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You are finding me at an interesting time.
We just launched Kiva. Kiva is a startup focused on connecting lenders with micro-businesses online. We provide the world's first and only online micro-lending opportunity and just opened to the public 3 weeks ago. We have now started over 30 businesses in Uganda and are scaling at a rapid pace. This is too much to summarize in a blog entry, so to find out more, go here. A HUGE blog, Daily Kos, covered us today. Thank you Daily Kos. In a couple of hours, your members funded every business we currently have. It was an incredible day.
Kiva is all about connecting people. Let me now introduce you to the people who are responsible for Kiva.
Jessica, my wife, and I came up with Kiva together. Kiva is a manifestation of what can happen when two people love eachother, spend every moment together, and allow imaginations to go places together that would have never been explored alone. For this reason, among others, it has been an amazing experience.
Moses Onyango is a man I met in a Nairobi hotel 1.5 years ago, and serves as a representative for Village Enterprise Fund (VEF) in Uganda. Moses has enabled us to work successfully with our first partner, VEF. He has been simply brilliant in finding successful businesses around Tororo and Soroti Uganda. He talks about goat herding and fish mongering the way a VC talks about semi-conductors and solar power.
Brian Lehnen is the head of VEF in the US, and has opened every door for us to run a successful online micro-lending operation. I first ran the idea past Brian in March 2004. "Nothing you just said sounds impossible" he said (this was the most positive thing I had heard yet). Brian has gone out to lunch with us on a regular basis for 2 years and is the reason we went to East Africa in the first place. VEF has started over 9,000 businesses in East Africa. I have a lot to learn from this man.
This blog will most likely be a mixture of my thoughts of what is happening now mixed in with stories from the past. It will chronicle what happens as Kiva goes from a beta-round startup with an important idea to a more significant endeavor with wider reach.
Thanks for reading.
Matt
We just launched Kiva. Kiva is a startup focused on connecting lenders with micro-businesses online. We provide the world's first and only online micro-lending opportunity and just opened to the public 3 weeks ago. We have now started over 30 businesses in Uganda and are scaling at a rapid pace. This is too much to summarize in a blog entry, so to find out more, go here. A HUGE blog, Daily Kos, covered us today. Thank you Daily Kos. In a couple of hours, your members funded every business we currently have. It was an incredible day.
Kiva is all about connecting people. Let me now introduce you to the people who are responsible for Kiva.
Jessica, my wife, and I came up with Kiva together. Kiva is a manifestation of what can happen when two people love eachother, spend every moment together, and allow imaginations to go places together that would have never been explored alone. For this reason, among others, it has been an amazing experience.
Moses Onyango is a man I met in a Nairobi hotel 1.5 years ago, and serves as a representative for Village Enterprise Fund (VEF) in Uganda. Moses has enabled us to work successfully with our first partner, VEF. He has been simply brilliant in finding successful businesses around Tororo and Soroti Uganda. He talks about goat herding and fish mongering the way a VC talks about semi-conductors and solar power.
Brian Lehnen is the head of VEF in the US, and has opened every door for us to run a successful online micro-lending operation. I first ran the idea past Brian in March 2004. "Nothing you just said sounds impossible" he said (this was the most positive thing I had heard yet). Brian has gone out to lunch with us on a regular basis for 2 years and is the reason we went to East Africa in the first place. VEF has started over 9,000 businesses in East Africa. I have a lot to learn from this man.
This blog will most likely be a mixture of my thoughts of what is happening now mixed in with stories from the past. It will chronicle what happens as Kiva goes from a beta-round startup with an important idea to a more significant endeavor with wider reach.
Thanks for reading.
Matt
