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High Five Energy Founders
Jessica Jackley: $3 Billion in Loans that Changed The World (Kiva Co-Founder)
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Jessica Jackley, Co-Founder of Kiva, reveals: How a $3,100 pilot with 7 friends in Uganda became $3 billion in micro loans — and why she never set out to be an entrepreneur.
THE REAL STORY: Jessica wasn't chasing a startup. She stumbled into a lecture about microfinance, moved to East Africa with no plan, and spent months interviewing borrowers living on a few dollars a day. What she heard changed everything. She and her co-founder Matt launched Kiva with a self-written press release, no PR budget, and a handful of Ugandan entrepreneurs who needed a few hundred dollars. Within weeks, blogs were writing about it. Within a year, they'd facilitated $500K in loans. Kiva is now closing in on $3 billion — with a 99% repayment rate across 90+ countries.
WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:
- Why entrepreneurship is "the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled" — and why that definition changes everything
- How $3,100 and 7 borrowers in Uganda became one of the most impactful platforms in the world
- Why she teaches a class specifically designed to debunk Silicon Valley's "mono-myth" of startup success
- The "Design for People First" framework that built Kiva — and still guides her work at USC
- What happened when she built her second startup pregnant with twins — and an investor blogged about it
- Her take on AI, intentionality, and why she doesn't want her 5-year-old learning to write prompts
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Entrepreneurship Redefined
03:46 Stanford Social Innovation
06:08 Discovering Microfinance
09:45 East Africa Fieldwork
12:09 Kiva Idea Takes Shape
14:47 Pilot to Viral Launch
17:07 Repayment and Impact
21:03 How Kiva Tells Stories
24:14 Disregard the Blockers
26:50 Everybody Poops Mindset
28:43 Purpose and Priorities
30:36 Choosing How to Use AI
36:48 Breadcrumbs and Attention
42:40 Advice for Aspiring Founders
ABOUT JESSICA JACKLEY:
Jessica Jackley is the co-founder of Kiva, the world's first peer-to-peer micro-lending platform, which has facilitated over $3 billion in loans across 90+ countries with a 99% repayment rate. She is a professor of Social Entrepreneurship and Design Thinking at USC, an investor, and an advocate for mission-driven entrepreneurship.
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Jeffrey Chernick is Managing Partner at Yellow Visor Ventures, and author of High Five Energy. He's a 3x founder (RideAmigos, Vyng - 20M+ downloads) with 20+ years building companies. Featured in TechCrunch, Forbes, NBC, LA Times.
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