FEMALE SPEAKER: Jessica is
an entrepreneur and investor
focused on financial
inclusion, the sharing
economy, and social justice.
She's best known as
a co-founder of Kiva,
the world's people-the-people
microlending website.
In her new book,
"Clay Water Brick"
that she's going to
share about today,
she shares her personal
story of co-creating
a tool for social change and
the evolution of this nonprofit
that started in a modest
off-campus Stanford apartment,
and went on to be
a global movement.
Jessica highlights
the life lessons
she's learned firsthand from
the entrepreneurs themselves,
many of them in the
world's poorest countries.
So I'm going to leave
no further introduction,
and have Jessica share
her story with us.
[APPLAUSE]
JESSICA JACKLEY:
Thank you very much
for the very kind introduction.
Thank you all for being here.
I'm touched, and I don't
take the time that you're
spending hear me for granted.
So we dive right
in, and by the way,
there's a little squeaky baby
in the back and he's mine,
and I'm happy he's here.
He probably will want to
chime in a little bit.
I'm going to first talk
to you about a gentleman
that I met 10 years
ago named Patrick.
I met him in Uganda, in a
little village on the border
of Kenya and Uganda.
He had fled the northern
area of the country years
earlier, because a rebel group
had attacked his village,
and he fled only with his
brother and nothing else.
No shoes on his feet, just
the clothes on his back.
He was young,
uneducated, orphaned,
and really didn't have much.
And I think a lot
of people would
have looked at Patrick's
life and thought,
the situation is hopeless,
this person is hopeless.
But Patrick didn't believe that.
He knew that he had
within themselves
what it took to improve his
life and to lift himself up out
of poverty.
And so one day, as he
described the story to me,
he was sitting, kind of leaning
against the mud structure
where he and his
brother slept, and he
was thinking, as he did every
day, about what his plan was
going to be to feed
himself and his brother.
And he sort of had
this aha moment.
He kind of looked down where
his hand was touching the earth
and he began to dig.
And at first, when he dug,
he didn't discover too much,
but he got a piece of
wood and a scrap of metal,
and started to kind
of use these homemade
implements to dig deeper,
and he found clay deposits.
And he learned, as
he dug, that if he
mixed a little bit of water with
that clay, it could be shaped.
And so he created these bricks,
just with his own two hands.
The first bricks were
really rough and misshapen,
and kind of crumbled
easily, but he kept at it.
He got better and
better, and soon he
made bricks that were good
enough, high quality enough,
to be able to sell.
Just for fractions
of a penny each,
but it was enough
to get started.
So he did that.
Sold those bricks and saved up.
And eventually,
he was able to buy
a brick mould, which instantly
doubled his production.
He was able to make
bricks that were
more smoothly and
consistently shaped and sized.
And he dried those
bricks in the sun,
because that's what was free.
That's what he knew how to do.
And those bricks sold
for a little bit more
than the other ones that
he had just made by hand.
You can see where this goes.
He continued to save up money.
He knew that if he baked
the bricks in a kiln,
they would sell for even more.
So of course, he saved
up to be able to go
to a neighboring village and to
learn, and kind of apprentice
for a little while,
with the brickmaker
there and learn how to
make a self-contained kiln.
So he did that, baked the
bricks, and of course,
those sold for more.
And eventually, he
was able to replace
those homemade implements
with a shovel, and a trowel,
and other things to be much more
of an official business person,
as a brickmaker.
He was able to hire his brother,
and then a neighbor, and then
another, and by the
time I met Patrick,
he had this booming business,
was doing quite well,
and was a real leader
in his community.
And perhaps, at least
to me, most notably,
he showed me were sort of
this epiphany had happened,
and also showed me
the home next to it
that he had built the new home.
Not just the old
packed mud home,
but the new one with
baked mud bricks
that he had pulled from the
earth with his own two hands.
If that's not entrepreneurial,
I'm not sure what it is.
That's Patrick.
The second story I'll
tell you is of Fatuma.
Now Fatuma, I met
about 700 miles-ish
due south of where
I met Patrick.
Fatuma lived in a village
outside of Dodoma, Tanzania,
and she was also
an entrepreneur.
But her story ended a little bit
differently than Patrick's had.
So to kind of tell you why I
was there in the first place,
I was working for several months
with a nonprofit organization
called Village Enterprise, a
great bay area nonprofit that
provided, at the time,
microgrants of $100
to entrepreneurs so
they could start or grow
their simple businesses.
Patrick and Fatuma were
two of these entrepreneurs,
and I was there sort of
surveying them, interviewing
them, asking them, did
you receive the money?
If you did, how did it work?
Did it change the trajectory
of your business at all?
Did it improve your life?
How so?
And I was doing this sort
of standard of living survey
and had a questionnaire that
I would ask entrepreneur
after entrepreneur.
So these are just two of
the 150-ish entrepreneurs
I met during that period
of time, 10 years ago.
Fatuma kind of pulled
me into her home,
and who here has been
inside of a mud hut before?
I'm going to guess some.
There you go.
So I think they're
totally fascinating.
I am sure that I could
never build one myself,
but I kind of really love
looking at the structures.
So this is not
actually-- I didn't
get pictures of her and
her home at the time,
but this is not
actually her home.
And it looked a little bit
like this on the outside,
and on the inside, some of
the nicest homes like this
that I've been in
looked like this.
With actual furniture,
different implements,
quite a nice
brightly lit inside.
But Fatuma's looked
a lot more like this
So imagine, she pulls
me in, sits me down
in one of the few pieces
of furniture in her home.
