Africa's Moment
Global Social Benefit Incubator
Global Social Benefit Incubator 2008
Exercise 1: Target Market Statement
GSBI 2008
GSBI 2008 Application
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Frontline Fallout
The last day has been the best and worst of times for us at Kiva. We have experienced an outpouring of support from the American public an order of magnitude greater than ever before....and we couldn't handle it. I'll never forget Halloween 2006.
The day began with a furious push to get more businesses on our site. Our partners all over the world worked overtime to fill our site with loan applications from hundreds of entrepreneurs. We weren't going to run out of businesses this time. Premal and Chelsa did an incredible job at mobilizing our partners to get their businesses posted. Our partners proved that quick scale was possible.
6:00 PM
The show was beginning to air in NYC and all over the East Coast. Many of us were in costumes -- Premal as Chilly Willy and Jeremy as a Greg Bradyish seventies swinger. We projected the site on a huge whiteboard in our office along with the accompanying server statistics that were being updated realtime. Jeremy, in his curly afro and unbuttoned shirt, dictated to the staff on how our server was responding. All was going well at first. The site was getting increased traffic but was working well.
6:35 PM
Suddenly, everything stopped. The site froze and even the server statistics stopped being reported. The NYC viewers decided to hit the site all at once. Our little server didn't stand a chance. It wasn't even close. It's been down ever since. We uploaded a static HTML page asking for patience and offering an email address. Serving up this one static page is maxing out the CPU on the server. This really took the fun out of an otherwise joyous evening.
This is obvious. Kiva failed to take advantage of an incredible opportunity for us and more importantly for the entrepreneurs we serve.
We are now working with a new company who are experts in scaling web applications fast. They are advising us on how to handle high transaction volume and site traffic. If all goes well, we'll be back online tomorrow.
To everyone involved: Kiva Staff, Board, Partners, Entrepreneurs and Lenders. Please accept my apology. Looking back, I didn't do everything I could to prepare Kiva for this event. We couldn't handle the tidal wave of support, but we will.
The day began with a furious push to get more businesses on our site. Our partners all over the world worked overtime to fill our site with loan applications from hundreds of entrepreneurs. We weren't going to run out of businesses this time. Premal and Chelsa did an incredible job at mobilizing our partners to get their businesses posted. Our partners proved that quick scale was possible.
6:00 PM
The show was beginning to air in NYC and all over the East Coast. Many of us were in costumes -- Premal as Chilly Willy and Jeremy as a Greg Bradyish seventies swinger. We projected the site on a huge whiteboard in our office along with the accompanying server statistics that were being updated realtime. Jeremy, in his curly afro and unbuttoned shirt, dictated to the staff on how our server was responding. All was going well at first. The site was getting increased traffic but was working well.
6:35 PM
Suddenly, everything stopped. The site froze and even the server statistics stopped being reported. The NYC viewers decided to hit the site all at once. Our little server didn't stand a chance. It wasn't even close. It's been down ever since. We uploaded a static HTML page asking for patience and offering an email address. Serving up this one static page is maxing out the CPU on the server. This really took the fun out of an otherwise joyous evening.
This is obvious. Kiva failed to take advantage of an incredible opportunity for us and more importantly for the entrepreneurs we serve.
We are now working with a new company who are experts in scaling web applications fast. They are advising us on how to handle high transaction volume and site traffic. If all goes well, we'll be back online tomorrow.
To everyone involved: Kiva Staff, Board, Partners, Entrepreneurs and Lenders. Please accept my apology. Looking back, I didn't do everything I could to prepare Kiva for this event. We couldn't handle the tidal wave of support, but we will.
