A podcast by students of Stanford University's Business and Design Schools


FEATURED INTERVIEW

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Matthew and Jessica Flannery, Founders of Kiva.org

Matthew and Jessica Flannery are founders of Kiva.org, what the New York Times calls "D.I.Y. foreign aid"


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Great things are afoot at Kiva, featured today on Oprah alongside Bill Clinton.

Kiva is a person-to-person microcredit lending platform which allows any individual in the world to be a banker to the poor: it does this by connecting the working poor with microloans from anyone in the world.

Kiva straddles innovative intersections, and does it well. By combining philanthropic motivations with the marketplace, Kiva is entrepreneurial, rigorous, capitalistic, and charitable all at once.

iinnovate caught up with Matt and Jessica Flannery for an insightful chat on how it all started, the experience of starting an endeavor as a husband-wife team, as well as Kiva's challenges, successes, and future directions.


- Nir Eyal and Min Li Chan

4 comments:

Nikolaj M. said...

Man, these guys are fast in reading my thoughts - I learned about kiva just a couple of days ago, got excited and now even found them on iinnovate. Everybody here is doing great!

Unknown said...

I love the concept driving Kiva. Very creative. I really appreciated the fact that Jessica and Matthew set out to create "relationships based in mutual dignity."

Thanks to iinnovate for serving up another interesting show.

Amanda Mooney
www.americanshelflife.com

Anonymous said...

Thanks for a well done interview. I am glad I saw it magically appeared in my iTune Podcast where I didn't have time to listen to until now.

Great job.

Regards,
Kempton

Suhail said...

I'm glad I found iinnovate because I always had an interest in sparking awareness concerning microfinance. I proposed a microfinance project to SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise) at the University of Florida, where I am currently a student. They liked the idea, but didn't have enough resources to carry it out. I think this is a great idea and is truly one of the best ways of getting involved in the global community ... thanks for the succinct yet significant source of discourse.