Premal Shah - Kiva

Kiva's President shares with Global X three pieces of advice for fellow social entrepreneurs.

1. More traction, less projection!
Premal Shah spent two years at PayPal while he was trying to get Kiva's idea off the ground. In retrospect, he thinks that doing "less PowerPoint, less MS Excel" is best. "Showing traction is a lot better than showing projections (even if the traction is a fraction of what the projections are)."

2. Go public, keep a blog!
Premal Shah thinks that you should start a blog the minute you launch your social venture to show how things are progressing month-over-month. His recommendation: "Make the process transparent online as soon as you can, but don't only talk about your successes, talk also about your failures and your constraints. Make your whole adventure radically transparent!"

3. Share the ownership!
Premal Shah thinks you should build a large advisory board "to share the ability for other people to co-create something with you and track it all online." As he says: "Ink is cheap on the Internet!"

Watch Premal Shah's X-Interview, then read Matt Flannery's blog, the Kiva Chronicles.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• socialedge
• globalx
• socialentrepreneur
• skoll
• PremalShah
• Kiva
• microfinance

[ItsaStringThing]

Great ideas here Premal.  Will have to save this.

[Mackenzie1485]

I definitely agree with traction over projections. Traction is real where projections are wishful thinking. Thanks Shah!