Regarding Ambitious Impact/CEIP, we’ve definitely drawn inspiration from their model and have received direct mentoring from them throughout our implementation. They have been very generous with their knowledge and support! Some key differences:
Founders act as researchers, guided by our methodology: they choose the problem (based on the ITN framework) and the intervention (evidence-based and cost-effective), and they decide what to focus on.
They build in their own countries.
They implement an early prototype during the incubation.
It’s a part-time program with a longer duration (12 months total) in their native language.
We don’t have a seed funding circle (yet), but we aim to demonstrate the types of interventions being incubated and build toward that over time.
Thanks for wanting to support! We are hosting a Meet the Founder session on April 9th to facilitate this; connections, mentorship, and feedback are exactly what we’re looking for. If you’d like to join, please fill out this short form (≈3 minutes), and we’ll share the meeting link and details: https://forms.gle/sb5bYBUihReiexJv8
It would be great to have you there!
As for the Laboratory of Social Entrepreneurship, we are a relatively new organization (~1 year), and this is our first cohort, but it builds on prior experience in the sector (M&E, program design, and implementation) and in the region.
Happy to share more if helpful, and thanks again for engaging!
Thanks for sharing this! It’s inspiring to see such a rigorous approach being applied to the LATAM context. I’d like to highlight a few points that resonated with me:
Language and Expression: As someone who understands English but struggles to express my full potential in a second language, I believe hosting the program in the founders’ native language is a significant advantage for deep strategic thinking.
Early Prototyping: Implementing an early prototype during the incubation is a great idea to prove the proposed value and test assumptions in the real world.
Local Context: Building in one’s own country offers invaluable insights into cultural or systemic factors that can either mitigate or amplify the effect of an intervention.
One minor reflection: while I agree that founders should lead the strategy, I wonder if the profile of a great founder always overlaps with the profile of a researcher. To avoid potential blind spots in either the research quality or the organization’s execution, how do you mitigate this risk?
Regarding the research question: while fellows are making the decisions, they are doing so within a fairly structured methodology (we provide the tools, templates, and step-by-step process). For example, problem selection is guided by specific thresholds (e.g. Only selecting problems that are affecting >600k people or ~6M animals in the first country of implementation), alongside other criteria like depth, breadth, and trajectory of the problem in the region.
Similarly, intervention selection is constrained by requirements such as being evidence-based (e.g. supported by RCTs, meta-analyses, or strong evidence equivalents for animal welfare), proven to be cost-effective in other contexts, and feasible to adapt locally. We also have a (small) research support team helping throughout the process. And of course, we have used the help of certain LLMs (like Elicit and Perplexity).
Additionally, fellows go through theoretical training (e.g. M&E principles) to guide their reasoning, and we have the support from IPA Colombia, who provided lectures and office hours to review parts of the work.
We don’t think this replaces the depth of a trained researcher, but in a resource-constrained setting, it allows for reasonably rigorous, structured decision-making. It also has the advantage of making the reasoning process explicit so if something doesn’t work (as it sometimes happens in the real world, while implementing), fellows can revisit and iterate more effectively.
Always happy to receive feedback on how to improve things!
Hi Tony, thanks for the thoughtful questions!
Regarding Ambitious Impact/CEIP, we’ve definitely drawn inspiration from their model and have received direct mentoring from them throughout our implementation. They have been very generous with their knowledge and support! Some key differences:
Founders act as researchers, guided by our methodology: they choose the problem (based on the ITN framework) and the intervention (evidence-based and cost-effective), and they decide what to focus on.
They build in their own countries.
They implement an early prototype during the incubation.
It’s a part-time program with a longer duration (12 months total) in their native language.
We don’t have a seed funding circle (yet), but we aim to demonstrate the types of interventions being incubated and build toward that over time.
Thanks for wanting to support! We are hosting a Meet the Founder session on April 9th to facilitate this; connections, mentorship, and feedback are exactly what we’re looking for. If you’d like to join, please fill out this short form (≈3 minutes), and we’ll share the meeting link and details: https://forms.gle/sb5bYBUihReiexJv8
It would be great to have you there!
As for the Laboratory of Social Entrepreneurship, we are a relatively new organization (~1 year), and this is our first cohort, but it builds on prior experience in the sector (M&E, program design, and implementation) and in the region.
Happy to share more if helpful, and thanks again for engaging!
Hi Verónica,
Thanks for sharing this! It’s inspiring to see such a rigorous approach being applied to the LATAM context. I’d like to highlight a few points that resonated with me:
Language and Expression: As someone who understands English but struggles to express my full potential in a second language, I believe hosting the program in the founders’ native language is a significant advantage for deep strategic thinking.
Early Prototyping: Implementing an early prototype during the incubation is a great idea to prove the proposed value and test assumptions in the real world.
Local Context: Building in one’s own country offers invaluable insights into cultural or systemic factors that can either mitigate or amplify the effect of an intervention.
One minor reflection: while I agree that founders should lead the strategy, I wonder if the profile of a great founder always overlaps with the profile of a researcher. To avoid potential blind spots in either the research quality or the organization’s execution, how do you mitigate this risk?
Excited to see how these 8 organizations grow!
Hi Gabrielle,
Thank you for your thoughtful reflection.
Regarding the research question: while fellows are making the decisions, they are doing so within a fairly structured methodology (we provide the tools, templates, and step-by-step process). For example, problem selection is guided by specific thresholds (e.g. Only selecting problems that are affecting >600k people or ~6M animals in the first country of implementation), alongside other criteria like depth, breadth, and trajectory of the problem in the region.
Similarly, intervention selection is constrained by requirements such as being evidence-based (e.g. supported by RCTs, meta-analyses, or strong evidence equivalents for animal welfare), proven to be cost-effective in other contexts, and feasible to adapt locally. We also have a (small) research support team helping throughout the process. And of course, we have used the help of certain LLMs (like Elicit and Perplexity).
Additionally, fellows go through theoretical training (e.g. M&E principles) to guide their reasoning, and we have the support from IPA Colombia, who provided lectures and office hours to review parts of the work.
We don’t think this replaces the depth of a trained researcher, but in a resource-constrained setting, it allows for reasonably rigorous, structured decision-making. It also has the advantage of making the reasoning process explicit so if something doesn’t work (as it sometimes happens in the real world, while implementing), fellows can revisit and iterate more effectively.
Always happy to receive feedback on how to improve things!