The Venture Edge

 I just finished making a Kiva loan to a woman entrepreneur in Peru. If you’re not familiar with Kiva, it’s a micro lending program founded in 2005 to “connect people through lending to alleviate poverty.”  You can go on Kiva’s site and search for an entrepreneur anywhere in the world who needs a loan, and you can be the lender for as little as $25. When the entrepreneur pays back the loan (and all of my entrepreneurs have paid theirs back), you can relend it. And that’s the essence of micro lending. I’ve been doing Kiva loans for the past 4 years, but it was after the debt crisis here in the U.S. that I wondered if it might be a model that would work here. Clearly others were thinking the same thing because today there are several sites offering “peer-to-peer” lending. 

I was so distressed when I read Peter's recent post about Kiva.org (A little less love for Kiva.org) because I am a lender and I've given Kiva gift certificates to people to get them involved in helping others start or run their small businesses.  Peter wrote about how big business Kiva has become and how the very thing that drew most people to them (one-to-one lending) is the very thing they tinkered with to the dismay of many of their most loyal customers. The precarious position that Kiva has put itself in reminds me of how often some entrepreneurs foresake the core values that were the very reason for starting the business in order to grow and make more money.

Way back in April 2009, I wrote a glowing post about my love affair with Kiva.org, the online microlending website. The idea is a great one: connect everyday people with entrepreneurs around the world who need small loans to start or grow their businesses. Go to the website, find an entrepreneur you want to loan $25 to, click and pay, and your money is winging its way into the pocket of your "adopted" small businessperson.

One of the really great things about teaching budding entrepreneurs is that sometimes they come back to tell you how much they've used what they learned or what an impact you had on their lives.  I think that's why a lot of people have found so much joy in teaching.  I don't know about you but the days when someone takes the time to tell me how much they appreciate what I did are the best days of all.  Some of them thank you in a way that just keeps on giving.