There was two folding chairs
and a little table, and then
the mattress where she's slept,
and that was pretty much it.
So she pulled me
in, sat down, and we
started to talk about her
business, which was a charcoal
selling business.
And she showed me the
records that she had kept
in these little blue books.
Now, does anyone have a visceral
memory when I talk about this?
Blue books.
Right?
Like the things, that least I
used to write my middle school
essays in and stuff.
So she had blue books.
Kind of funny.
And kept her records in there,
and as we went through them,
I got really excited,
because her business was
doing much better than a lot
of the businesses I had seen,
even those that were
quite successful.
And I thought I had
discovered this sort of rags
to riches story.
I got really excited, I
double-checked her numbers,
looked, not only at that little
blue book full of records,
but other ones.
And in fact, her numbers
panned out, they were correct.
But I was baffled
because as I asked her
the kind of questions that I had
been asking many entrepreneurs
up until that point, like,
how have you reinvested
the profits of your business
back into the business,
or how have you improved
your life thanks
to these new profits?
I didn't see
anything that told me
that she was
actually reinvesting
in herself or in her family.
Her clothes were
tattered, her shoes
were kind of falling apart.
She was very gaunt, barely
ate three meals a day.
And basically, there was
nothing that I could see,
no signs of newfound
wealth in her home.
So I asked her directly
and she said things like,
oh, it's fine, you
know, my days will pass.
I am OK.
She was very, content is
not quite the right word,
but she had no dreams to
do anything with her money.
And I pushed her on it
and I said, OK, fine,
but where actually did
you put all this money,
because you should have
kind of a nice pile
somewhere if what you're
telling me is correct?
And she was kind of a joker.
She kind of looked around
as if anyone else was there,
and like tiptoed over to
the far side of her hut
and patted the ground, and she
said, it's in the world bank.
Which was kind of funny.
I mean, you don't
get a lot of jokes
when you're looking
at, you know,
very impoverished situations.
There's not a lot of
poverty jokes out there.
But she thought
that was so funny.
I laughed, it was funny.
She had literally
buried her money
in the grounds, in the earth
floor next to where she slept.
That's what made her feel safe.
That's what made her feel good.
She didn't have real
dreams for the future
and she certainly
hadn't reinvested
much at all back into her
life to make things better.
Every other
entrepreneur that I met
did have that,
almost all of them.
They had these amazing
dreams for the future
and I have a long list of
things that I heard about
as I asked individuals, not
only what they had done already.
You know, send their
daughters to school,
afford three meals a
day, buy a mosquito net,
all sorts of things.
They had many other
dreams for the future.
You know, travels to faraway
places, new clothing,
shiny electronics, education
for all of their children,
and on and on.
But Fatima did not.
And since that day, I've sort
of been fascinated by a number
things, but especially,
I've been fascinated
by this question, what makes
some people dig, and find
opportunity literally in the
ground beneath their feet,
and what makes some people
bury the gifts that they have,
the treasures that they do that?
I don't think that
the answer to that
is unrelated to
entrepreneurship.
I do believe Fatuma
was an entrepreneur,
but I think the main
difference between her
and Patrick and the
many, many others
like Patrick who had really
just big dreams what was next.
I think the main
difference between them
was that Patrick was able to
imagine a different future.
He had a very strong vision
for what was out there for him.
What could make his life
better and the lives
of people around him better.
He had this vision and
he wasn't afraid to keep
pursuing that vision,
along the path,
even when it got difficult.
I think this has to do with
entrepreneurship, at least
in some way, because
it speaks to,
at least my favorite
definition of entrepreneurship,
my favorite academic definition,
which is Howard Stevenson's
from Harvard Business School.
He says that entrepreneurship
is the pursuit of opportunity,
without regard to resources
currently controlled.
And maybe I'm reading
into it too much,
but I think it's
quite a romantic idea.
That the pursuit of
the thing that you
vision in the future, the
pursuit of this opportunity
that you see to
make things better,
without regard to what
you might currently
have in your possession.
So it's about this
movement forward.
Not what you own, not your
education or your pedigree,
not a pile of resources
you might have at hand,
at your network.
Just going after this
thing and knowing
that as you do that,
you'll find what you need,
you'll make your way
over, around, and through.
And I think the best
entrepreneurs that I've met
are able to do that, because
they have this strong vision
and they know that it's worth
it to keep moving forward.
OK, so I want to now
digress a little bit.
You might ask, then, at
least I do, OK, great.
So if the thing that made
Patrick and others so great
is that they had this
vision for the future,
they were be able
to tell themselves
a story for what could be
different in the future,
why don't some people do that?
Why did Fatima get stuck?
And others like her?
And why do we?
With everything
we need around us,
why do we get stuck
sometimes and feel
like we can't move forward?
I think it's because we end up
believing in the wrong stories.
And so I think it's really
important to figure out
what we're hearing and
believe the right ones,
champion the right ones, retell,
perpetuate the better stories
in the world that really
focus on potential,
and not get stuck in
the wrong stories.
Now, I know that that's what
I've had to do in my own life,
and to briefly tell
you my own story,
we're going to go way back.
When I was five, I
was in Sunday school,
and I'm not trying
to make fun, I just
think this is how I saw
the world at five, right?
This is Jesus, my buddy.
I'm there on the
left, just kidding.
But I just, you know, I had
a very simple world view,
as I think a lot of
us do at five and six.
