The concept behind Sandbox is an old idea in fact and dates back to when I was about 16 years old. At the time I was president of my high school student committee and regularly networked with other student leaders across Switzerland. That was a fantastic and really energising experience. So we continued to build on our network, organising parties and such. By the time we were 20 we were pretty well connected but we realised that if we wanted to develop further we’d have to extend the network internationally.  

The first idea was to organise a big international conference, but unfortunately that didn’t happen. We struggled to find sponsors and then the financial crisis hit. So we took a different tack. We raised a little money to start a business with two objectives in mind: firstly, we decided to continue building our network on the basis of both online and offline activities. Online we rely on a social network platform, a bit like Facebook but private. And offline we started organising small gatherings and dinners in different regions of the world. We asked some of our members to serve as ambassadors to organise these events and to look for new members.  

Secondly, we’ve been working on a business model. For example, we’ve been asked by several large companies to help them with their marketing and social media projects. In other cases we’ve been asked to participate in workshops that form part of their leadership development programmes. They want to expose their managers to some of the ideas that our members are working on and thinking about. What works about these projects is that they’re valuable both for the companies and our members. Companies love it; their people gain a lot of inspiration from our members. And for our members it fits in our goal to accelerate their careers. It offers them interesting experience and connections within the corporate world.  

 

Looking ahead, we’re planning a number of regional and global events. These won’t be your classic conferences; we’ll place a lot more emphasis on interactivity and working together. We’re also going to expand our editorial activities. And finally, we’re exploring the idea of setting up an investment fund, call it a Sandbox Fund. A lot of our members are entrepreneurs who are actively looking for funding. Obviously we’ll do this with a partner.

 

We incorporated Sandbox in May last year (2009) with the help of funding from family, friends and fools. And we’ve just announced a second round of funding from Centralway, a Swiss-based venture capital company. This isn’t the classic VC investment where they’re looking for a major financial return; their main agenda is to be close to the network because it is such a tremendous source of potential new companies.

There are three steps to becoming a Sandbox member. Obviously you may be invited, but if you apply for membership then we first ask you to fill in an online profile, basically a c.v. outlining what you’ve been up to. The second step we call the WOW part. Here we ask you to provide a video, a song, an essay—anything, as long as it creates a WOW impact. Then the third step is to be recommended by a member. If you don’t know any members then we’ll find people in the network who could recommend you. We’d probably first ask you to attend a dinner and meet some of the people.

 

We have about 450 members at present.  Our intention is to keep it manageable; we don’t want to be too big. Everything depends on the quality of the network, the mutual trust, the passion.

I’m 27 years old, so I guess I have 3 years left hey?  But seriously, we don’t want be 40 looking after a community of people in their twenties. Hence, our goal for the next 2-3 years is to develop a stable business model and to attract younger people who could take over the running of the project. We want to create a highly recognisable brand, comparable to say TED, but targeting a very specific age group with a very strong added value for members.

The corporates are taking an interest; they’re observing us, and especially keen on the new ideas that emerge from our network. This younger generation clearly has a different way of working. They’re very creative and can achieve a great deal with very small budgets. And they’re not particularly interested in working for large organisations. We see that in our membership; people are looking for more freedom but at the same time they’re keen on taking on more responsibility. They want to have an impact on the world; and they realise that they have a major responsibility in shaping our world. They’re the future. So they want to act now and not just reproduce what their parents were doing.  

 

I think that there are several ways in which companies can attract and retain these people. Firstly, by helping them understand what their impact can be on the company’s strategy and vision; and more broadly on the world. Don’t sell a 9-5 job; instead, sell a greater vision, sell meaning and values. There are several companies out there who really understand this. Companies like Apple, Netflix and Zappos are creating entire manifestos about their values and vision. They’re experimenting too. For example, some of these companies have scrapped holidays.  Instead, they hire people to do certain tasks and leave it up to them to plan their time. This is working on the basis of trust and values, as opposed to hierarchical structures. I guess the extreme example of these alternative organisational forms is Wikipedia, but I think that some of these principles can be applied to commercial companies.