Hi, I'm Chad. This is 
(Yeah, that's me in the chair)
I created Kyn after a long career in technology, first with large companies doing strategy work, and then helping entrepreneurs launch startups. After venturing out on my own in late 2010 to create yet another web productivity tool, I woke up one day and realized the software I created did nothing to further humanity. Sure it made a few folks' lives easier by simplifying meeting scheduling, but who cares!
I wanted to do something that mattered. Something like the conservation-based forestry fund I helped an entrepreneur launch. Or the refurbished wind turbine upstart I helped become a reality. But it needed to be online, where scale is measured in global reach.
Reassessing my priorities, I kept coming back to Saava, a socially-responsible angel network I created in 2002 (it was sort of an AngelList for impact investors). Although it turned out to be ahead of its time and largely an experiment while on sabbatical, it was the single most fulfilling project of my career. So, I decided to dive back into the space.
As I began talking to some of the philanthropists, angel investors, foundations, and impact-lenders that participated in Saava, it was clear the problems remained: Unless you were a foundation with a large staff, the process of finding and supporting the most effective nonprofits was difficult, uninspiring, and took many individuals out of philanthropy altogether. Further, unless you were a large nonprofit with a dedicated fundraising machine, finding and cultivating donors remained difficult, expensive, and largely distracting from the organization's core mission and programs. Bottomline: It's a woefully inefficient market.
I sold everything I owned in late 2012, dropped personal expenses to bootstrap levels ($1,500/mo), and began spending more time with the foundation community primarily in and around Chicago (I'll admit my ridiculously adorable and brilliant two year-old niece had something to do with the location choice). My early conversations confirmed my first assumption: technology does have a role, but previous attempts to connect philanthropists were too tech heavy (really, you want me to install a server?!?), too "retail" focused (giving $10 is different than $200k), or didn't bridge the generational gap (not everyone wants to be online all day).
the sharing of ideas and experiences is what moves humanity forward
Ev Williams - Twitter Founder
And so Kyn was born. Thanks to a few years running development teams and a career of rolling up my sleeves with 1 and 2 person startups I've been able to code, design, and handle the business side (my true expertise) myself. Thus, I've kept total hard costs to just $90 (!), while methodically validating our major assumptions (yes, I'm a lean startup fan).
I'll soon be writing more about how we use rapid protoyping to validate assumptions with zero cost, and hope to elaborate more on our "reverse-incubator" model. Most incubators wrap business mentorship around technical founders...I needed the reverse. Since I embarked on this journey I've been lucky to have an amazing group of technical mentors to help ensure my data model is scalable and the codebase clean. Special thanks to @jcl2007, @ckraybill and @ibuprofen!
We're excited to finally move Kyn out of the garage and hope to be in touch soon!