And I remember the
first time I learned
about poverty was in
a Sunday school class,
sitting on the floor, hearing
my lovely Sunday school
teacher, who I know had great
intentions, sort of haphazardly
throw out different
things that were
in the Bible about poverty.
One thing she threw
out to us was this idea
that Jesus told us, what you
do for the least of these,
you do for me.
And I remember hearing that, and
as a kid it might sound silly,
but as kid, it was
deeply motivating
and it was kind of
the closest thing
that I had ever
felt to a calling.
I thought, wait
a minute, so if I
help people that are in
need, if I helped the poor,
then I'm doing
something for God?
This is amazing.
This is like the world's
greatest homework assignment.
I'm going to go do that.
Let's go.
I was super motivated by this
idea that my life could matter.
That I could do
something important--
of cosmic importance, right?
In the lives of other people.
At the same time, she also
threw things out like this,
and the second thing
that she threw out
did not give me that
same sort of motivation.
In fact, it scared
the pants off me.
She also told us that Jesus
said that the poor would always
be with us.
I pictured in my head, as a
little kid, this long line
of people that would always
be following me around, always
with me, asking me for my
stuff and asking me to share.
And while I wouldn't have
used language like, you know,
this is unsustainable.
I knew that, like, I
would run out of stuff.
I only had so many crayons
that I could give out.
I knew that this
wasn't going to work,
and so I felt frustrated,
and in fact, angry, at god.
At the world, for if
this was the reality.
I felt like I'd been given
this great assignment,
this great charge, this
great mission for my life.
But I was being told in
advance I would totally fail,
and I was angry.
Unfortunately, a lot of the
stories I heard over the years
after that little glimpse
when I was five-years-old
felt and sounded and
looked a lot like this.
They were stories focused
on sadness, and suffering,
and desperation,
and hopelessness,
often carefully crafted.
These stories were
carefully crafted
by well intentioned
nonprofits and NGOs that
wanted me to feel something.
I mean, the feelings that I felt
were panic, I felt overwhelmed,
I felt quite guilty,
and I felt even
shameful about my own relative
middle class American wealth.
But I felt bad enough that
I whipped out my own money
and gave whenever I could,
even as a kid and a teenager,
whatever.
And I called the 1-800
number and sponsored kids,
and I hear that there
is a Christina Aguilera
version of this right now.
I should totally probably
update this, but in my day,
this was Sally
Struthers all the way.
I saw a lot of Sally growing up.
So I responded, but mostly, if
I'm really honest with myself,
I did so in a very
transactional way.
I did so because
I was feeling bad,
I was feeling like crap
about my own lack of ability
to ever solve these problems,
no matter how much I did.
And this yearning that I had
had a little kid to really
be meaningful to
someone else had
turned into this transaction,
not an interaction.
A meaningful,
beautiful connection.
It turned in to sort of
throw my change in the jar,
temporarily feel a little
bit better about myself,
and then go on with
the rest of my life.
Until the next sad
story came along.
And unfortunately,
what this did was
lead to a sort of invisible
barrier being erected
between myself
and these stories,
and really, these
other people that I
had very much
otherized and very much
put in this category of not me.
So don't worry.
This is the saddest moment,
there's a lot of serious faces.
Now it gets happier, ready?
So here we go.
So this was at its worst, how
I interacted with the poor.
Lot of air quotes today.
And then, and I'm really glad
I'm not talking to a college
audience right now, because
I have to do a lot of caveats
with them and say,
hey, look, I'm
not prescribing you do this.
Like, don't blame
me if you do this,
but I studied philosophy and
poetry and then I, on a whim,
moved out to California.
I told my parents-- it was
right after graduation--
and I told them I'd be
here for a few weeks.
That was 15 years ago.
So I moved out and I got a temp
job at the Stanford Business
School, which it
first, by the way,
I was kind of a hater
about business early on.
I thought, no, I want
to be a part of things
that help people.
Nonprofits seemed to be helping
people, just go with me.
For-profits must be bad,
so they are the enemies
and here I was,
right in the heart
of, like, enemy territory.
This heart of
entrepreneurial activity,
because I thought entrepreneurs
are the gang leaders of this,
this is terrible.
But I needed the money,
so I took this temp job
at the Stanford Business
School, and it just so happened
that I had landed, not
just in the business
school, god forbid, but in the
Center for Social Innovation.
This amazing place
where every day,
people are coming
through those doors
and thinking about how
to use business skills
and business thinking to
solve social problems.
So I realized very quickly
I was in a good place,
I had kind of found my
people, and I learned so much
over the next few years.
I sat in on classes
and crashed lectures,
I even, I kid you not,
went to office hours
sometimes and told professors
I was not a student.
I would be later and I would
pay a pretty penny for that.
At the time, I was
just a staffer,
but I would go and say look,
if you have no one else to talk
to, can you, like, help me
understand the difference
between profit and revenue?
Which I actually never
got a hang of until later,
but I get now.
But I tried to be a
sponge and absorbed,
sort of for free, an MBA,
and learn all that I could.
Anyway, three years in to this
job, which changed and evolved.
I mean, I clearly liked
it and I stuck around.
There's this guy
named Doctor Muhammad
Yunus, who came to campus.
And so I stayed late after
work, it was in the fall
of '03, three years before he
and his Grameen Bank would win
the Nobel Peace Prize for
their work pioneering modern
microfinance.
And so I stayed after
work to hear him speak,
sat in the back in case it was
lame and I could leave early.
And in fact, it was my
little moment of epiphany.
I learned about
microfinance, right?
Financial services and products
for the entrepreneurial poor.
