[staunch]

Bill Gates and Elon Musk are two of the best examples of effective social entrepreneurship.

Bill Gates made the money and then spent it socially on vaccine research, reducing disease, improving education, etc.

Elon Musk's efforts are more directly social-entrepreneurial. He's helping to move the entire world away from gas powered vehicles (Tesla/Solar City), reducing urban congestion and improving rural life (SpaceX/Starlink), and trying to back up civilization on other planetary bodies (SpaceX).

I think the idea of "social entrepreneurship" is plagued by the problem of "serving two masters" when you really need focus to be successful.

Elon Musk clearly is clearly doing social entrepreneurship, but in practice that just means running successful (and relatively traditional) capitalist enterprises. Gates was even more conventional with his path. Both are doing a lot more good than most people who call themselves social entrepreneurs.

[afkqs]

Would the founder of vegan restaurant be considered a social entrepreneur? As by growing their business, more people will consume non meat-based food, and in fine help reduce climate change.

Defining the boundaries of social entrepreneurship would require a whole separate thread.

[aaanotherhnfolk]

A calculation of effectiveness should contain not just an assessment of magnitude but also of scalability.

Most people can't become Bill Gates or Elon Musk. There's not enough births of the computing age, or births of online banking to go around. There's a lot of people seeking to do social good within the confines of capitalism.

So while most (all?) techniques may be less impactful than Gates and Musk, we shouldn't hold back people trying to find other strategies (dare I call them entrepreneurs) by confining them to being ruthless capitalists who later grow benevolent or build Wayne Industrieses.