Vivek Kundra: Chief Information Officer of the United States

Tumblr Explore

Image by Julia Roy via FlickrThe new Explore feature on Tumblr has been a major time suck. A few days back I started following the tags animals, landscape and tech. Major time suck. So much so I started to ignore the 100 or so people I have been following on Tumblr.

David Noel created a list of techies and VCs a long time ago, and I think I ended up following pretty much everyone on the list. That is what got me started on Tumblr in the first place.

Like David Noel?

Today I started following the tag food, Amy Cao of FoodSpotting is the Top Editor. It's amazing what pictures of food can do to you. No, not make you hungry, that is not what I had in mind. It is the aesthetics of the appreciation.

AVC MeetUp Tomorrow

I think I RSVPd for the AVC MeetUp last week. I am going. It's tomorrow. Fred Wilson might or might not be there. The venue has to be right for him to show up. The MeetUp has to have its own separate space, perhaps the basement, perhaps a room. You can't just host it at an open bar where 20 different crowds are mixing up with each other and expect Fred Wilson to show up.

Sally Shapiro: He Keeps Me Alive

(Via Soraya Darabi)

The Raveonettes: Forget That You’re Young

(Via Fred Wilson)

Rich Kids

Cover of Slumdog Millionaire [Blu-ray]I have taken to dropping by Hacker News near daily after Fred Wilson made the point a few days ago. Today I came across this blog post.

Michael Church: Yes, rich kids already won the career game. Here’s why.: Americans like to believe that the modern workplace, like school, is a meritocracy........ Americans prefer to believe that, among those who do work, side-by-side in the same environment, it’s a fair competition. To their chagrin, they observe that their co-workers from wealthy backgrounds advance three times as fast ..... People in offices are out for themselves, not trying to preserve (or to combat) the social status quo. Rather, this is a subconscious and irresistible force, and it comes from one root cause: rich kids don’t fear the boss. ...... The middle-class kid spends the bulk of his time trying not to offend, not to behave in a way that might jeopardize the job he worked so hard to get and could not easily replace if he lost it. He doesn’t invite himself to meetings, avoids contact with high-ranking executives, and doesn’t offer suggestions when in meetings. Thanks to the fear he experiences on a daily basis, he’s seen as “socially awkward” and “mousy” by higher-ups. Nothing recommends him, and he will not advance. ...... Middle-class kids generally fuck up their first few years of the career game in one of two ways. Either they fear authority tremendously, which is crippling from a career perspective and renders them devoid of creative energy, or they show an open distaste for managerial authority, described by the wealthy as having a proletarian “chip” on one’s shoulder, and fail to advance on account of the dislike they thus inspire. ..... The rich kid, on the other hand, relates even to the highest-ranking executives as equals, because he knows that they are his social equals. He’ll answer to them, but with an understanding that his subordination is limited and offered in exchange for mentoring and protection. He views them as partners and colleagues, not judges or potential adversaries. Perhaps this is counterintuitive, but most of his bosses like this. (Most bosses aren’t assholes and don’t like to be feared, at all. In fact, they’d be happy to forget that they are bosses.) His career advances fast. ......He’s neither a cowering weakling
Image via Wikipediawho crumbles at the sight of authority, nor an obnoxious brat whose sense of entitlement and dislike for managerial authority limit his progress prematurely. He respects others and himself and has an uncanny air of effortless “coolness” (by which I mean freedom from anxiety) that enables him to actually get things done. ....... the majority of rich kids who are well-behaved and decent are valued more highly when their circumstances are discovered. ...... This advantage held by the wealthy, more prominent on the East Coast and outside of technology, is nearly impossible to compete against in most companies. ....... I would advise those who are sufficiently talented to work in technology, which tends to be more meritocratic than other industries, and to avoid old-style business. Beyond that, I know of no solution.

I found this blog post amusing. I am someone who has never had a "job." You know, where you show up eight in the morning wearing a tie? I have never done that. I did note the ode to the technology sector. In a startup, it is not about if you are rich, it is about if you are hungry. For me rich and poor is a global thing. For me it is about dollar a day people and self made billionaires.

Facebook Comments: First Impressions

Image via CrunchBaseI got excited about Facebook Comments right away, long before it got rolled out. I am very much for using real names with comments. When you leave a comment at my blog, I want the option to be able to click over to your Facebook profile if I want to. I want you to stand by what you have to say. I want to meet real people. To me that's the whole point behind the internet, that geography is irrelevant. The blogosphere's appeal is that it allows for a meeting of minds. Facebook Comments takes that to a whole new level. It is more than meeting of minds, it is also meeting real people.