Particularly microcredit,
loans, I learned about that,
and it almost seemed magical.
The idea that this
little bit of capital
at the right time
in the right hands
could change somebody's
trajectory, and help
lift them and their
family out of property.
It sounded amazing and I had
never heard about that before.
So that was one thing.
Secondly, he talked
about his story
in a very accessible,
approachable way.
So here I was, this
legit liberal arts major,
but I had no idea what
to put on my resume.
I didn't know what my skills
were, I couldn't code.
I've since tried,
that's another story.
It's pretty hard.
I don't know if that's what
I'm meant to do in the world.
But so I learned
about microfinance
and I learned about
this amazing man who
got his start by
basically, and I'm
paraphrasing, leaving
the halls of academia
where he had been a professor
at the University of Chittagong
in Bangladesh.
He one day goes and sits with a
group of women, basket weavers,
and asks them directly
why they are poor.
Asks them why they think they're
stuck in a cycle of poverty.
And they tell their
stories to him.
And he listens and he respond
in a very common sense way.
Because they tell him that
every morning, they wake up,
they have nothing,
they have to go
to a local moneylender
who charges, you know,
300 plus percent interest.
They borrow a little
bit of money, often
just a few dollars,
buy materials
that they need to
weave their baskets,
make a beautiful product,
sell it at a profit,
but they owe everything back, if
not more, to the moneylenders.
It's a very easy to
understand cycle of poverty
that they were trapped in.
At least when I heard
that from his story.
And as it goes, he
reaches into his pocket,
lends a little over $20 to
that village full of women,
and indeed, they're
able to repay.
Not with 300% interest,
and slowly change
their lives for the better.
That's what he did in
response to their stories.
It seemed so common sense
and it seemed like something
maybe even a philosophy
major could do.
Go, sit, be a really
good listener,
and maybe, maybe, maybe
hear something new,
and respond in a common
sense way to help somebody.
So one, microfinance.
Two, maybe I could go listen to
people and do something good.
And three, he talked
about the poor in a way
that I hadn't heard, at
least in recent memory.
He talked about people
who are smart, and strong,
and hardworking, and very
intelligent, even if they might
be unschooled, and
who just needed access
to this little
thing, a small loan,
to be able to do great things.
It totally changed my paradigm.
I mean, having spent a few
years in Silicon Valley
by that point, I
mean, I figured out
that an entrepreneur was a
pretty great thing to be.
So suddenly, to tell me that
the poor could be entrepreneurs
flipped everything on it's head.
And I was so inspired,
in fact, this
is another place where
I tell college students,
like, don't do this or
don't blame it on me.
But I quit my job at Stanford
and I moved to East Africa,
and begged my way into a
basically unpaid internship,
as I described, with
Village Enterprise.
And they allowed me to have
this amazing opportunity
for three months
to go, by myself,
trump around Uganda,
and Kenya, and Tanzania
and interview entrepreneurs and
ask them about their stories.
And ask them how this $100
had changed their lives.
So that's what it did,
And it was the best.
It was so fun.
Not only did I learn
a lot about business,
I did finally, thanks to
goat herders, et cetera,
learn about the difference
between profit and revenue.
That's a lot of why I wrote the
book, because I feel like they
really taught me business.
Business school did, too.
I mean, Standford
GSB is a great place.
I recommend it, et cetera.
But in all seriousness,
I mean, I so frequently
thought back to my
conversations with entrepreneurs
when I would learn a big,
fancy theory in class
and say, oh, right.
That was that thing that
fishmonger did, or oh,
yeah, yeah, yeah.
I remember, this is the way
the farmer did whatever.
Those are my real life examples.
Those were businesses
that I could understand.
That are started with $100.
It was a really nice
place to start for me.
Anyway, so not only did
I learn a little bit
about entrepreneurship
and business,
but I had this new experience
that really changed
the way I felt and
the way I thought
and it opened my heart up
to different possibilities.
I heard a new narrative
about poverty and potential.
And I met people
who were smiling
and actually happy with
their lives and the work
that they were doing,
even though it was tough.
I met people who already
had made great progress.
Maybe had started with
a needle and thread
under the shade of a tree,
and now had capital equipment
and an office.
I met people who
just, I happened
to encounter in a scene of
abundance versus carefully
crafted picture on a, you
know, marketing brochure
for a nonprofit, of scarcity.
And that changed how I fell.
I met people who had full hands
with something to offer me,
not empty ones
asking for a handout,
as I had sort of maybe expected,
given all I'd heard before.
It changed how I felt.
It change how I thought.
And along with my
co-founder Matt,
he was back in San Francisco and
I would call him and tell him
all about the awesome
goatherder that I'd
met, or the seamstress,
or whoever it was.
And we thought two things.
One, wouldn't it be fun
to tell this new story
about these individuals
living in sub-Saharan Africa
that I hadn't heard
before, and we
didn't think a lot of other
people had heard, either.
Stories of entrepreneurship.
And two, instead of
just holding out the jar
and having people
throw change in it,
wouldn't it be great to engage
individuals in a new way
and allow them to
respond differently, too.
Maybe with a lone,
since, for the record,
nobody had asked me for
a donation or a handout.
Nobody.
People had asked for loans.
They wanted to build
something on their own,
repay, and have
ownership and autonomy.
So with those two
what-if questions.
In the spring of '05, we put
seven entrepreneur's pictures,
much like Sophia.
Although she came later, but
here's Sophia there and here.
We put seven
entrepreneurs from Uganda
on to this little, basic,
scrappy website. thekiva.org.
