The Bitly Story

The Bitly of today was not the Bitly that got launched. Bitly was launched by visionary founders as a site where if you got bit by a dog, you would take the picture of the dog, the bite, and your face in pain, and you would post the pictures online to share with the world. That was the idea. But it was way ahead of its times. The word spotting had not been invented yet.

And so Bitly pivoted and became the URL shortener that you know today. And it has been quite a success, would you say?

Alexa's PaperlessPost

Image via CrunchBaseI first met Alexa Hirschfeld when she was sitting on a panel during Social Media Week 2010. We have met here and there, stayed in touch, an email here, an email there. I brought this idea months ago. I said let me do a few blog posts about your startup. Finally looks like I get to do it. We are meeting Friday. She says they just moved to a new office. It is near Union Square. Most tech startups in Manhattan are near Union Square for some reason.

This is not going to be an act of journalism. I am not a journalist. This is not a professional blogger out to gather material either. This is one tech entrepreneur reaching out to another. But this is the age of social media, so it is not just going to be a let's-catch-up kind of conversation. The conversation will happen and then it will spill over to my blog, which is just fine by Alexa.

A Small, Historic EatUp

So around noon I showed up. Oleg was there, his wife was there, his brother was busy serving.

Amy Cao of FoodSpotting showed up. This was not my first time seeing Amy, but this was my first time talking. And we talked at length.

There was this guy. He said he was just passing through town. He was in the city for a few months. He showed up. He said he knew Amy from meeting her at a few events.

So when it was time for the group photo, it is this guy and me, with Amy taking the shot. And I am feeling a little awkward. I hope she got the truck in the background. The truck matters. I am just an eater.

Both the dude and Amy took pictures of my food. My lunch was on the house.

Amy and I first talked on Twitter. Then I saw her briefly at the FoodSpotting panel the first day of Social Media Week, but did not get to talk.

Microfinance: The Basics

Image via WikipediaThe basic premise behind microfinance is simple: access to credit is basic, it is a human right. You give people three tools - education, health, credit - and they fly. Traditional credit has depended on your ability to put down some collateral. And that has cut off a large swath of humanity. There are over a billion people who live on less than a dollar a day. There are over two billion people who live on less than two dollars a day.

Yunus in Bangladesh has proven the default rate among these small borrowers tends to be really, really low. 98% of those who borrow pay back. That is a much better rate than rich people and corporations in New York City. Their default rate is higher.

So what gives? Why were mad men bankers pouring trillions into real estate and shady finance tools a few years back instead of pumping that money into microfinance? Stupidity. Racism.

You can't build enough schools and colleges and print enough textbooks on time. But you can hope to take everyone online. Similarly microfinance has to be taken to all those people. Microfinance is the ultimate fishing net.

When Zuck's Facebook Account Got Hacked

BBC: January 26: Facebook blames bug for Zuckerberg 'hacking': Facebook has said "a bug" was to blame for an odd posting purporting to come from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. ..... Overnight, the cryptic message was posted to the Facebook fan page in the name of the 26-year old billionaire founder. .... It called for the site to become a "social business" with investment from its users. .... The message, left in the name of Mr Zuckerberg, read: "Let the hacking begin: If Facebook needs money, instead of going
Image via Wikipediato the banks, why doesn't Facebook let its users invest in Facebook in a social way? ..... "Why not transform Facebook into a 'social business' the way Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus described it?" ..... Muhammad Yunus is a Nobel Peace Prize winner and the founder of the Grameen Bank, which offers small loans to people who have no collateral to get started in business...... The message also linked to a recently edited Wikipedia article about social business and asked readers: "what do you think?"

The English Patient

The Google/Facebook Of Microfinance

Image via WikipediaThere are five broad categories on the cutting edge: web tech, clean tech, bio tech, nano tech, fin tech.

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Google and Facebook fall within the web tech domain. Google is the next Google. There is no next Google. Facebook is the next Facebook. There is no next Facebook.

But there remains a Google/Facebook size opportunity in mobile tech, which is a sub category of web tech.

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