Farmville's Got Competition

Image by haikugirlOz via Flickr

ReadWriteWeb: Look Out Farmville: Angry Birds is Coming to Facebook: The game - in which you fling a variety of birds at things in hopes of knocking them over - is a complete blockbuster with more than 75 million downloads. Several different gaming blogs have reported that Angry Birds' creator, Rovio, has told Wired UK that it is working on a social reinvention of the game for Facebook...... Will Angry Birds take over as the number one game on Facebook? Can it compete with the crack-like qualities of games like Farmville and Cityville?

I'd be curious to know as to how the game reinvents itself for the Facebook platform. I do think they are capable of giving Farmville some serious competition.

Identity And Collective Identities

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeOne of the highlights of Obama 08 for me was this conversation I had with Barack's sister Maya at the downtown Manhattan headquarters late in 2007. I talked to her about a very personal connection I felt with the guy. I asked her about her name. It is an Indian name, Maya, I said.

It was Maya who articulated it for me. She said, "He walks between worlds." That captured it for me. It was then I realized why I connect with the guy so very personally.

Barack Obama walks between worlds.

Chaiyya Chaiyya

Prabhu Deva: Muqabala Muqabala

SXSW: Not Going

Image via WikipediaI was on the phone with a friend earlier in the day. She is going to South By South West for the first time and she is excited. SXSW is in the air.

I have never bought a plane ticket in America. I guess she was trying to convince me to come along. I guess it is too late to sign up for panels and things. But you can go to the parties in the evenings, she said. They are free.

I get the impression South By South West is the Kumbh Mela of tech. More than 10,000 people show up. From all over the country.

Maybe next year. This year it's a pass.

Sean Parker, Billionaire, Was Really Poor Once

“You have got to be willing to be poor [as an entrepreneur]. There was a time when I was living out of a single suitcase. I had a rule that I wouldn’t stay on one person’s couch for more than two weeks because I didn’t want to become a bother.” - Sean Parker

Blogging Works Wonders: Here's An Example

Image by Newton Free Library via FlickrSo I put out this blog post yesterday. Yes-ter-day.

Very Much Would Like To Go Into Bihar

And someone left a comment a few minutes back. Here's a team that is already doing microfinance in the part of the world that is of greatest interest to me: Mithilanchal in Bihar. Mithilanchal is two words, just like Paramendra is two words. Mithila + Anchal (Zone) = Mithilanchal. Param (The Great) + Indra (King of all the 300 million gods and goddesses in the Hindu mythology) = Paramendra.

GroupOn, Zappos, And The Non Tech Components

Image by David Berkowitz via FlickrGroupOn Did Not Launch At South By South West

I dig these two companies for their emphasis on non tech components. Zappos does not sell shoes, it sells phone calls. The emphasis is on customer service. Tony has told his people, talk to the customers for as long as they will talk to you.

GroupOn has boots on the ground. That army of sales people is integral to how GroupOn rolls.

GroupOn Did Not Launch At South By South West

Image via WikipediaGroupOn has grown like crazy. But it was not launched at South By South West. And I have an observation to make.

GroupOn has this very clear offline component to it. It has hired thousands of sales people. And its customer base is your very average person, the Walmart types. They want to save money. They want to save money on haircuts.

That is why you do not hear GroupOn and South By South West in one sentence. I never have. Because GroupOn's early adopters were not the kind of people who end up at South By South West.

Overall I feel good about South By South West. But I also have a word of caution for the crowd. You don't want to end up in some kind of an echo chamber where you are only hearing each other. It is possible to collect too many business cards. What are you going to do with them? Networking is a good thing overall, but too many business cards can also mean a lack of focus.

Like the Kayak.com CEO likes to say, I don't go to events.

A Life Of Poverty

Image via WikipediaI have had my double cheese burger super sized. It was like a six month disappearance - they had Wael Ghonim disappear for 12 days in Egypt, they had me disappear for six months in America, cost me two major victory parties, I guess it is a bigger deal to put a black man into a White (WHITE) House than it is to kick an Arab out - plus the Great Recession - all my investors walked away - plus the Great Immigration Humiliation. But I have not so much as flinched.

Bundling Investors

Image via CrunchBaseFacebook not going IPO is real bad news for the average investors, people who might buy 10 or 20 stocks at $100 each. The growth in wealth that Facebook might see as it moves from a $10 billion valuation to a $50 billion valuation and beyond, all that is going to rich individuals and institutions. If Facebook had gone IPO at a billion dollar valuation, the 50 billion in wealth creation might have gone to average people.

