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slash disclosures. Welcome to the A16Z podcast. I'm Michael Copeland. In this segment of the podcast, Sonal catches up with Lila Janah, the founder and CEO of Samasource. Samosource is a non-profit that uses technology to connect marginalized people around the world to digital work. The discussion that follows covers the gig economy, remote work, and the business of nonprofits.

In the end, for Lila, it's all about alleviating poverty through impact sourcing,

which is where Sonal begins the conversation.

Laila, let's just start off by talking about what that even means.

Like, what is impact sourcing? Sure. Impact sourcing is the idea that we can reduce social inequity by

building social impact into the supply chain of a product or service. So in the case of

digital work, it means recruiting people who are non-traditional

workers, people who are marginalized in some way, could be veterans who lack employment opportunity,

or in our case, people living below the poverty line in the U.S. and abroad to increase their

incomes through the digital economy. So it's sourcing, it's deliberately sourcing in a way that creates social impact.

I've heard you talk before about how one of the, maybe not problems, but one of the trends in the current model of doing a lot of

nonprofit work or work that has impact is that people tend to give back at the end of the value chain versus in

the supply chain. Can you actually break down how things currently work now and why impacts

we're seeing is different? Sure. So I think when most people think of doing good, they think of it

as a separate category of activity from making money. So we think about making money from nine to five. And then on our

weekends, we volunteer for the PTA or help out with our children, soccer team. Exactly. It's an add-on.

And it's a, you know, you make profit through your day-to-day work activities and then you donate or you

give back with what

you make some of what you make that way of thinking we often apply directly to our

...