Kiva is once again taking on an Eastern European/Central Asian flavor.  As you check the website from now until the end of the year, you should see a high concentration of Bulgarians, Azerbaijanis, Moldovans, Tajikistanis and the like.  

There are two factors strongly at play here.  1) The presence of many highly-dependable and scaleable micro-finance institutions in that part of the world and 2) The fact that loans from these regions are the least desired on the site.  Recently, it's been taking 1 day on average for a loan to become fully funded.  The Azerbaijani loans take 3.7 days to be funded on average and are only 30% larger in dollar amount.  Why is that?  Who knows...

Premal is in Kenya.  Among other things, he is consulting with an ailing WEEC and helping kickstart our partnership with BRAC in East Africa.  WEEC, as many here know, suffered a huge loss with the passage of Jedidah Waigwa last Spring.  Ever since then, they have had trouble moving forward and are experiencing over 30% delinquency across their Kiva portfolio.  This has raised an important question inside our organization:  How much should we get involved in building the capacity of our partner base?  How much should we intervene when a partner is in turmoil?  In this case, we've pretty much made up our minds -- we are doing *alot*.  More on that in the months to come...

BRAC -- the world's largest NGO(?) -- is a slightly sunnier development.  BRAC is a modern marvel and has recently taken its recipe for microfinance into the eastern shores of Africa.  As a Bangledeshi organization moving continents, one might perceive potential difficulties in setting up operations.  None-so-far from everything we've heard.  Interest rates: relatively low.  Repayment rates: relatively high.  Portfolio growth: extremely fast. 

Premal had significant cargo to carry.  The Kenyan and Ugandan border crossings can be intimidating.  How would they react to a party with 25 cameras?  Often, governments want to get into your goods.  We haven't heard back, but I assume he arrived safe -- cameras and all.  Often, cameras are a surprising last mile barrier between borrowers and thousands of dollars in low cost debt pouring through the Kiva website. 

We have a donor -- Laurent Drion of Brussels -- who makes sure that lack of cameras are no excuse.  Laurent, a venture capitalist, started one of the biggest Macintosh distribution businesses in Belgium.  The man moves consumer electronics  -- now to Africa.    Thank you Laurent.  Soon, cameras will be flashing for BRAC in Tanzania, Uganda and Southern Sudan.  Sudan?  You can do microfinance there?  If anyone can, BRAC can.

When I was an undergrad at Stanford, I had trouble articulating what I wanted to do after school.  The best I could say was that I wanted to be an "entrepreneur."   That, however, is not very specific -- more of an adjective than an occupation.  I racked my brain in my free time to try and figure out how everything would eventually materialize. 

Graduation was a looming worry.  School ended in June.  By April, I had secured my first job....summer intern at a startup called "Pinacus."  We were 11 guys and 1 girl, working out of an apartment in Menlo Park.  I worked in the bedroom, programming in Java and doing random tasks around the apartment.  We were trying to create the world's first "content marketplace."  That might have been a good idea, except for what happened in the Spring of 2000. 

I had no concept of how a stock market crash could effect our small angel-backed startup, but it didn't matter.  By July, I was unemployed.  We folded up shop, broke our lease, and returned half of the angel investment.  Our model needed a significant round of Venture Capital.  I watched the founders come home disappointed day after day from their meetings on Sand Hill road.  It wasn't their fault -- most VCs were completely clamped shut. 

Freedom was good.  A week after the layoffs, I boarded the back of a U-haul truck on the way to New York.  Garth was moving to Manhattan and I tagged along.  He didn't let me drive because he didn't trust me behind the wheel.  I spent the entire voyage in the cargo area in the back.  We arrived in NYC in 3 days and only stopped once for any period of time.  Omaha baby.