Mobile Phone Banking: Major Boon To The Last Mile Of Microfinance

Image via WikipediaOf all the technologies that I see that can be put to use for microfinance - and I see a lot - the one that most stands out is mobile phone banking, the m-Pesa kind like has spread like wildfire across Kenya.

It is because the last mile is the most complex in the business. And mobile phone banking comes across as this gold standard that can help cut through the thick of all sorts of social, cultural, and bureaucratic issues. This is a case of simple technology beating human flailings to the dust.

Mobile phone banking reduces banking to simple transactions. You do it one simple transaction at a time. And the chips fall in place just fine. Mobile phone banking is like a machete with which you cut through the green thicks as you wade through a tropical forest.

The mobile phone is in a unique position to deliver all sorts of other goodies that will help transform the business. This decade belongs to the mobile phone.

Chris Dixon Is In The Big Leagues Now

Chris Dixon Just Impressed Me Like Never Before
Screw Twitter, Screw Facebook
Greplin: The First Y Combinator Company To Get Me Excited

EatUps Don't Seem To Have A Monthly Rhythm

Image via CrunchBaseToday has been my day for New York City, for Microfinance, for Greplin.

Chris Dixon Just Impressed Me Like Never Before
Screw Twitter, Screw Facebook
Greplin: The First Y Combinator Company To Get Me Excited
Very Much Would Like To Go Into Bihar
Some Serious Biking
TED Talks: Wael Ghonim, Bill Gates
Passion For Microfinance, Passion For Social Media
Walking/Running: Putting One Foot After The Other
Love Is A Symbol
Going High Tech: Selfish Reasons
Microfinance Alone Can't Cure Poverty
Focus, Focus, Focus
I Love This City

But last night I was at the First FoodSpotting First Friday. I was surprised by how many people showed up. At one point I counted 31 people.

Chris Dixon Just Impressed Me Like Never Before

Image by Zach Klein via FlickrFor Chris Dixon to have been an early investor in Greplin, I mean I am mighty impressed. You have to have been party of some kind of an inner circle, you have to have earned your way to being part of that inner circle. Being part of that inner circle was not enough. I mean, the Y Combinator companies present in front of lots and lots of angels and investors. To be able to spot Greplin for the winner that it is, early on, I mean, I am impressed.

Take this for a compliment Dixon. You are even more impressive than I already thought you were. You just earned your Super Angel title in my world. Super Angels pay super attention to the really, really early stage companies. They go straight to the source. They put their ears to the ground. And then listen. For the horse hooves.

Screw Twitter, Screw Facebook
Greplin: The First Y Combinator Company To Get Me Excited

Screw Twitter, Screw Facebook

My number one gripe with both Twitter and Facebook - services I love - has been that - fuck it - I can't even search through all of my own tweets, I can't even search through my own Facebook wall.

Looks like they both needed an outside party to come along and take care of the problem. Daniel Gross, you are a billionaire for doing this.

Greplin



Greplin: The First Y Combinator Company To Get Me Excited

Greplin: The First Y Combinator Company To Get Me Excited

Image via CrunchBaseDon't get me wrong. I am and have been huge on Paul Graham and Y Combinator. Recently I read the name of a friend - 19 years old - in a magazine article. She apparently had graduated from Y Combinator and had just raised a million dollars in funding. I emailed her. Hey, is that you? Yes, it is me, she said. You should also raise money, right now is a great time to do so.

Paul Graham, Brad Feld, Me, BBC

But I have said at this blog a few times that I don't see any iconic company emerging out of Y Combinator. Y Combinator has had a propensity to produce middling companies. A $200 million exist is not impressive.

Greplin

And let me make it very clear I have not been reading up on Y Combinator companies. There must be gems being spewed out every few months. But I only read about companies that show up in the news.

Very Much Would Like To Go Into Bihar

Image via WikipediaI just sent an email to my top microfinance contact in India asking her to look into the "license to transact debt capital cross border" thing that Matt Flannery, one of the founders of Kiva, has raised in a Quora thread.

This is someone I am going to get onto my team. She will telecommute. She has four plus years of experience in microfinance in India in the Chennai region. This has been a good catch.

It is not like I am never going into India. And so if I am eventually going into India, how would I do that? And if I will do those things then, why will I not do those same things now?

