“It’s a simple idea.  Inspire action.  Change the world.  Have fun.  Because doing good shouldn’t feel like a chore.”

Those were the words that started our company…

A couple of years ago, Jerri Chou and I had a great idea to expand All Day Buffet.  We wanted to channel our creative energy into a company that allowed us to filter all of our charitable ideas through one company.  I dug up an interview from 2007 I did with Influx Insights that goes over this into a little more detail…

We noticed that even though people wanted to do good, the options to do something were very limiting. People are willing to subscribe to Good Magazine but may not necessarily want to spend their weekend planting trees. Up until now, there’s always been a separation between the things we like with the things that matter most. We want to break the conventions of doing good by infusing the somewhat prude non-profit/charity industry with the creativity and energy of the Creative Class. If we can make it easy and accessible to do good, as well as infusing creativity in everything we do, we can help raise awareness and inspire young people to take active steps to making change.

We were a lot younger back then but our goals were idealistic, pure, and simple.  We wanted to “make doing good cool.” Our team consisted of Scott Hechinger, Justin Hakuta, Adrian Lai, Victor Jeffreys, Nikki Bagli and about a dozen other awesome people.  We were tired of using our creative skills in the corporate world so we designed, coded, and brainstormed for weeks on how to make the world a better place.  They lived in NYC, and I worked remotely from New Orleans.  It was the best time of our lives because we had nothing to worry about but create something that would be appealing to us.

In August ‘07, we launched a spanking brand new website and our first project – Cause for Drinks.  The idea was simple. Host a happy hour.  Take $2 from each drink.  And donate it to a local charity.  It started in New Orleans and NYC and quickly spread across the country like wildfire.  By the end of the project, we were in nearly two dozen cities and raised over $10,000 for local charities.  But more importantly, we empowered creative professionals across the country to do something good in their own communities.

Holy shit.  We just built a community of creatives that were hungry to do more.  Cause for Drinks was their gateway drug to doing good.

A year later, at a BBQ in Brooklyn, Scott Hechinger, Justin Hakuta and I were talking about the TED Conference and how awesome it would be to attend.  There was only one major problem… the $6,000 price tag.  So, we did what anyone else would do in that situation.  We decided to create our own conference in our backyard — New York City.

It made sense for us because our goals were changing and all us were starting to get the entrepreneurial itch.  We also gave our community a taste of doing good and they wanted more.  So why not combine entrepreneurship, creativity, and innovation together?  Why not channel all the energy from our network to create real change with massive social impact?  Thus, The Feast was born.

Our mission still holds true today.  Change the world through creativity and business.

We held the very first Feast at Scandinavia House in October ‘08.  I convinced Jerri that it was a good idea and she believed me (Jerri, I had no idea what I was doing back then ha).  We put together a conference in 8 weeks (I still don’t know how we pulled it off), and packed Scandinavia House with 125 of the most amazing social innovators, entrepreneurs, and non-profit leaders New York has ever seen.  (It will still go down as one of the most memorable experiences of my entire life.  The energy in that room can and probably will never be replicated anywhere else.)

A year later, we expanded to The Times Center and tripled to 375 attendees.  This year, we’re looking to double our attendees to a little under 800.  We’re also focusing on “the future” as our overall theme moving forward.  The growth has been tremendous and our goal is to make The Feast into the SXSW for our community.  We could not have done this with the support of from our community.  So, thank you!

Get full on good.

While working on The Feast, Jerri and I had a brilliant idea to create a new business model for startups.  Rather than working on one idea, why not throw a bunch of ideas against the wall and see what sticks?  So, in 2009, we went into prime brainstorm mode and emerged with By/Association, TBD, and Lovely Day.

Our business model has always been extremely simple.  It’s non-traditional but it works for us.

All Day Buffet is the parent company.
It advises, invests and incubates for-profit/for-good ventures.
Each venture has a CEO with their own teams.
Each venture has a 5.0% option pool that gets shared across all our ventures.
All Day Buffet takes the remainder of each venture.

If 2009 was about incubating ideas, 2010 will be about growing them.  So, it’s extremely hard for me to say that Jerri and I will be splitting our time to focus on our individual ventures.  Rather than spreading ourselves thin over 4 different companies, Jerri and I will be focusing on a few.  I will take over on The Feast and By/Association & Jerri will be taking over on Lovely Day and TBD.

Be an entrepreneur.  Not a social entrepreneur.

Throughout the past couple of years, we’ve worked hard to blend creativity, entrepreneurship, and social change together. It’s been our goal to show the world what our community is capable of when creative people get together to change the world.  Sprinkle that with some entrepreneurship and voila!  It’s a recipe for success.

What does the future hold for All Day Buffet?  In 5 years, we want to have a portfolio of companies that are profitable, sustainable, and world-changing.  We believe that New York City will be the epicenter of social innovation, and we hope to be the leaders that spearhead that movement.  Our end goal is to launch a venture fund that allows us to fund innovative startups that are changing the world with seed investments, lifetime personal investments, mentorship, advisement and support.

We achieved all of this without one penny from outside investors.  We couldn’t have done this without the support of our team, partners, community, and mentors.  And most importantly, I could not have done this without Jerri Chou who has wanted to punch, kick, and beat me up on numerous occasions for all my crazy ideas.  Without her as a business partner, All Day Buffet will not exist as it does today.  And to all of you that have helped and supported us along the way, thank you. We hope you’ll continue getting full on good with us.

This was written by Michael Karnjanaprakorn, Co-Founder of All Day Buffet.  You can follow his updates on Twitter.