They needed about a total
of $3,000 in loan needs.
We still don't know for
sure if it was legal.
We had cold called the SCC and
hadn't gotten totally clear
answers at that time.
But we thought, surely
they won't come to our door
and arrest us, we'll just try.
So we spammed friends
and family, said
our seven friends in
Uganda need some money,
do you want to help?
Overnight, the money came in.
Now, to be very
clear, this was like,
cash from my grandma and a
check from my mom, and like,
we didn't have online
processing at all.
It was just pictures
and stories.
We had our personal
bank account.
Wired it to another friend in
Uganda's personal bank account,
and it was not an
illustrious, fancy beginning.
It was very, very scrappy.
But it was enough
to start, so we did.
Over the next six months, by the
fall of '05, where I had just
started business
school and was, like,
drowning in accounting and
trying to pass my classes.
The entrepreneurs were paid
and we said, look, we did it,
we're real.
Kiva is a real
thing, we're going
to take the word beta off of
the site, and launch for real.
Which meant nothing, except
our friend writing, like,
a press release that we put
on our own site and that's it.
That was a launch.
We called our friend in
Uganda, put another dozen or so
businesses on the
website, and just
spammed our friends
and family again.
And we told them they
could spread the word, too.
So the first few weeks,
things were moving along,
you know, rather quickly for us.
I mean the loans got filled
and time was passing.
But then, in November, a month
after we had taken that beta
off of the site,
300 blogs suddenly
wrote about Kiva, including two
of the three most widely read
at the time.
Daily Kos and Boing
Boing wrote about it.
And suddenly, the site
was slammed with traffic,
and it just kicked off this
crazy gear were somehow,
in that first year, October '05
to '06, we facilitated about
$500,000 in loans.
The next year, the total
went up to $15 million,
the next year $40 million,
the next year $100 million.
Today, Kiva is about
to cross $750 million
in loans in these little
$25 bits for people
all over the planet.
So it's been a crazy
thing to get to watch.
And it's not just
loans in East Africa
and it's not just
individuals, although, here's
an example there, it's also
people in my own hometown.
Any Pittsburghers in here?
Just got to check.
Go Steelers, right?
So Kiva works
throughout the world.
I'm happy to go more into
detail on Kiva if you'd like.
Loans are not always just used
for business activities, too.
They're used for other things.
Sometimes housing, sometimes
it's their consumption loans,
but investing, or lending money
to entrepreneurs on the site
is still what the core
of Kiva is all about,
and it's been really
a wonderful and fun
experience to watch it grow.
So that's just one
thing that I've
had the honor of
being involved with.
I left Kiva, I started another
company a few years ago.
I worked for a venture fund
called the Collaborative Fund.
Really fun that the fund
invests at the seed stage
in sharing economy
type companies.
Could talk about that more
if you'd like, but here's
what I kind of want to end on.
So my definition of poverty
has kind of changed over time.
I still very much believe
that at its heart,
it's really about lack of access
to basic things, basic needs.
Food, clothing, shelter, basic
health care, information.
I think it's about
a lack of access
to opportunity and lack of basic
freedoms, lack of capability.
But here's the thing.
Day to day in my
life now, I encounter
a lot of other kinds of needs,
too, that are often invisible.
And often, the things
that are the greatest
need in communities
like this where
we're all quite privileged
and quite blessed with all
that we have.
And I find that just as sad.
I meet people all the time
who might be very wealthy
materially, but are poor
creatively, or emotionally,
or spiritually, and
they feel stuck,
even though they have everything
they need to move forward.
They feel trapped even
though they're free
and I think that's tragic
in its own way I think
the main problem is that
they, like many others all
around the world, have
forgotten, just temporarily
hopefully, that they can
imagine and then pursue
a different future for
themselves, whatever
that looks like.
So I would just like
to remind us today,
please don't believe
the wrong stories.
The ones that are
incomplete, just
telling one side of things.
Don't believe the wrong stories,
especially about other people
and about what's possible
in the world for them.
And don't believe the
stories that tell you,
you can only respond
in one particular way.
That you're only needed
for this one thing
you might have, whether
it's financial contributions
or something else.
I want you to practice,
I hope we can all
practice imagining a
new and a better future.
One that reminds us that
more is always possible.
I ask this for very
selfish reasons.
I want my kids, I know
it's totally cheating
to end on a kid picture.
And one of them is here,
the other two are not,
because that would have
been a little crazy.
I wanted to stories that
my kids hear, and believe,
and internalized to be ones that
convince them of the reality
that opportunity is
everywhere, sometimes
even in the ground
beneath our feet.
And that human
potential is everywhere
around the world, even,
and especially, inside
each one of us.
So thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
FEMALE SPEAKER:
Thank you so much.
JESSICA JACKLEY: Thank you.
FEMALE SPEAKER:
That was amazing.
JESSICA JACKLEY:
Thank you very much.
FEMALE SPEAKER: This is probably
one of the only Tech Talks
I've been to where it was
stay in the room room only.
So--
JESSICA JACKLEY:
Oh, that's so nice
FEMALE SPEAKER: --you
should be very honored
and I'm really thankful
for all the Googlers
that took their time
to come listen to you.
JESSICA JACKLEY:
Thank you so much.
FEMALE SPEAKER: So how long
did you work on the book?
How long--
JESSICA JACKLEY: Oh my God.
FEMALE SPEAKER: --did it
take you to get through it?
What was sort of the hardest
part about putting all of this
into words?