I'd be very willing to lobby top politicians in Patna and Delhi as necessary. The Indian government just put tens of millions into microfinance. My message is, take that money and build schools, hospitals, roads. Let someone like me bring money from outside to put into microfinance.

Some Serious Biking

VCA 2010 RACE RUN from changoman on Vimeo.

TED Talks: Wael Ghonim, Bill Gates

Passion For Microfinance, Passion For Social Media

Image via WikipediaWhen you are gelling the DNA of a young company, when you are laying down the rudiments of its culture, when you are slowly building a team, there are decisions you have to make.

Tony of Zappos has a few things to say about the topic. One thing Tony does is after he trains people, he offers them 3,000 dollars to leave. Another thing he does is he lets go the top talented people who deliver when they don't fit into the Zappos corporate culture.

Two obvious things I have figured out are that you have to have a passion for microfinance - duh! - and you have to have a passion for social media if you want to belong on my corporate team.

Walking/Running: Putting One Foot After The Other

Image via WikipediaDoing a tech startup is a lot like walking and running. You put one foot after another. And you can't do that unless you have a very good idea of where you are at a given point in time and where it is you want to go. Both those angles are important.

If you are just starting out, you can't act like you are in a position to hire 10 people. I have gone to events and met amazing people and I have told them I'd love to hire them. True, I'd love to, but right now I can't afford those 10 amazing people.

So the right thing to do would be to not look for amazing people to hire, right? Wrong. I could hire those 10 amazing people in my round two, which might happen in as much as six months, eight months, a year, or as little as four months after the first round of money is raised.

The right people will understand the language. I have talked to two major social media talents about my round two possibilities. And both of them took me seriously. The talk is informal, private, off the record, there is no concrete offer. But it's real.

Love Is A Symbol

Readers might have noticed a slight change at this blog a few days back.

I do love my readers. But that love sign? Okay, that was me trying to implement the new Facebook Comments thing for my blog. I obviously did not do it right. Instead of Facebook Comments, I ended up with the love symbol. Enjoy while it lasts.

Facebook Comments To Go: Facebook Nailed It

Going High Tech: Selfish Reasons

Image by liewcf via FlickrOne big reason I want to go super high tech with my microfinance startup is because I want me and my small core corporate team in New York City to be able to see all aspects of all our operations in near real time. I want my lenders - people who might put in that $100, that $200, at no interest - to be able to see much of the action in the field. I want them to experience that last mile as much as possible.

We are in microfinance, we are not in some kind of a data collection business. But I'd want my folks doing the last mile to think we are in a data collection business. People in the last mile collect data. People in the middle mile - us, the corporate team - make sense of that data. People in the first mile - the lenders - get served some of that data in palatable ways.

Microfinance Alone Can't Cure Poverty

Image by uncultured via FlickrMicrofinance is no magic bullet. Microfinance alone can't cure poverty.

Good governance, I think, is the first precondition. Yunus saw that. That is why he tried to launch a political party in Bangladesh a few years back. But looks like the politicians in Bangladesh have managed to unlaunch him instead.

Focus, Focus, Focus

Image by Austin Yoder via FlickrAt this blog I want to switch to talking primarily about microfinance and the technologies and business practices primarily related to microfinance. The idea is to keep a steep learning curve. The idea is to communicate. The idea is to enter into conversations.

I have done a lot of reading and commenting on broad developments in tech, and I want to keep doing that, but so far that has been the primary thing by a wide margin. I want to narrow that margin. I want to start talking primarily about microfinance.

The three broad conceptual jumps I have made - moving from a non profit model to a for profit model, moving from a low tech model to a very high tech model, and doing the last mile under the same brand name everywhere through the franchise concept - have to be visited again and again.

I Love This City

Every time a train slides into a train station, it feels like an action movie to me.

I love this city. I love the package deal.

I love the energy in Manhattan. I love the mini Global South of the outer boroughs. Every town on earth is represented here.

New Order: Crystal

(Via Soraya Darabi)

Bill Gates On Education: Making Sense

Image via CrunchBaseBill Gates: The Washington Post: How teacher development could revolutionize our schools

