The Unreasonable Mansion, Boulder. This is not really a mansion, but it’s not a dormitory, either. It’s a hybrid, which is fitting given the crowd that just moved in. A clue to the nature of the occupants can be found inside the front doors, where a handwritten sign asks that shoes be removed. A shoe rack has been provided for this purpose. It awaits, empty and accommodating. To reach it, however, you’d have to cross the lake of shoes surrounding it, a jumble of sneakers and sandals and flip-flops.
This is precisely the sort of behavior the orchestrators of the Unreasonable Institute underway in this house would observe with approval. It represents to them not laziness but audacity. “Unreasonable Fellows don’t really follow the rules,” says Institute co-founder Tyler Hartung.
By audacity, I do not mean insolent but intrepid, bold. Necessary qualities for young people who believe that if this world is to do more than scrape the surface of its toughest social problems it will take people like them, inhabitants of what fellow Jasmine Stine calls “the crazy in-between” world of social entrepreneurs.
For the next nine weeks, these 25 young people, most between 20 and 30 years old, most already running fledgling socially minded businesses, will share this house. They come from 10 countries and have projects underway in 17, including India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Australia, the Netherlands, Peru, Uganda, Tanzania and the U.S.
The Unreasonable Institute is to be incubator, accelerator, schoolhouse, boardroom, clubhouse, support group. It is to be part of a revolution.
The name comes from a George Bernard Shaw quote: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in adapting the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
The founders are pleased to say they are all highly unreasonable. They are University of Colorado at Boulder alumni, all young men in their 20s. Whip-smart, charming, clearly ambitious, absolutely fevered.
“There’s a quote,” says co-founder Daniel Epstein, “and I don’t know who said it, and I’m not going to get it exactly right, but it’s, ‘Ask not what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive.’ “
“Dude, that’s Thurman.” This is fellow co-founder Teju Ravilochan, who has a businessman’s brain but poet’s heart.
“Who?” Epstein says.
“Howard Thurman.”
“I used to really like that quote, but now I disagree,” Epstein goes on. “It suggests that the two are at cross-purposes. But it seems to me that if you can find what the world needs and what makes you come alive, you found the perfect synthesis.
“We share a deep belief that we can’t afford to send young people out in the world unprepared to tackle its problems,” Ravilochan says. ” ‘This isn’t work for us, it’s the culmination of our entire lives’; that’s a Dan quote.”
“I said that?”
The Unreasonable Institute works this way: The institute team — Epstein, Ravilochan, Hartung, Vladimir Dubovskiy, Nikhil Dandavati and Justin Kang — has brought together about 60 mentors, top names in social entrepreneurship, with 25 international fellows. The fellows competed to get here. Almost 300 applied. The team narrowed the field to 35. Each posted his or her business description at an online marketplace. The first 25 to raise $6,500 — the market therefore supporting the entrepreneurs’ 10-week stay at the institute — won.
I don’t know that I’ve ever been around 25 more engaging, intelligent, obsessed young people. They’re excited about what they’ve learned in the first week and about the prospect of leaving Boulder with a viable plan backed by investors.
Here then is Stine, who, with her partners, created a reality television show in Afghanistan in which the competitors were not singers but entrepreneurs starting their own small businesses under the gaze of 7 million viewers.
Here is Jehan Ratnatunga of Australia, with the memorably titled “Who Gives a Crap” business that would manufacture and sell toilet paper at market prices but use the profits for water sanitation projects. Zehra Ali seeks to produce affordable insulation for the homes of the poor in Pakistan. Detail on mentors and fellows is at unreasonableinstitute.org.
“Who are you to define progress in our time?” the fellows were asked at the institute’s inaugural reception. Stine responded: “We don’t define progress by looking forward. We define progress by looking all around us and sharing opportunity.”
In the crazy, in-between world of a social entrepreneur, the best practices of a nonprofit are married to the best practices of a business. The agenda is humanitarian; the engine is the market.
“We are looking for people who can define progress in our time, who can change the world,” Ravilochan says. He grins. “Those are the kind of things we say.”
“And we believe it,” Epstein says.
“We do,” Ravilochan says.
And the two unreasonable people exchange a high-five.
Tina Griego writes Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