JESSICA JACKLEY: Well,
so you might see him now,
walking around with the baby,
but my husband is, like,
the real author of the--
and I'm saying this,
not him-- he is a legit author.
He has like half
a dozen books out,
and I am the entrepreneur
that wrote a book.
So what was really
difficult was thinking
it would be easier
than it was, because he
makes it look very easy.
It took me several
years, and I'm just
going to be super honest.
This might not be good
for-- sorry about this,
I don't want to end up
coughing like-- excuse me.
Don't quote me on this.
Can I say that?
But as much as I am, and I am
totally and completely, like,
women can do it
all, working moms.
For me, I had moments where my
brain did not work quite right,
after the twins especially.
And so I definitely had to
just be gentle on myself
and stop writing some
days, because I couldn't
think of the word for that thing
that you sit on, like chair.
I mean, I literally
lost very basic words.
And I tried to
Google why that was,
and unfortunately I think
I'm very bad at searching.
If anyone can give me
give me some lessons,
I'm not even joking, I
would be very grateful.
Because all I found was that it
was, like, right after birth,
the mother's brain
grows, and I think
it grows, like, it's
like an animal brain
though, not like the author
writing sentences brain.
So anyway, it took me like
four years of back and forth,
and I turned in one
manuscript that was fine,
but then I was like, can
I actually change that?
And then took another year.
Took me a long time.
That's my answer.
Thank you for asking.
AUDIENCE: What advice would
you give for someone that's
interested in social change?
JESSICA JACKLEY:
That's a nice question.
I would say, get
specific and personal
about who you want to serve.
That's, for me, I think the
best question to start with.
There are lots of objectively
good things to the world.
There's a lot of needs.
You can, I think, go crazy
if you try to just make it
about, where will I make the
most impact in a general way,
right?
Like where will my
dollar do us good?
Definitely research that
stuff and figure it out,
but go with your heart.
Go with what you're
passionate about,
and then get close to the
people you want to serve, ASAP.
Right away.
Early in your career if
you can, but at any time,
just make a point to get
out of your comfort zone
and go spend time with the
people you want to serve.
One of my favorite books is Paul
Polak's book, "Out of Poverty,"
and he basically says--
I'll just paraphrase him--
he basically says, like
in the first few chapters.
Look, don't even try to go help
people far away if you haven't
spent major time with them,
because you'll probably
screw it up.
He's not that harsh
about it, but it's
kind of what he's anything.
And there are lots of,
probably as you know,
stories of people
with great big heart
and great intentions that just
missed the mark because they
think they have a great
idea of how to help,
but it actually doesn't map with
what people need on the ground.
So get there, get
close, get personal,
and be a really good listener.
AUDIENCE: You talked about how
Kiva kind of was such a success
and grew, and grew,
and grew, but I'm
sure you faced some
challenges along the way.
And I'd love to here kind of
what some of those challenges
were.
JESSICA JACKLEY: How
much time do you have?
Yes.
AUDIENCE: But also, what
motivated you to keep going,
and, you know, how you were able
to overcome those challenges.
JESSICA JACKLEY:
Really great question.
So I'll start with
the easy stuff.
The easy challenges
were more up here.
Like people-- In the
very, very beginning, when
we had this idea, hey, wouldn't
it be fun to loan money
to our friends in
Uganda and beyond?
Traditional for-profit types and
socially responsible investment
folks, I mean experts.
People who had
decades of experience,
push back and would say
things, like, well, why would
you think somebody would want
to do this weird 0% loan.
There's no financial return.
And on the other side,
nonprofit folks were like,
it's not a
tax-deductible donation.
That's silly.
But we thought maybe there was
going to be a market for that
anyway, and there is.
But that was one
thing we got back,
so that was one
piece of criticism
that, it's easy
to rattle off now,
but it was a little
bit crazy making.
I think a lot happened up
here in the very beginning
of ventures where a
lot of entrepreneurship
feels like make believe.
You have this vision for
the future and your kind
of imagining what
the world would
be like you can get there.
And you're trying to
make make believe.
You're trying to make the
thing that's in your head real.
And when other people tell
you it's silly, or impossible,
or won't work, it
can rattle you.
So that's like the least of
the issues, of the challenges,
but it was something
to overcome.
There were also other challenges
at the beginning around, which
we can all sort of giggle that
now, that around, you know,
will technology really
spread that fast?
Will you really be able to get
a picture of people in Africa?
It was kind of funny.
And that was easier to fight and
to just prove to be incorrect.
The harder stuff was
the emotional stuff.
So that picture of me with
the turkey, 10 years ago.
During that time, I lived with a
family, just for a short while,
but became really close friends
with the family in Uganda,
and this guy Moses was
one of our-- virtually
a co-founder with Matt
and me-- and became
a really good friend.
And over the first year, because
we had this onslaught of demand
from would-be lenders,
I'm not to say
we created a monster because
he's a wonderful person,
we definitely made
it difficult for him
and put a lot of
temptation in front of him.
He was a pastor in
this small village
and it had only ever seen a
few thousand dollars at any one
time, if that.
And suddenly, we were, like,
pushing hundreds of thousands
at him to distribute.
That's a lot of entrepreneurs.
And so there was
a case of fraud,
and it was just kind
of heartbreaking to see
our friend make bad choices.
But we were so green, and
so, I'll use the word naive,
and had not build in the right
systems for accountability,
and transparency, and
that sort of thing.
So the good part
of that was that we
were able to respond with,
OK, what do we need to change?
What do we need to improve?
