Early August Updates

Life is busy as ever. The primary task -- building an organization to last. Some news:

-- We've added some amazing people to the team. In the last month we've added an illustrious engineer Jon Kart, a VP of microfinance Isabelle Barres from the MixMarket, a microfinance expert John Berry and a Finance Director Jen Hamilton. Hiring in a period of growth is a significant time commitment, but the commitment pays off many-fold when you hire the right people. These new friends are going to start paying huge dividends soon for Kiva.

-- Our focus these days is managing the mounting risk on our site as we start sending larger and large sums to the microfinance field partners in our network. Our solution is to be transparent to lenders about the risks of lending on our platform. To that end, we've created a risk rating system to be displayed to our user base which will go live later this week. This is one of the most significant accomplishments in our short history and is the culmination of nearly 6 months of work.

-- We are making a significant move to do more work in the field. Finally, we are at a point where we can afford this it makes incredible sense. We've sent over 40 Kiva fellows to the field, are conducting audits all around the world, and are signing up new MFIs by actually visiting them and training them. In our first year we had very few partners in South and Central America. We are just rectifying that by signing up high quality partners there, for instance Pro Mujer Bolivia and FINCA Peru.

-- I've been trailed by a Japanese film crew for the last week. NHK Japan is doing a series on social entrepreneurship and I've learned a lot about the evolving attitudes towards social issues in Japan thanks to a week hanging out with the crew. It's been a learning experience and so much fun to spend time with the crew. Hopefully, we will be able to handle the outpouring of Japanese interest later this year when the show goes live!

-- Kiva continues to face chronic shortages in businesses to fund as we try to accomodate the growing lender interest while managing risk on our platform. We've limited user transactions to $25 per user for the rest of the month to deal with the shortage. We live in crazy times!

-- I'm off to Aspen Colorado tomorrow to spend the rest of the week at the Brookings Institute conference on Poverty. I'm excited about the event but it will be hard to be away from home.

-- Jess and I just completed a move back to the Mission District/Noe Valley area where Kiva began. Her graduation from the Stanford GSB prompted the move and it is incredible to realize the dream of walking to work.

-- Jess just took off for a trip to West Africa to visit MFI partners there and she is working again for Kiva dealing with some of our relationships with MFIs in the field. It is amazing to be working together but hard to be apart.

-- We moved to a new office to accomodate the growth. Our team is in the process of moving from 10 to 20 people and needed a better space to handle the new activity. The new place is intimidatingly professional.

-- Kiva will be on the Today show this week or next. This is another humbling episode in a series of media events about Kiva and social entrepreneurship.

More to come.