Daring to reimagine the panhandling economy (opens in new tab)

Photographer here...

So I was just thinking: when was the last time a founder conducted a UX interview with a panhandler? Looking back on reporting this story, it strikes me that I don't know any startup people involved with the homeless community (besides the HandUp team). I hope I'm wrong on this, but I suspect it'll be a while before I see another CEO chase down a panhandler to talk about a text message user flow.

As we move more and more into a cashless society, ideas like this are just going to get more important. It's also very interesting explicitly turning giving money to the homeless into a personal donation, which seems to me has a different connotation than just giving somebody a couple of bucks.