Vivienne Harr first achieved fame by ringing the bell at the New York Stock Exchange last November, when Twitter went public. Standing beside her were the actor Patrick Stewart and Cheryl Fiandaca, a former spokeswoman for the Boston Police Department. Vivienne was chosen by Twitter for the honor because of her lemonade stand.
This was no ordinary stand, Steven Davidoff Solomon writes in his Deal Professor column. Vivienne, 10, had started it to end child slavery, vowing to sell lemonade for a year or until she raised $100,000. Because this is a Silicon Valley story, she had become an Internet sensation by the 14th day. It didn’t hurt that Vivienne and her family lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and that her father, Eric Harr, worked in social media public relations. He has done a good job.
A year later, after a children’s book, not to mention a variety of new lemonade flavors, the Harrs have moved on and are riding the mobile app wave. Their app is called Make a Stand (an homage to Vivienne’s lemonade roots), and allows people to set up a crowdfunding campaign for a charity in just a minute.
The app has raised millions from a variety of Silicon Valley luminaries, including Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone, two Twitter founders, and Chade-Meng Tan, whose official title at Google is Jolly Good Fellow.
This story couldn’t have happened anywhere but Silicon Valley, and certainly not without the energy of a father with social media skills who happened to live in the area. But the story of Make a Stand also shows how in today’s world, social connections are replacing old community ties. From a lemonade stand in Marin County, someone can tweet their way up to millions of dollars in funding and, perhaps, a game-changing role in charity. It’s a reminder of the power of social media, and people are quickly learning how to take advantage of the connections it builds, creating vast wealth, even for 10-year-olds. Read more »