Over the past four decades, the per-student cost of running our K-12 schools has more than doubled, while our student achievement has remained virtually flat. Meanwhile, other countries have raced ahead. ...... For more than 30 years, spending has risen while performance stayed relatively flat. Now we need to raise performance without spending a lot more. ....... When you need more achievement for less money, you have to change the way you spend. ....... the single most decisive factor in student achievement is excellent teaching. It is astonishing what great teachers can do for their students. ...... we do very little to measure, develop and reward excellent teaching ....... The value of measuring effectiveness is clear when you compare teachers to members of other professions - farmers, engineers, computer programmers, even athletes. These professionals are more advanced than their predecessors - because they have clear indicators of excellence, their success depends on performance and they eagerly learn from the best. ....... t. The United States spends $50 billion a year on automatic salary increases based on teacher seniority. It's reasonable to suppose that teachers who have served longer are more effective, but the evidence says that's not true. ....... Perhaps the most expensive assumption embedded in school budgets - and one of the most unchallenged - is the view that reducing class size is the best way to improve student achievement. ...... get more students in front of top teachers by identifying the top 25 percent of teachers and asking them to take on four or five more students. Part of the savings could then be used to give the top teachers a raise. ..... 83 percent of teachers said they would be happy to teach more students for more pay

This Guy Jack Dorsey

Image via WikipediaI am reading this profile of Jack Dorsey in Vanity Fair, and it has started to feel eery. I guess I have not known some details about the guy I should have known. First let me say I am an admirer. But I also threw a gauntlet his way recently: Jack Dorsey Also Has A FinTech StartUp. It was all in good faith.

I'd compare my work into Nepal's democracy movement of 2006 to Jack Dorsey's work on Twitter. The difference is my work was so cutting edge, I have not officially been given credit yet.

But look at some of these lines:

Urban strolls are one of Dorsey’s favorite activities ......

Get out of town. Someone just described ME! Urban strolls are one of my favorite activities. The article also says the guy's dream job would be to become Mayor of New York City. Wow. First time I am hearing this. I knew he endorsed Reshma 2010, but I did not realize he was all that political. Warms my heart.

Windows Over The Years

Steve Jobs: iPad 2 Announcement

Empty Spaces/Young Lust: Pink Floyd

(Via Fred Wilson)

