We went on an amazing trip to LA last week. Jeremy, Fiona and I took route 99 all the way home through cloud after cloud of cow smell. The agricultural central valley is stunning on a sunny day.

Premal is a tireless people person. The more people he talks to, the more energy he has. A 2-day conference on Microfinance last week was fuel for his fire.

A scene:

Premal and I are in the conference lobby, between panels, tracking the daily volume on Kiva.org. The new website has more than doubled the conversion rate on our site and we are scrambling once again to get our partners to post more businesses on the site. It is a puzzle to match supply to demand on the internet, and now we are doing about $3000 per day. This speaks to the power of usability and design on the (double) bottom line.

So we are sitting there and we hear a voice over the wall of the lobby computer cubicle. A Bangledeshi accent gives it away: It's Dr. Mohammed Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank and future Nobel Laureate. We have an amazing confluence: Dr. Yunus and the internet in one place. Awkwardly, we stood up and peered over the cubicle wall.

"Dr. Yunus, do you mind taking a look at our website really quick?" Premal asked.

We go to walk him through the site and we can now say that Dr. Yunus has used Kiva.org. Too bad we stopped just short of making a loan. Dr. Yunus is, at very least, a huge reason why we started Kiva in the first place. Over 2 years ago we saw him speak at Stanford about how he started Grameen. Pretty soon after that, Jess quit her job and went to Africa. 2 years after that, I quit mine. I told him the story and he listened intently in the same way that he probably listens to everyone he meets.

Here's Fiona, Premal and I with Dr. Yunus:




Later that night:

We had a meeting with another pioneer: Tom Anderson of MySpace.com . My friend Sundeep Ahuja is a Product Manager at MySpace and was able to introduce us to Tom -- who has about 70 million friends (73493129 today to be exact). Tom has, from time to time, promoted certain causes on his MySpace profile. He mentioned that last week he linked to NPR and crashed the site for a day. Will he promote Kiva? Maybe, he said, but we all agree that wouldn't be the best idea at the moment. If he can crash the NPR server, I can only fear what would happen to ours.






The ending comment here may be obvious: Is Kiva really bringing together microfinance and social networking? I think so, at least in some respects. The virtual bulletin board of Tororo, Uganda might be the first example of this. More on that later this week...

This is a blog entry which doesn't highlight how tired I am. Why? For once, in a long while, I'm not. I'm relieved. Jeremy and I are on the verge of completing a software project which began in mid January and took slightly longer than we anticipated. We, along with Carl, essentially rewrote the Kiva web application. The code that will be up there on Monday will be a complete replacement of last year's code. We didn't add a ton of new user facing features to this release, instead we concentrated on the partner interface. As of Monday, our partners will be able to directly post businesses to the site, thus creating a much more distributed work dynamic.

Outside of this, there is a lot to report.

First, we just signed up and posted a new partner CREDIT, which is an MFI based in Cambodia that works in the World Relief network. We are honored to be in partnership. Our businesses section, today, displays 5 Cambodian entrepreneurs needing loans. The pictures they sent are some of the best I've seen on our site. Our first foray into Asia!

Second, Carl arrived in Uganda on Monday. I was sleeping on Jeremy's floor, in the middle of a 72 hour coding spree, and was awoken by Moses at the ungodly hour of 9 AM. Moses started the call like any Moses call, with a sequence of pleasantries and formal greetings characteristic of an East African orator. I responded to his speech with sleepy grunts. Then, he really surprised me by passing the phone to carl, who had just flown in. They were calling me from Moses' cell from the Kampala airport. It was quite disorienting to hear Carl and Moses on the same line. My worlds have truly collided.

Third, Premal Shah, from Paypal has formally joined Kiva as President. Premal and I will make a two person leadership team while Jessica calls the shots from behind the scenes as a student at the Stanford GSB. All three of us are now on the board. There is a long story as to how Premal ended up as the President of Kiva and it will come out piece by piece in blog entries to come. All I can say now is that having Premal at Kiva instantly boosted it's future hopes by an order of magnitude. If Kiva was a stock, it would have doubled with that announcement. Thank you Premal, you are a godsend to Kiva and an amazing partner to have on this journey.

Last, thank you Jessica for putting up with me over the last three months. For the most part, I was gone from the house -- spread across internet cafes and donut shops all over the Bay Area. I needed your support and you gave it to me. Thanks. I'm gonna go to bed early tonite.

I'm tired. I've been up all hours getting ready to rollout a new software release. Such nights take me through a progression of Mission Neighborhood cafes. If it gets really bad, all the cafes close and I find myself at Happy Donut, where I watch the police filter in and out. The other night, I learned that the police don't necessarily have to pay for coffee at a San Francisco Donut shop. I watched a kind policeman come in, smile widely at me, pour himself some coffee, and leave. Yee, the kind owner of the shop, didn't look twice. I guess there is some unspoken agreement.

Saturday morning, I awoke to this nice message from Moses. Moses rightly marked April 1st as the one year anniversary of Kiva's first loan. Since that time, we've started almost 200 businesses and Moses has been interviewd by the BBC, NPR and others. I was too tired to note this great occurence, but he did:

Dear Matt and Jessica,
I count it as a complete blessings to three of us seeing Kiva in existance to day.
Today is Kiva's first anniversary on active loan to businesses in Uganda. We started the first seven businesses on the 1st of April 2005. I thank God for all what we went through, for at the begining Kiva seemed in the eyes of people as Moses- Matt game.
I kept on writting very interesting Journals that impressed people all over the world. Some of your friends were making comments on my writings and some would say that you were lucky to have meet Moses because he is the only faithful African we have seen so far.
I know that people struggled to believe that Kiva would succeed in her operations. Through our joint prayers and hard work, today Kiva family has expanded beyond Moses-Matt idiology. Other trusted Africans have joined the race of development through Kiva loan scheme.
My brother and Sister when I see all these things happening, it humbles me very much before God.
I know that we still have a long way to go to make Kiva's vision stand strong even during the time of storms.
I count my self very previleged to be as part of the founders of Kiva. I will leave to love and support Kiva.
Tomorrow Im planing for thanks giving prayers for Kiva in the church. Our church has stood with all of us in prayers for Kiva success. During your time of consultation with the lawyers and even the _____ meetings, they prayed for us.
Let us all rejoice for what God is doing to Kiva through us.
Yours in Christs Love,
Moses.