And over time, a lot
of great improvements,
I think, to the
product and to the site
in general have
been because we've
been pushed to get better, and
to refine, and to iterating.
Sometimes, because something not
great happens, but other times,
just because that's what you do.
So I think the really important
part of your questions
is, how do you get
through those times?
One, I don't think it's
ever really smart, at least
not for me, I'll speak
for me personally.
I don't think it's
great to go in alone.
I always had people around
me, whether it was just
friends or family,
or my co-founder,
or the early team that
believed in the vision, too.
And said no, no, no.
Remember, it's real, this
is where we're going,
we got to keep at it.
It's just the encouragement
of people really helped.
But also, I think at some
point, you just need to, like,
make a choice to see
the good in people
and believe that it's still
there and believe that.
It's so funny.
I did-- it was really fun,
kind of a bucket list thing
for me-- it did a forum this
morning with Michael Krasny,
and it was an hour.
And in between
all the breaks, he
was like pushing me on
the goodness of people
and he thought it was
very Pollyanna about it,
and we had a nice
healthy debate.
I really think you look
at a lot of the sad stuff,
the bad things
that are happening
in the world and
the bad choices.
I'm such a parent, right?
I'm like, you made a bad choice.
Sorry, I'm suddenly,
like, I notice
I'm using more and
more mom language.
Oh my lord.
Yeah.
So when you see that, I really
see people who are hurting,
who haven't been given even a
fraction of the opportunities
that I've been given.
And I think their
reactions to the world
aren't always forgivable,
but are understandable.
I can see where they come from.
So I think you need to choose
to believe that we all start out
with great intentions and
the same common desires.
And the more and more we can
provide opportunity to people,
the better things get.
And then the more
the good in all of us
can come out more easily.
I think you just have
to make a choice.
AUDIENCE: So as you've
traveled the world
and met a diverse
group of people,
what is their perspective on us?
On America?
On people from America?
How does their world see us?
And a follow up
to that would be,
regardless of color,
or country, village,
what is the common
theme that you've
heard from all of these folks.
That one thing that
you would break?
JESSICA JACKLEY:
Yeah, so I guess
it's very hard to
measure a generalization.
And it's probably
self-selected, but the people
that I have encountered have
been people that, in some way,
have been connected to, I
think, good organizations
that I have been a part of.
So I've kind of encountered a
lot of really friendly, nice
people who are very
happy, and thankful,
and excited to talk about
Americans and the US.
I know that there is other
sentiment out there, too,
but I've encountered
a lot of good will.
What's, I think, also positive
and notable with the Kiva
experience, in particularly.
Even though a lot of lenders are
in North America, not all are.
And so to be able
to talk to borrowers
about this global
community of supporters,
I mean, almost all
over the planet.
When you look at the
number of countries
where borrowers and
lenders are, it's all over.
So to be able to say there is
this global community of people
who have read your story, who
care, at least enough to chip
in $25, if not more,
who are cheering you on
and think you're important.
That's a really wonderful
message to be able to deliver.
So I think all else
being equal, and maybe I
am being a little bit
too utopian about it,
but all else being
equal, to be able to have
a loan, versus a loan with
all these people behind it.
I think that's a
really beautiful option
and I think that's well
received in most places.
That's been my experience.
What's the one sentiment
I've encountered
in all these entrepreneurs?
I have just been blown away
by the perseverance that
exists to make life just
a little bit better.
Now sometimes it's
only relatively better.
Sometimes it's in
this absolute way,
but again and again, the drive
that I see in individuals
to make life better
for themselves,
and more often than
not, for their families,
it's so palpable, and it's
so powerful, it blows me way.
And part of what
I'm really hopeful
comes across in the
book is that, hopefully,
I honor those and celebrate
those kinds of stories.
People make it work, even
when it seems like it can't.
And I feel so lucky that
I've gotten to see that.
AUDIENCE: I am really
interested, now that you've
scaled, how you vet
all of the people who
are asking for loans.
And I've heard different
things about, in general,
like, working with
partners in different ways.
And I don't know that's
related or unrelated to this,
but I'd love to understand,
kind of, that dynamic
and how it all works.
JESSICA JACKLEY: Sure.
So it is no longer just
me running around Uganda
with my camera, thank God.
It would be super
fun, but it would not
be scalable, as they say.
So classic Kiva, there's
two ways Kiva works today.
The way it's worked
traditionally,
and still does for the majority
of loans, is this, as follows.
So you have lenders
come to the website
that Kiva runs and there
are field partners that
actually are out there.
These banks for the poor.
Kind of the Grameen
Banks of the world,
but there are many
other types as well,
and a lot of kind of
nontraditional partners now,
not just microfinance
institutions.
Maybe NGOs that also happened
to get loans, in addition
to other things.
So you have lenders
that come to the site
that Kiva perpetuates,
you have field partners,
and you have borrowers.
There's sort of four parts.
Lenders chip in their $25,
it goes through the site,
Kiva doesn't touch it.
It goes through the
microfinance institution,
they don't touch it.
It goes into the
hands of the borrower.
The borrower repays
with interest
that's fair and appropriate
and set by those by those field
partners, to make
it more general.
Sometimes that could be 20%,
30%, but you have to remember,
you have to compare it
to the right things,
and you have to
understand what are
the other alternatives, if any?
And often, it helps,
I think, to understand
the incredible amount of work
that is necessary, usually,
to reach a borrower
in a very rural area.
To get out there and do weeks
of training, if not months,
to collect repayment.
Sometimes every week after
the loan has been dispersed.