The Kiva Story

Image via CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBaseMatt Flannery: 2007: Kiva And The Birth Of Person-To-Person Microfinance: started Kiva in 2005 ..... a growing network of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in more than thirty countries ..... MFI partners post the profiles of their loan applicants to the website ..... small loans via PayPal ..... e businesses pay the lenders back over a period of about a year ..... the human connections we build between lenders and borrowers have brought new lenders ..... One night, she invited me to come hear a guest speaker on the topic of microfinance, Dr. Mohammed Yunus. ...... my first exposure to the topic ..... the page in our workbook that asked: “What are your Career Goals? Matt ‘s Answer: “I want to live in the Bay Area and be an entrepreneur.” Jessica’s Answer: “I want to go to Africa and do microfinance. ...... “Spend as much time together as you can during the first year of marriage.” ....... Her task was to locate as many VEF businesses as possible and measure impact. She asked questions like “Do you take sugar with your tea?” and “Do you sleep on a mattress?” ...... Instead of poverty, we could focus on progress ..... I followed Jessica with my camera through Kenya and Tanzania ...... Using a set of culturally specific questions, Jessica worked to ascertain the quality of life of those she interviewed ...... the painful decisions familiar to anyone who has lived in poverty—whether to pay school fees, put food on the table, or buy medicine for a child suffering from a curable sickness ...... The $500 needed to buy an initial inventory and start a store was too great a barrier. So everyone walked. ...... a self-regulating lending marketplace where microfinance institutions could raise loan capital online to fund projects ...... business plan software ..... forced us to think about costs, revenue,
Image via Wikipedia and, most importantly, our plan for growth. ...... Jessica is an extrovert and very good at developing a web
 of connections. ....... a ten-page “feasibility plan” document printed from our business plan software. It was for an organization we called “Kesho.org.” In Swahili, Kesho means “tomorrow.” ...... It’s eerie reading the plan after all that has happened since then ...... During the period of a loan agreement, investors will receive frequent, real-time updates on the progress of SMEs working to pay back the loan. ...... a beta round involving fifty friends ..... $5,000 in capital for operational costs for the first year, and how we hoped to raise $150K in our first year of business in loans to the poor ....... an historical tension between the donor/lender desire to “know where my money goes” and the recipient organization’s need for efficiency ...... whether it was better to be seen as a charity or as a business ...... breaking existing mental models proved harder than it looked. ...... started to go to microfinance events and conferences ...... the UNDP Global Year in Microcredit Summit at the U.N. headquarters in New York ...... If microfinance is going to have a significant impact on world poverty, the argument goes, then MFIs will need to be integrated into the global economy and tap into the capital markets ...... 50 percent of our users would not lend on the site if Kiva adopted the for-profit model. ...... the vast majority of MFIs don’t qualify for commercial grade investment ...... We began to see person-to-person debt capital as a bridge for MFIs on a journey from donor dependence to tapping into the capital markets ...... almost every U.S.- based microfinance institution was incorporated in this country as a nonprofit. ...... Scalability and commercialization were big questions ..... A cloud of legal uncertainty began to hover over our idea ..... Whenever money is being exchanged between two people, someone in some government somewhere will begin to take notice ...... whether or not you are issuing an investment product to the public. If you are, things can become complicated ...... The SEC maintains a definition for what is and what is not a security. If the SEC rules that you are issuing securities, they require that such securities meet a long list of requirements. ....... a legal minefield ..... the topic of organizational type as it relates to raising money from the public ...... When we were at the end of our rope, the phone rang ..... A third issue was the U.S. Patriot Act ...... One of the first MFIs we were thinking of connecting with operated in Gaza, another in India ........ the process of asking for permission had taken a toll on us. We had reached a point where we didn’t live and breathe this concept anymore. It was no longer rewarding and we had lost touch with the reason we had started at all ....... it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get much traction on the business unless we figured out a way to just start ...... we resolved to “just start” ..... Money and organizations are secondary, people are primary. ...... lending money is all about information exchange. In a sense, money is a type of information ....... Every time you load our website, it should be different ..... a dynamic where philanthropy can actually become addictive ...... We appeal to people's interests, not their compassion. ...... Whenever it is possible to collect data from the field, we collect it. Over time, we will display as much information about our partners, lenders, and borrowers as possible and let the users decide where money flows ...... the lender assumes the default risk. ..... Create loans between people, not necessarily organizations, where Kiva acts as a platform and MFIs act as distributors ..... The SEC seemed to me like a gigantic black box ....... One day, I just decided to cold call the SEC ...... even large scary organizations are made up of normal people and there is a lot to gain by simply reaching out to them in a transparent way ...... if we return interest to users on the Internet, we run the risk of being seen as a securities issuer ....... if we remove the interest rates from the service, the SEC would be unlikely to take notice and consider these loans as securities .... We would have to launch without interest rates on the site. ....... a short, memorable brand can be incredibly important in launching a company ..... I was able to buy it from the squatter for a clean $600. That was perhaps the best $600 I ever spent. ...... my electric guitar for a logo. We had a logo a week later. That was perhaps the best use I ever got out of that guitar ..... Moses Onyango is a pastor in Tororo, Uganda ...... Moses was ready to post and administer the loans of seven entrepreneurs in his community. ....... We emailed about 300 people, and all seven businesses were funded in a weekend. That was April 2005, and we raised $3,500 in a few days. We were blown away; everything worked. It was better than we expected. ....... Moses blogged his heart out, chronicling the intimate business challenges and successes ....... a sustained mental and emotional connection ..... These tiny, interpersonal loans were creating a consciousness that didn’t exist before. ....... At that point, I knew every user in the database. Then a stranger showed up: Premal Shah from PayPal. ...... Jessica and I were confessional, careful, thorough, strategic, and technical. Premal was passionate, charismatic, brilliant, wildly enthusiastic, and reckless ...... Premal continued to focus primarily on building support within both Ebay and PayPal for a corporate microfinance effort. ...... We told Moses to find fifty