Some Serious Biking

VCA 2010 RACE RUN from changoman on Vimeo.

TED Talks: Wael Ghonim, Bill Gates

Passion For Microfinance, Passion For Social Media

Image via WikipediaWhen you are gelling the DNA of a young company, when you are laying down the rudiments of its culture, when you are slowly building a team, there are decisions you have to make.

Tony of Zappos has a few things to say about the topic. One thing Tony does is after he trains people, he offers them 3,000 dollars to leave. Another thing he does is he lets go the top talented people who deliver when they don't fit into the Zappos corporate culture.

Two obvious things I have figured out are that you have to have a passion for microfinance - duh! - and you have to have a passion for social media if you want to belong on my corporate team.

Walking/Running: Putting One Foot After The Other

Image via WikipediaDoing a tech startup is a lot like walking and running. You put one foot after another. And you can't do that unless you have a very good idea of where you are at a given point in time and where it is you want to go. Both those angles are important.

If you are just starting out, you can't act like you are in a position to hire 10 people. I have gone to events and met amazing people and I have told them I'd love to hire them. True, I'd love to, but right now I can't afford those 10 amazing people.

So the right thing to do would be to not look for amazing people to hire, right? Wrong. I could hire those 10 amazing people in my round two, which might happen in as much as six months, eight months, a year, or as little as four months after the first round of money is raised.

The right people will understand the language. I have talked to two major social media talents about my round two possibilities. And both of them took me seriously. The talk is informal, private, off the record, there is no concrete offer. But it's real.

Love Is A Symbol

Readers might have noticed a slight change at this blog a few days back.

I do love my readers. But that love sign? Okay, that was me trying to implement the new Facebook Comments thing for my blog. I obviously did not do it right. Instead of Facebook Comments, I ended up with the love symbol. Enjoy while it lasts.

Facebook Comments To Go: Facebook Nailed It

Going High Tech: Selfish Reasons

Image by liewcf via FlickrOne big reason I want to go super high tech with my microfinance startup is because I want me and my small core corporate team in New York City to be able to see all aspects of all our operations in near real time. I want my lenders - people who might put in that $100, that $200, at no interest - to be able to see much of the action in the field. I want them to experience that last mile as much as possible.

We are in microfinance, we are not in some kind of a data collection business. But I'd want my folks doing the last mile to think we are in a data collection business. People in the last mile collect data. People in the middle mile - us, the corporate team - make sense of that data. People in the first mile - the lenders - get served some of that data in palatable ways.

Microfinance Alone Can't Cure Poverty

Image by uncultured via FlickrMicrofinance is no magic bullet. Microfinance alone can't cure poverty.

Good governance, I think, is the first precondition. Yunus saw that. That is why he tried to launch a political party in Bangladesh a few years back. But looks like the politicians in Bangladesh have managed to unlaunch him instead.