities with Wi-Fi coverage. His second, 4Info—part of which he sold in 2006 to the media company that owns USA Today—is a mobile search service that allows people to cue up such instantly gratifying intelligence as sports scores, stock quotes and movie times just by sending a text-message inquiry. And the third, Tonic, operates on a more old-fashioned definition of “network,” perhaps best illustrated by Matt Damon’s appearance on Oprah last April to tout GreenDimes, the Tonic subsidiary that, for $20 a year, stops your junk mail and plants 10 trees to celebrate this act of greening. (“Matt is a friend of a friend,” Shah explains.)

Named in honor of “everything that is morally, mentally and physically invigorating,” Tonic aims to prove that social good and capitalism can coexist, with the help of a rather risky business equation: The marketing budget for Tonic’s fi rst product, a T-shirt line, is a mere $10,000, but the company’s faith in word-of-mouth advertising is nearly infinite. The difference is that Tonic donates 40 percent of its revenue to a rotating list of worthy nonprofi ts that target the environment, education, social welfare and poverty. At press time, these causes ranged from Against Malaria, which distributes mosquito nets to families in Africa, to the Ruchika Social Service Organization, which provides educational opportunities for children in India.

So, in the event that you become smitten with the School tee, made of bamboo fi ber and organic cotton and created by Imitation of Christ designer Tara Subkoff—“She’s also a friend of a friend,” Shah says—rest assured that a hefty chunk of the $45 retail price will send three impoverished Indian children to school for one year.

Shah, a first-generation Indian American, explains his uncommon business tactic this way: “I focus less on the economics than I do on getting people to think, ‘Hey, if I’m gonna buy a T-shirt anyway, I might as well buy yours, if it's going to change the world.'"

email page | print page