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Global Social Benefit Incubator 2008
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Catfood and Commoditization
Last month I was at Google Zeitgiest in London. I was able to see the esteemed Salmon Rushdie speak about his new book, The Enchantress of Florence. He gave me a signed copy after the talk, it was a big honor. It's right here on my mantle. It's about time I started to read it. This week, I promise.
The speakers at Zeitgeist included Queen Rania of Jordan, Gordon Brown, Larry, Sergei and many more. I was most excited to see Mr. Rushdie. He's a big Google user, getting all of his news straight from news.google.com. He also spoke about Facebook and Youtube which contribute to what he calls the "endless confession" that we are seeing pour out over the social web. Youth, globally, are uploading terrabytes of data about the most trivial issues. A sea too big to parse through.
Certainly this blog at times has been part of my confession. It's pretty easy to confess things here that I would never think about confessing in other mediums. My Blog, My Powerbook, Sunday evening. Who knows what I will write. Thankfully, Kiva is not a public company.
Kiva is seeing these days seeing an uptick in pet pictures posted in lender profiles. Lenders love their pet pics maybe moreso than they love their own headshots. Cats, more than dogs, make great lenders on the site and together these cat herds have lent many millions of dollars to real people in 40+ countries. American kitties are having a huge social impact and it is cute.....sort of.
The entrepreneurs on the site don't get the chance to mask themselves behind a feline facade. Rather, they are baring it all: their work, their families, their struggles, their finances and most importantly their hope for a better life. Most of the time, they don't fully understand the role of the Internet and that their funding is coming from dozens of computer users in over 70 countries who want them to succeed. Explaining the people aspect of this is hard enough. How could a person in Fresno really care about me here in Samoa? Explaining the dynamic gets even trickier when the entrepreneurs scans a printout of her lenders and sees that a cat is actually her main financier.
I heard a story recently from a Kiva Fellow stationed in Africa who, when showing the entrepreneur his lenders, was asked the cat question. How does that work? Why has a cat lent to me? How can a cat lend to me? Does that cat really want his money back? (he looks pretty fat).
We had never trained our Fellows to answer this question, and there was no prepared response. The fellow postulated "Well, maybe he needs to buy catfood???"
Oh man!
I just heard this story for the first time last week and it was pretty disturbing. Kiva is all about connecting people over disparate worlds as equal business parters. It will be harder and harder to make the case that we are fulfilling our mission as cats become an increasing constituency among the lenders. I'm sorry, you can't be a business partner with a cat. Certainly, it can be very degrading to learn that the pet of an American was able to make a life changing loan to your business in Western Kenya. Are we commoditizing, rather than dignifying the low-income entrepreneurs getting loans on our site? If so, we need to pull a u-turn fast.
Two summers ago I had the joy of hosting my Kenyan friend Rowland in San Francisco. The one thing that amazed him the most was the pet store in Noe valley. He was visibly shaken. Cats in SF enjoy an existence much more comfortable than most in his country. The resources available for a Noe cat are overwhelming. No wonder they become lenders. They have it all.
The speakers at Zeitgeist included Queen Rania of Jordan, Gordon Brown, Larry, Sergei and many more. I was most excited to see Mr. Rushdie. He's a big Google user, getting all of his news straight from news.google.com. He also spoke about Facebook and Youtube which contribute to what he calls the "endless confession" that we are seeing pour out over the social web. Youth, globally, are uploading terrabytes of data about the most trivial issues. A sea too big to parse through.
Certainly this blog at times has been part of my confession. It's pretty easy to confess things here that I would never think about confessing in other mediums. My Blog, My Powerbook, Sunday evening. Who knows what I will write. Thankfully, Kiva is not a public company.
Kiva is seeing these days seeing an uptick in pet pictures posted in lender profiles. Lenders love their pet pics maybe moreso than they love their own headshots. Cats, more than dogs, make great lenders on the site and together these cat herds have lent many millions of dollars to real people in 40+ countries. American kitties are having a huge social impact and it is cute.....sort of.
The entrepreneurs on the site don't get the chance to mask themselves behind a feline facade. Rather, they are baring it all: their work, their families, their struggles, their finances and most importantly their hope for a better life. Most of the time, they don't fully understand the role of the Internet and that their funding is coming from dozens of computer users in over 70 countries who want them to succeed. Explaining the people aspect of this is hard enough. How could a person in Fresno really care about me here in Samoa? Explaining the dynamic gets even trickier when the entrepreneurs scans a printout of her lenders and sees that a cat is actually her main financier.
I heard a story recently from a Kiva Fellow stationed in Africa who, when showing the entrepreneur his lenders, was asked the cat question. How does that work? Why has a cat lent to me? How can a cat lend to me? Does that cat really want his money back? (he looks pretty fat).
We had never trained our Fellows to answer this question, and there was no prepared response. The fellow postulated "Well, maybe he needs to buy catfood???"
Oh man!
I just heard this story for the first time last week and it was pretty disturbing. Kiva is all about connecting people over disparate worlds as equal business parters. It will be harder and harder to make the case that we are fulfilling our mission as cats become an increasing constituency among the lenders. I'm sorry, you can't be a business partner with a cat. Certainly, it can be very degrading to learn that the pet of an American was able to make a life changing loan to your business in Western Kenya. Are we commoditizing, rather than dignifying the low-income entrepreneurs getting loans on our site? If so, we need to pull a u-turn fast.
Two summers ago I had the joy of hosting my Kenyan friend Rowland in San Francisco. The one thing that amazed him the most was the pet store in Noe valley. He was visibly shaken. Cats in SF enjoy an existence much more comfortable than most in his country. The resources available for a Noe cat are overwhelming. No wonder they become lenders. They have it all.
wow...
There is a cultural difference at work here, of course-- people who post pictures of their cat probably think that's some legitimate expression of what's imporant to them-- but somehow I don't think the borrowers will embrace that alternative reading of things. I also suspect that a lot of people who lend will treat their profiles as a close kin to a "MySpace" page.
You may have to remind the lenders of the dignity of the borrowers and the partners. As a first measure: you could remind lenders who set up profiles with pictures etc. that their borrowers and partners will (possibly/probably) see the pictures, and expect/deserve a person-to-person connection, so when they're about to upload an image they should bear that in mind that these folks have a right to be treated as equals...