Changemakers: Bas van Abel is fuelling our appetite for less disposable tech

My 3 tips for success

1. Be strategically naïve. If you’re too invested in all the reasons why your field works the way it does, your ambition will be dampened before you can act on it.
2. Be transparent about your company’s shortcomings. People trust authenticity.
3. Refuse to settle for the status quo, but don’t be dogmatic – you have to play by the rules some of the time.

They soon ironed out the practical details with the help of a development team in China. But instead of upholding an idealised notion of their product, the Fairphone team took a radical business approach: vulnerability. They were honest with customers about their product’s shortcomings: it was true that they were working from a ‘conflict-free’ mine, but it was also the case that Chinese labour conditions on the Fairphone production line were poor.

The founder held his hands up, ready to make changes when Fairphone had the resources, and it worked. Within a year and a half 60,000 of the phones had been sold and Fairphone had 40 employees.

Van Abel, who had never run a company, was now CEO and getting to grips with balance sheets. It was a steep learning curve, but it was “fantastic,” he says, describing it as having “the typical Silicon Valley startup feeling, combined with purpose”. But never settling, he sensed it was time for a shift of focus. He realised that they could invest money in mines and help improve working conditions, but that ultimately it shouldn’t be part of their model at all because of mining’s environmental effects.

Sustainability was soon at the core of the operation; van Abel was fascinated by the prospect of creating a modular phone that customers could easily repair themselves using inexpensive spare parts – a far cry from common smartphones, their batteries glued in and lifespan frustratingly short.

Changing the relationship between consumer and product, he says, is “the sustainability holy grail”. Creating phones people could hold on to for longer would mean a drop in production, which would dramatically reduce Fairphone’s carbon footprint. Van Abel laughs, envisioning himself as a CEO announcing to shareholders that his plan was to have consumers buy fewer products. “That’s the difference between being a social enterprise and being one of the big companies. You can engage with the dilemmas that your business model creates.” Fairphone 2 launched and again, van Abel proved that consumers were desperate for guilt-free tech.

Two weeks ago, van Abel stepped down as CEO, explaining that a company at this stage requires skills different from his own. He’ll join the supervisory board after a short sabbatical spent with his family, chasing new projects and – he hopes – taking a breath for the first time in five years. He hopes the social enterprise will continue to grow, his perspective unchanged from when he launched it: success for Fairphone puts change on the horizon of a wasteful industry.

Illustration: Lyndon Hayes