Once upon a time makesense

At the very beginning, there were only 2… The story of makesense began on a journey, on the roads of India. In 2010, Christian and Leila, two newly graduated friends, embarked on the adventure of social entrepreneurship by organizing their first ‘hold-up’, a new type of collaborative and constructive workshops.

Ten years later, the team has a hundred employees, thousands of volunteers and has sparked hundreds of thousands of actions around the world.

Let’s rewind!

makesense was born in 2010 of an idea: what if citizens could help entrepreneurs to develop their ecological and social projects? What if students could contribute to it?

This is how makesense’ ‘gangsters’ and ‘holdups’ appeared: a first meeting between the world of civil society, students and entrepreneurship.

Soon the community grew and expanded, but we felt there was a missing link if we wanted to go even bigger and farther. To do this, we had to get companies on board, help them change course, change from the inside. So we imagined commonsense, which has become the department working with organizations.

Then came senseschool, an educational branch to train students starting at the beginning of their studies.

And then we thought that if holdups were a first step for entrepreneurs, we could support them more in-depth. So we created the incubator (which in 2020 will welcome its 10th batch) for longer formats, and sprints, open to a wider public, for shorter formats.

Finally, we put the finishing touches to this entrepreneurial package by creating Seed I, our own seed fund, in 2019.

Recently, to leave no one behind, we have begun to approach the public sector: the State and local authorities who have the power to make many innovations possible in their areas.