TOMS Shoes founder Blake Mycoskie discusses social entrepreneurship

I've worked with Blake a lot, my company developed their current e-commerce site. He's a great, passionate and fun guy. One of my favorite stories about him is when we were asking how he gets thousands of pairs of shoes through customs in Africa. All he said was "Oh, Bill Clinton helps me take care of that." That in itself can tell you how powerful his socially conscious business model is.

He's the kind of guy that would fit in perfectly at HN, he's not technical but he's extremely entrepreneurial. He had a variety of small successes, some failures, and finally hit it big with TOMS Shoes.

Great add to the community. I'm coming from a social entrepreneurship background but now building a web startup and seeing just a ton of flow between those two communities. Actually run mixers for startups in SF that explicitly connect both - people seem to really dig em. Thanks for sharing this.

Just don't return your shoes or else he has to take a pair back from a child in need!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kypYXanAv0Y

(disclaimer: that may or may not be me wearing the special helmet in that video.)