I love this stuff; the persistence part is the part that I like. It’s actually not fun when it’s happening, but you know it makes a difference because 99.9 percent of the people give up. And Vinod gave me that lesson in spades. I think I would have given up with Netscape. I wouldn’t have known what to do. I wouldn’t have had the chutzpah to just say, “No, we haven’t lost, we’re still negotiating, aren’t we?” And treating it as if I didn’t hear their “no.” It was very unfamiliar to me originally.
Livingston: Web-based email was one of those big ideas that was waiting right under people’s noses. Why did you and Jack come up with the idea first?
Bhatia: I don’t know why. Let me tell you one other thing about the Internet: there are thousands of such ideas under our noses even as we speak. Why things happen, I just don’t know. Maybe somebody has a need and, in our case, we had a need. That’s what triggered the idea. Sometimes ideas are born out of necessity: you solve a problem for yourself, and you hopefully solve it for a number of other people too.
Wokai delivers an internet microfinance platform that allows individuals to provide Chinese microentrepreneurs with loan capital. Our organization acts as an intermediary in this process, transferring funds from contributors abroad to microentrepreneurs in China through our field partners.
Who does Wokai support?
A typical Wokai microentrepeneur is a female rural inhabitant, living on less than $1/day. Her microfinance loan, ranging from $150-$300 dollars, provides her with the capital to start a small business. Her business varies by location, raising sheep in a rural grassland or operating a small fruit stand in a city center.
With her income, she accumulates savings, which allows her to allocate money towards long-term investments like education and health. By the end of her loan cycle, she has experienced increased financial independence, bolstered self-confidence, and a strengthened sense of community.
I’ve been extremely busy recently. Lot’s of changes going on at Cascadia right now. In a nutshell, I have a lot more responsibility and I’m going to be a lot busier so frequency of blog posts might suffer. I have 3 posts in draft mode and this current post I can hardly take credit for.
The 2 sidebars have been placed within an element so that you can enter information here at the bottom or up at the top that exists outside the 2 sidebars.
