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woodside comments on Who Wants To Start An Important Startup? - Less Wrong
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Rough Idea: Send brilliant, destitute kids to great schools from an early age in exchange for a percentage of their lifetime earnings.
Depending on the study you read there are up to hundreds of millions of children in the developing world that are in the primary/middle school age range that will never get the chance to attend a school. Some of these children have the genetic potential to be top tier in terms of intelligence and productivity but will never realize this potential.
Develop a cost-effective selection mechanism for finding these diamonds in the rough and present them with a deal. They are moved to a top-level boarding school in a developed country (This could be a partnership with existing schools or a school developed specifically for this program, maybe there is a year long english prep trial school they go to first, there are many details to consider). In exchange they commit to paying some percentage (10% feels about right as a gut-check) of their income to the company for the rest of their lives (maybe there is an option to buy out of the contract for kids that end up sufficiently wealthy, again, many details to consider).
Biggest issues I see:
You don't pluck them from their families, because you can't do this in the US or Europe anyway. You build the schools in the other countries. You're not going to send them to Harvard. The point is not to get them hooked into the US old-boy network so they can win grants or get venture capital or work for Goldman-Sachs. The point is to get them an education, which is not what top-tier US schools are for anyway.
In the US, I think the law prevents you from doing this, unless you're the military.
Well, if it's for-profit venture, then the point isn't to get them an education, the point is to prepare them for lucrative careers, in which case social capital is of high importance.
I propose a new term for what we're trying to do here, not for-profit, nor not-for-profit, but for-results.
Have you read The Unincorporated Man for some fictional evidence of how this idea turns out? ;-)
I haven't but I'll check it out, I'm about to go on a 20 hour plane trip.