AMSTERDAM: Beneath the low beams of a converted warehouse in Amsterdam lives a company with many of the attributes of a Silicon Valley startup, except that at less than a year old it has zero venture capital and says it is already making enough money to sustain itself.
Fairphone started in 2010 as a campaign against smartphone makers’ use of conflict minerals. Last year, after a series of artistic and social protests to highlight what it says are injustices in global supply chains, its founders decided to make and sell phones of their own.