Helping the world: Ever since Muhammad Yunus founded the first microcredit institution in 1976, microfinance has proven one of the most powerful ideas for supporting developing economies. Recently, sites like Kiva.org have brought introduced microfinance to online crowdsourcing with fantastic results. Now you can lend money to entrepreneurial individuals around the world, often in amounts as little as $25 to buy a tool, seeds, or other essential resources. Unlike simple charity, 98.7% of all money is paid back, allowing you to repeat the process and provide a sense of empowerment to business owners around the world.
Entrepreneurship in America: During a recent trip to California, I was lucky enough to find myself at a pop-up restaurant in the Mission. The roommate of my friend Kasia had simply cooked a bunch of delicious food with some friends, set up s very light restaurant in a garage, and sold their wares to anyone fortunate enough to find them. The food was delicious, cheap, and even profitable. Rather than creating a real restaurant with a high risk factor, this micro-venture cost little more than a few hundred dollars and three days of work.
A new domestic initiative: It should come as no surprise that the ethic of minimum viable product has extended beyond the tech sector and into the rest of the Bay Area entrepreneurial spirit. Most of all, however, it made me realize that microfinance is not just a solution for rural third world countries. There is no better marketplace than an American city. As we begin to overcome a bias for enormous start-up capital, we should begin to encourage people to build businesses like hackers build websites and tinkerers build rockets.
It should come as no surprise that I am a believe that “execution is everything.” Ideas are cheap but action is the mechanism of business, civilization, and life. If we can get people working in a meaningful way on their own entrepreneurial activities - motivated by intrinsic and extrinsic rewards alike - we can add great innovation and value to our society. But first, we need a way to fund these projects in a fast and flexible manner that is as simple (and almost as low-cost) as Kiva.org. If we do this, we can have more low-cost startups like these:
Websites like Craigslist or Khan Academy
Home Video Production Companies
Interior, Graphic, and Industrial Designers
Artists, Writers, and Inventors
Academic Tutors and Consultants
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