A lesson in financial entrepreneurship

Micro lending has been a hot topic ever since Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Prize. Two outfits that were formed to provide microlending services, Kiva and Prosper, offer an interesting contrast in their approaches. Kiva is set up as a dot.org, while Prosper is for-profit all the way--complete with some heavy duty venture capital backing from the likes of Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital and others. But Kiva is not without private-sector talent. It has hired Olana Hirsch Khan, as chief operating officer; she previously worked at Google for six years. President Premal Shah was one of eBay's early employees. My sense is that it will be hard to match the sheer financial heft afforded by the VC approach to startups. However, it might find a niche in which non-profits may be the only option.

For more:
- here's a Business Week article