“Like many of her fellow students in the Stanford Graduate School of Business class of 1995, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen felt a “burning desire” to be an entrepreneur. But while they parlayed their lessons in finance and management into dot-com business plans, she envisioned a venture of another stripe, one that would harness Silicon Valley’s newest wave of entrepreneurial energy and wealth for community benefit. “I wanted to do something different,” she writes. “Instead of establishing an organization to make money, I wanted to create one to give it away.” Three years later, she launched the Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund. Today, SV2 is thriving: successfully wooing, engaging, and educating generations of Silicon Valley talent, who are great at being go-getters, to become givers.
Founding SV2 marked the end of Arrillaga-Andreessen’s apprenticeship in philanthropy and launched her on the quest that inspired and informed Giving 2.0. Over the succeeding 15-plus years, the author immersed herself in the field: creating and teaching graduate business and undergraduate courses at Stanford University, commissioning case studies, serving on nonprofit boards, helping design Stanford’s Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, interviewing hundreds of fellow travelers, and learning by giving herself. She has consistently upped the ante for her own philanthropy with every new lesson learned.”