qualified entrepreneurs in Tororo by October ..... I had received nearly a thousand emails to my Kiva address. I checked the database logs and saw that we had raised about $10K that morning and that all the loans on the site were sold out. Why? We had been featured on the home page of DailyKos, one of the world’s largest blogs. Over a million people had read about Kiva that day and hundreds were actively discussing it online. ...... many of the emails were from MFIs all around the world ...... I heard from MFIs in Bulgaria, Rwanda, Nicaragua, and Gaza. ..... an overwhelming feeling: pain. ..... how much it actually hurt to not fully pursue a passion .... I quit my TiVo job the next Monday. Every day since has seemed more colorful. ..... Pretty soon I was surrounded by a tight group of true believers and my previous pain of distance was leavened by the blessing of community ...... Ebay supported Premal’s decision and to this day supports Kiva by donating to us free payment processing ..... Just a few months into our full commitment to this project, we had assembled an energetic nucleus of people ready to build something big. We hunkered down in Premal’s house and worked there, unpaid, for the first six months ..... The most pressing challenge we faced was to get more businesses on the site ....... creating a partnership program whereby microfinance institutions could use our site as a platform to attract low-cost debt capital—one borrower at a time ....... Signing up partners onto our system presented a significant challenge. We were facing the broken record of criticism that “it won’t scale.” ...... In response to the question, "What is your greatest need?" he overwhelming answer was, "Money for peanut seeds." ...... Fay learned of Kiva through an Internet blog in early 2006. He contacted Kiva ...... Tier 1 MFIs, the largest and most established, account for just 200 of the approximately 10,000 MFIs in existence ...... Many of the 9,800 MFIs are extremely small, opaque, unsustainable, and often impossible to contact internationally. We call this the “long tail” of MFIs ..... Our ability to take risks and dip into the long tail is what differentiates us from the microfinance investment funds ..... no previous credit history or formal, traceable identity .... they use reputational collateral and a hope for future access to funds in order to enforce repayment. ..... It took three months after the DailyKos event to get our first set of MFI partners on the site. By the fall, we had around twenty. As of April 2007, we have nearly forty ...... Sometimes, though, reality surprises you and the picture becomes more colorful than your wildest imagination ...... we needed to quickly expand our partnership base and work with well-vetted, growing, and transparent institutions ...... Africa currently represents only 10.4 percent of microfinance world-wide; the greatest areas of concentration lie in Southeast Asia and Central and South America ..... Microfinance has scaled best in places where crowds of people live in close quarters. Dense populations bring down the transaction costs ...... We came to see ourselves as a technology platform for microfinance institutions alleviating poverty anywhere ...... fascinating to see the similarities and differences in microbusiness across disparate geographies ...... Lenders showed unambiguous preferences according to region, gender, and business type: Africans first, women first, and agriculture first. A female African fruit seller? Funded in hours. Nicaraguan retail stand? Funded in days. A Bulgarian Taxi Driver? Funded in weeks ...... We had completed our 501(c)(3) application in late 2005. By the summer of 2006, we were still waiting. .... For nearly a year, our application was stuck in a pile of papers somewhere in Cincinnati ..... seven out of ten users choose to donate 10 percent on top of their loan to Kiva. For instance, after making a loan of $100, the typical user chooses to pay $10 on top of the loanbringing the total to $110 ..... Float refers to the revenue from the interest accruing in one's bank account ..... Eighty percent of our users re-loan their funds after being repaid ...... Kiva is managing a fund that will grow at well over a factor of two every year for the near future. Kiva earns about 4.5 percent interest in its bank account ..... That summer, however, Kiva was crawling along at $1000-$2000 in loans and 25 new users a day. ..... Running out of options, I ran the idea of becoming a for-profit by the board, but they shot it down unanimously. ...... filming for Frontline World on PBS. ..... The 15-minute piece ....... Like being in DailyKos a year earlier, the Frontline event was a gamechanging moment for the organization ...... Overnight, our loan volume went from approximately $3K per day to approximately $30K per day ..... Our lender base before the piece was around 6K. Today, it is around 60K. Before the show, we had processed $500K total in loan volume. By April 2007 we had processed around $5.5M cumulative and have a goal of being at $12M cumulative by the end of 2007. The Frontline piece was fundamental in making this happen. ....... e took our nonprofit from a point of financial crisis to a relatively healthy state ...... PayPal donates free transaction processing to us, which means we aren’t charged the usual 3% of every transaction ...... single mindedness unlocked a potential I never knew existed ..... what people can achieve when they lay their egos at the alter of something greater than themselves ...... recipients resent benefactors even as they consume the aid. ...... A benefactor assumes that the poor need your help to escape. A colonizer assumes the poor cannot escape. However, both share a common assumption—the poor are helpless ....... interest rates, which turn a charitable relationship into a business relationship, empower the poor by making them business partners ...... a deeper integration between daily decisions and core values. ...... the mobile devices loan officers carry as information retrieval tools ...... A data-rich system is inherently more transparent. Transparency allows more accurate risk assessments ....... In many places, the Kiva website is serving as the first ever public record of a particular person’s existence ...... the Internet is a promising platform for housing portable credit ratings. One day a borrower moving from one MFI to another, or one country to another, will be able to point to a Kiva profile as a reference point for creditworthiness. ..... Although microfinance can be an amazing tool to fight poverty, it can also be quite harmful when placed in the wrong hands. Predatory lending, fraud, and mismanagement are commonly cited in cases of MFIs that get it wrong ....... extensive offline monitoring ..... an international auditing and visitation program .... This will help us communicate to our users the financial health of our partners, the truthfulness of the information posted on the site, and the extent to which we are fulfilling our mission of alleviating poverty ...... This model thrives on information, not marketing ...... default and delinquency rates will fluctuate ..... Crises in a particular region—political, economic, or natural disaster– will cause temporary drops in repayment rates that will eventually stabilize ..... I firmly believe that repayment rates will stabilize at well over 90 percent .... Kiva is different from the typical international development organization in that the platform will deliberately show the negative as well as the positive stories. Thus, in cases where things go bad, our lenders will know.

Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn

Image via CrunchBaseSocial media is going to be so fundamental to all aspects of my company's operations that I have decided to put that into the DNA, into the culture. When you apply for a job with me, you email me the web addresses of your presences on these four platforms - Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn - and a few paragraphs of who you are and why you are the best person for the job. That is where the conversation starts.

Obviously everyone on my corporate team is going to stay active on those four platforms. Obviously you are going to end up with some level of transparency, you are going to end up with what might look like a jellyfish organization. Overall I think that is a good thing.

Architecture in Helsinki: Contact High

(Via Soraya Darabi)

Human Planet

Best Thing I Read Today

I really, really like this guy. Matt Damon. The three Bourne movies are my favorite action movies.

What Disqus Can Learn From Boxee

Image via CrunchBaseBoxee is the big dog. It's not Apple TV, it's not Google TV. Wordpress beats Blogger. When you think check in, you are more likely to think FourSquare than Facebook. There is something about the nimble startup that is focused on one mission.

Facebook just threw a big one in the direction of Disqus, a service I love.

South By South Best

Chomp

(Via TechCrunch)

Me: Author

Cover via Amazon

Business Insider: This 26-Year-Old Is Making Millions Cutting Out Traditional Publishers With Amazon Kindle: 26-year old Amanda Hocking is the best-selling "indie" writer on the Kindle store, meaning she doesn't have a publishing deal ...... She gets to keep 70% of her book sales -- and she sells around 100,000 copies per month. ..... Hocking sells her books for $3, and some $.99. ..... she can make more on volume, especially impulse buys. Meanwhile e-books cost nothing to print, you don't have to worry about print volumes, shelf space, inventory

I write, I write a lot, I write daily, but I am not a writer. I get offended when I get called a writer. I am not. A writer. No.

People who disrespect my political work into the Nepal democracy movement of 2006 call me a journalist. Fuck no. I am not a journalist. That was digital activism. That was political work.

Never Say Never

TechCrunch: What Every Entrepreneur Could Learn from Justin Bieber: Justin Bieber is unbelievably entrepreneurial and most of you will never know it because he serves a target demo that doesn’t include you. ..... t in 10 years he’ll be a mainstream talent rather than a pre-teen girl wonder ..... the new Justin Bieber movie, “Never Say Never.” I was initially skeptical, but it was a pure delight for me from start to finish ..... Justin Bieber is a self-made entrepreneurial success. ...... a kid from a non-privileged background and single mother who makes it big through natural talent plus tons of hard work and a belief that he can do it despite everybody telling him he can’t ...... how hard Justin worked to achieve his dream ..... He was told he’d never have a big following. He was told he’d never be able to play on radio let alone Madison Square Garden. He sold out MSG in 22 minutes. ..... Justin Bieber was discovered by Scooter Braun who saw him on YouTube. ..... was relentless in convincing Justin’s mom to come to Atlanta ..... didn’t take no for an answer and even fronted all of Justin’s costs to get him to come to Atlanta. Think of Scooter as Justin’s angel investor. ....... None of the major labels wanted to pick him up and none of the local radio stations wanted to play his music. ...... So they set out a grassroots effort to go directly to the market. Bieber went across the entire country in a bus and on an airplane to meet with every DJ in the country whether they would play him or not. ...... you can’t have a great marketing program around a mediocre product. You need to start with an amazing product ...... , Justin’s is 8-15 year-old girls and he built his music & persona around this demo. ...... getting out and talking directly with customers ...... evangalizing yourself, meeting key influencers, meeting customers, taking feedback, refining your product and winning people over. ......Bieber Tweeted constantly when he would be at a radio station. Girls started appearing to get his autograph. At first it was 10-20 girls, then 40, then 80 then he started getting malls shut down due to safety concerns of local police. He mastered the art of going direct to his audience via Twitter. ...... find free marketing opportunities ..... Bieber also uploaded all of his stuff onto YouTube. .. There’s nothing like having YouTube fans to prove to labels that you can sell music. ...... you need to engage directly with your audience. ..... just grab your nearest niece or nephew and tell your friends that you only went because you wanted to be a good uncle or aunt.