So interest rates
kind of makes sense,
and Kiva only works
with ones that,
at least the
organization believes,
are fair, and
appropriate, and OK.
So anyway, loans are paid
with a little bit of interest,
the interest is kept
by the field partner,
the principal comes back
through Kiva and into the hands
of the borrowers.
Kiva never takes
any out of that.
The only thing that
can happen, so there's
a few things that can happen,
if this is interesting.
So-- Oh, sorry.
Lenders.
I said borrowers, but
lenders, they're over here.
Lenders take on default risk, as
well as currency exchange risk
in some cases, so they might
not receive all the money back,
or not at all, but
that's quite rare.
Repayment rates are
almost 99% on average,
so usually the money comes
back and everything's great.
That's Kiva classic, OK?
So the way to answer
your first question.
I think you asked two, but I'm
going to make it two anyway.
And the way that the
borrowers are vetted,
it is all done on the ground
by these experts, these expert
organizations that
know their stuff,
they're in the
community, they've
already existed
before Kiva usually.
They have their own ways of
doing training and vetting
and all that stuff.
So that's how that happens.
Now, there's also, over
the last few years,
a new way that Kiva has been
doing things called Kiva's If.
And for the sake of
time, I'll explain
it super, super concisely.
Instead of lender, Kiva,
field partner, borrower.
It's lender, Kiva, trustee--
just an individual-- borrower.
And it's much more direct and
it's kind of like Kiva-lite.
And the trustee just vouches for
the reputation of the borrower.
I think that's the way, at
least in the US, for sure,
but I think in other places, the
way things are going to move.
And it's lighter, it's more
mobile, it's exciting stuff.
AUDIENCE: If you're,
depending on how close you
are to the field partners,
like, how did they
vet someone to know if they
are right for a loan or not?
JESSICA JACKLEY: Great, OK.
You can totally
interrupt me and be like,
that's not what I asked.
Reroute.
AUDIENCE: Super
interesting, I promise.
Thank you for saying all that.
JESSICA JACKLEY: No problem.
So field partners, they each
have their own set of criteria.
So now, my answer
is not even going
to be satisfying,
because it's going
to be an it depends answer.
But they all have their
own set of criteria.
Some only serve
women, some require
training before you can
even apply for loan.
Some have quite long
application processes.
It's all different,
but they, again, they
kind of know their communities
and know how to do that.
We can talk more after.
Is that OK?
I feel like that'll--
AUDIENCE: Yea, thank you.
JESSICA JACKLEY: --That's
my best I can do.
OK.
AUDIENCE: So I just
have a question
about what sort of makes
a good story in your mind,
and how you go about
making sure that you're
creating the right story.
I can already see
challenges around things
like trying to make a
representative story
versus a really
inspirational one,
or whose perspective
from a storyteller
is sort of being served.
You or sort of the
actor involved.
So I'm wondering how you
approach all those questions.
JESSICA JACKLEY: Well,
so one of the things--
I want to be super
clear, because I'm not
their day to day's, full
time, everyday staff.
I feel like a grandma, like,
I get to be really proud
and show pictures, been I'm
doing hard work every day.
So I don't want to speak for
exactly what's happening now,
but I will say, at the
beginning, first early years,
we were really excited not
to have it be too polished.
To just have whatever
people wanted to put up
there speaks for
itself, and have
kind of the opposite of this
very carefully crafted, kind
of manipulated story,
that we saw so much
from other organizations that
probably kind of gamified it,
right?
Like they knew exactly what
keywords to put in to make
it hit you in a particular way.
So right now, what happens
is those field partners,
see your other question
there was a great setup,
so now you know what
a field partner is.
They have loan officers or
other representatives that
are out there with
borrowers, and while they
are the ones that bring
the information back,
it's not like the
borrowers are typing up
their own stories at this
point, at least in Kiva classic.
They might have basic
guidelines on, like, question
to ask and things like that,
but the intention, at least,
early on, was never for it
to be a super polished, hey,
make sure to mention
how you're going
to use the profits from
your business for education,
because people love that.
And it's not like, oh,
that's a great picture,
but can you have
your kid in there,
because people love kids?
Right?
I'm so guilty of it myself.
So anyway, that's
sort of, I think,
the ethos-- that's the
spirit of how Kiva operates.
In terms of what I personally
think makes a good story.
I mean, I think transparency
and balancing-- I don't know,
I mean, I think
being as personal
and is honest about what you're
going through, as you can,
is kind of all you can do.
And that usually resonates
the most of people.
I think people
want to be let in.
In kind of the inner
circle, and to feel like
they're really participating
and really a part of it.
Some of the-- who asked the
challenges question back there,
yeah.
So some of the more
challenging moments
when we've had to talk about,
oh, sorry, your money is not
coming back, because this field
partner did something terrible.
Which is few and far
between, but it's happened.
I remember being
terrified, the first time,
to put that story out
there into the world,
and explain to people
what had happened.
But the transparency
of it, I mean,
we didn't get an angry
email or note back.
People were like, thanks
for being so honest,
this is really hard
work to do, we get it.
We're going to re-lend
anyway, or we're
going to lend new
money, because we're not
getting our money back.
But they were very supportive
and appreciated, I think,
being in the trenches with
us, and on the ground,
and hearing the honest stuff.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
JESSICA JACKLEY: Yeah.
Thank you all very much, and--
FEMALE SPEAKER:
Thank you so much.
JESSICA JACKLEY: --I'm,
I'll stay for awhile, so.
FEMALE SPEAKER:
Thank you so much.
JESSICA JACKLEY: Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
