WorldChanging's 2007 Best - Kiva - Interview With Kiva's Jessica Flannery

Saw that Kiva was on the list of WorldChanging's 2007 Best Social Entrepreneurship and Philanthropy . Below is their interview with Jessica.

Pop!Tech - Interview With Kiva's Jessica Flannery

Robert Katz
October 20, 2007 5:31 AM

Jessica Flannery is, in many ways, an accidental entrepreneur. Hadshe not met a guy named Matt at a DC conference in 1999, the entireenterprise she's known for (Kiva.org) might not exist today. I was fortunate to be able to sit down with Jessica for an interview on Thursday here at Pop!Tech 2007, where she agreed to share many of the other fortunate "accidents" that have marked her journey.

The best part about interviewing someone like Jessica Flannery isthat I don't have to tell and re-tell the Kiva story. After all,NextBillion.net was one of the first web sitesor blogs to even talk about Kiva, the peer-to-peer microfinance website that Jessica co-founded with her husband, Matt (ok, that's asmidge of story, I admit). What's more, Sara Standish � a former NextBillion writer and current MBA candidate � conducted a long interview with Kiva principals including Matt, Premal Shah, and Krista Van Lewen. And Kiva has been featured in a slew of mainstream media � from Newsweek to BusinessWeek to Oprah to NPR.

Sincethe basic story of Kiva is well known, Jessica and I decided to focusour conversation on some of the lesser-known aspects of her journey andthe business it has spawned.

A special thanks to Jessica Flannery and to the Pop!Tech press folks, who helped make this interview happen.

Rob Katz: Why did you take two years away from Kiva to attend business school?

Jessica Flannery, Kiva.org: To be honest with you, it's the result of timing more than anything. When I applied to the Graduate School of Business at Stanfordin 2005, I was working at the school and Matt was full-time with TiVo.Kiva was just a nights and weekends projects. We started it with 7businesses that I met in Uganda and $3100 that we raised throughfriends � and we raised it by spamming our wedding list.

So in the fall of 2005, I entered business school. About two monthslater, we got slammed on the blogosphere � mostly through NextBillion, Worldchanging, and BoingBoing� and Kiva took off. I was in the middle of my first semester, but Istrongly considered leaving school. After all, Kiva was a dream for me.After conversations with professors and administrators at Stanford, andlong talks with Matt, we decided that I would stay in school and Mattwould quit TiVo to concentrate full-time on Kiva.

RK: Why Matt, and not you?

JF: I admit that it didn't necessarily makeeconomic sense. Matt was earning a paycheck, while I was costing moneyin terms of tuition and living expenses while at school. Butfundamentally, Matt is a true visionary � which makes him better suitedto run a high ceiling social enterprise like Kiva. And on a practicallevel, Matt could program the alpha and beta versions of the web site,while I couldn't.

Ultimately, my decision to stay in school was a good one. After all,there's no better place to be while starting something than businessschool. Stanford's community of students, professors, and outsideexperts provided a great test bed in which Matt and I could develop andgrow Kiva. It also took over six months � from November 2005 to April2006 for Kiva's platform and deal flow to be sufficient to support us.By April 2006, I was nearly finished with my first year of businessschool. So from both the theoretical and practical side, my staying inbusiness school was definitely the right choice for me, and the rightchoice for Kiva.

RK: You have a bachelor's degree in English and a passionfor international development. Why did you go to business school in thefirst place?

JF: Honestly, I happened into business school. Tounderstand how I ended up at Stanford, you first have to understand howI ended up in California � and that goes back to 1999. In 1999, while asenior at Bucknell University, I attended an interfaith conference inWashington, DC, where I met a really nice guy named Matt. We stayed intouch throughout the year, and when I graduated from Bucknell, I movedto California to be closer to him.

When I got to California, I moved into an 11-person group house onSand Hill Road. My rent was $200 per month (we eventually got evicted).But I moved to California to be 3 miles from Matt, instead of 3,000miles. I had no job � so I took copies of my resume over to theStanford campus and walked around.

My first job in California was temping at the Center for Social Innovation.It was a directed accident, if you will. I knew I was interested ininternational development, so when I read a little about the Center forSocial Innovation and what it does, I decided to walk in. The accidentpart of it was that they needed a temp. My temp job became a contractjob, which became a permanent job.

RK: How did your work at the Center for Social Innovation develop from temp job to Kiva to business school and beyond?

JF: Well, the first thing I did with the Center was help coordinate the Global Philanthropy Forum.I was a 23-year old, moderating sessions with Fortune 100 CEOs � and itworked. It was an eye-opening experience for me. I kept working at theCSI for three years, watching students go through business school. Atfirst, I wasn't jealous � I cared about changing the world, not drivingcore competence in search of profits.

But after a while, core competence � and incentives, profitmaximization, and all those other b-school concepts � started to makesense to my own personal mission. These business school students,contrary to their stereotypes, actually cared about changing the world.Not only that, but they were getting my dream jobs � managing andrunning non-profits � when they graduated. So that's how I becameinterested in business school.

RK: What about Kiva?

JF: Kiva was, in some ways, born out of necessity.Matt and I had a relationship problem: he wanted to do high-techstartups, and I wanted to do microfinance in Africa. We knew that wehad this problem when we were dating, but we were in love, so we gotmarried anyway and decided to figure it out as we went along.

Think about it � Kiva marries the high-tech startup world withmicrofinance. It's the perfect solution to Matt and my relationshipproblem, and I can honestly say that it was born out of love. I wouldnever have been able to get my head around Kiva had I not worked at theCenter for Social Innovation, where these kinds of social innovationswere part of the standard, day-to-day office talk.

RK: What do you want NextBillion.net to know that we don't already?

JF: Pursue your passion. Peel away the boundariesbetween you and the people you want to work with. If you do thatpeeling, you can build connections that change you and change theworld. In the course of pursuing passion and peeling away boundaries,you become vulnerable. Don't fight it. Strive for vulnerability �beautiful things can happen out of it. In that same light, here's myone-liner: never, ever think you are better than anyone else. If youcan live like that, and work in the BOP context, then you can reallychange things.