Microlending, Leadership and Social Business - Julie Hanna, Chair of Kiva
Julie Hanna is Chair of the Board for Kiva, the online micro-lending company. In this short video Julie shares her thoughts on the internet as a democratising force, leadership, entrepreneurship and social business.
Speaking at On Your Marks 2011 Julie tells us about Kiva and shares her thoughts on doing business the right way. Julie’s top 5 tips were:
Use the Internet as a unifying and democratizing force.
Use the internet as a new form of connected capital where you can harness the principals of capitalism to benefit society.
Starting a company is testing your theory a temporary organisation.
The best leaders are those who are authentic to who they are – starting a company is about testing your theory and creating a temporary organisation in search of a business model.
To be a good leader you need:
Passion.
Conviction.
The ability to connect people to your vision.
The ability to hold two opposing concepts in your head, passion and dispassion. Julie says “You need to be passionate enough about your Vision to overcome adversity when people say that you are crazy you can’t do it, at the same time you have to take the market feedback to know here’s the part of the hypothesis and product that isn’t right so you can adjust and pivot. And learning how to pivot without going off course and in circles is a challenging art as it requires you to be flexible and staying the course at the same time”.
Know how to surround yourself with passionate people.
About Julie Hanna
Julie Hanna is a serial entrepreneur who is driven by her belief in information technology as a democratizing force for social, political and business disruption. She has spent the last twenty years pioneering products that have allowed tens of millions around the world to connect, communicate and collaborate.
About Kiva
Kiva is an online lending platform. It was started in 2005 by Matt Flannery and Jessica Jackley with the aim of connecting people through lending to alleviate poverty. Matt and Jessica had the idea after attending a lecture on Microfinance given by Grameen Banks founder Muhammad Yunus.
Kiva profiles borrowers (their background, what they want the money for, the amount of money they need, their planed repayment schedule etc) and then connects them to a bank of lenders who can lend as little as $25. Kiva also works with a worldwide network of microfinance institutions who make sure that the loans are legitimately distributed and re-paid to the right people. To learn more about the lending – borrowing process watch this great little video.
Since Kiva was started it has built over 940,000 lenders, distributed over $440,411,575 in loans, funded 1,057,030 borrowers who have a repayment rate of 99.01%.