Aquila Network Blog

If you are looking to start a Kingdom Business, you will most likely have to “pitch” your new business idea to various groups as you prepare to launch the company.

Guy Kawasaki has a great article by Bill Reichert, of Garage Technology Ventures, listing out some tips to help you create a perfect Powerpoint presentation to pitch your new business (especially if you are pitching to get capital):

• Make sure you can tell the entire story in ten to fifteen minutes. Even if you have time, your total presentation should be no longer than twenty minutes. You want to have time to engage the investors and discuss their questions or concerns. If you think you have additional critical points that have to be made, prepare “pocket slides” that you can put up if the topic arises.
• Don’t put so much text on a page that the investor has to read it. Everything should be short, content-rich bullets in a font large enough to read without squinting. The words are simply reinforcement of the points you are making.

Bill also gives a breakdown on the ten essential slides you need for your presentation. It is a very helpful article for all aspiring entrepreneurs.

You can read the entire article HERE.

Premal Shah developed an interest in micro-finance during college. He spent time in the developing world observing micro-finance institutions. After graduation, Premal ended up at PayPal, which was later aquired by eBay in 2002. The skills Premal developed from time at PayPal and eBay integrated with a passion for micro-finance as he became part of Kiva.org

In an interview with Gregory Galant of Venturevoice.com, Premal gives an interesting background on the growth of Kiva, their plans for the future, and some helpful advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.

You can download this audio interview at Venturevoice.com.

Premal made several points that were worth noting.
First, transparency has been one of the keys to the success of Kiva.
People can make a connection with the specific person they are loaning the money to. They see a picture of this person. They get journal updates about this person and their business. They can get a feel for what life is like for this person in the developing world. It is a very intimate experience.

When you “invest” with Kiva, you are not just giving money to a faceless organization where you have no idea how that investment is being used. Just like with Room to Read, transparency gives investors/customers/donors a great connection to the work you are doing.

Second, Premal’s best advice for entrepreneurs: Get started!
If you have an idea, go do it. You will never have all the pieces in place before you launch, so get what need to get started and figure out the rest as you go. Kiva started out as a “project”. As the “project” gained momentum, they realized they were on to something serious and needed to scale it up. Kiva just passed $2 million in loan volume in December.

Download this interview with Premal Shah, get inspired, and go do something big for God’s Kingdom.

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OnStartups.com has two great posts that give some great advice to those looking to launch their own start-up.

The first post contains 17 quick tips for founders. Here are a couple good ones:

• Eventually, your product will need to work and do something useful. No amount of marketing or strategy will get you around this.
• At the end of each day, ask yourself: “Did the product get better for customers today?”. If you don’t have a good answer, stay up until you do.
• At least once every year or so, your startup will almost die.
• Even the most successful startup ideas had 100 reasons not to pursue them. There is no perfect idea.

The second post give some helpful hints for those who are looking to bring on a co-founder. Here are the points I found insightful:

• There should be aligned interest and commitment from your co-founder. You both have to (at some level) be committed to not only building a company, but the same company.
• Have the hard discussions around equity, compensation and responsibilities early. This stuff does not get easier over time – it gets harder.
• If after significant effort, you simply can’t find a co-founder, you either don’t know enough people, not enough people like you or the idea sucks so much that nobody is willing to take the leap with you.

“For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.”

“Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his stripes we are healed.”

Isaiah 53

Tom Williams, the co-founder and CEO of www.givemeaning.com, has some great reflections on a recent trip he made to Africa. Here is just a sample:

The need and opportunity for social enterprise investment is massive. Especially in Rwanda but true also of Burundi and Uganda are tremendous and compelling opportunities to invest in businesses that would stimulate economic productivity of rural communities.

There is so much potential for Kingdom Entrepreneurs to create serious, lasting change in African communities through business development.

Tom has some great thoughts that will inspire your thinking on what can be done on a continent that is in need of help on so many levels. As followers of Jesus, we must look at the situation in Africa and find ways that we can contribute to the development effort while sharing the love of Christ.

Africa needs holistic change. We have been blessed with the means to help. We just lacking people with a vision for change who are willing to sacrifice. How will you contribute your gifting in business to the effort?

Guy Kawasaki has posted a great interview he did with Aziza Mohmmand, an inspiring female entrepreneur from Afghanistan. Currently, Aziza is running a leather company in Afghanistan that manufactures everything from soccer balls to wallets. She employees over 200 widows that are the sole bread winners for their family.

In the interview she talks about what it was like to start a business in Afghanistan. It is definitely worth a look.

LINK

“Leaving Microsoft to Change the World” is an inspiring book that chronicles what can happen if you follow your passion to make a difference in the world. Here is the summary of the book from Amazon.com:

John Wood discovered his passion, his greatest success, and his life’s work–not at business school or leading Microsoft’s charge into Asia in the 1990s–but on a soul-searching trip to the Himalayas. Wood felt trapped between an all-consuming career and a desire to do something lasting and significant…

Wood made the decision to walk away from Microsoft and create Room to Read-an organization that has donated more than 1.2 million books, established more than 2,600 libraries and 200 schools, and sent 1,700 girls to school on scholarship-ultimately touching the lives of 875,000 children with the lifelong gift of education.

There is much that can be learned from the story of John Wood and Room to Read’s origin and growth. Here are my top three take-aways from the book:

• Skills learned in the Marketplace transition well into the non-profit arena.

Wood set out to create the “Microsoft of Non-Profits”. He took much of the knowledge he gained from working at the company and applied that to how he ran Room to Read. His business skills helped keep the organization lean and organized.

• Think Big! One library in Nepal can become thousands of schools around the world if you don’t sell your dream short.

Wood didn’t set out to create thousands of libraries. It started with a book drive to donate books to a single school in Nepal. He then capitalized on the momentum of this initial event and turned it into an actual non-profit. Opportunities must be seized upon.
After the Tsunami in South East Asia, Room to Read realized that their was a tremendous need for schools to be rebuilt. A door was opened for them in Sri Lanka, but they had no real presence on the ground in that country. While they easily could have shrunk back for the opportunity due to the myriad of logistical issues of setting up a brand new field office in a matter of weeks; instead they went forward at full speed and answered the questions along the way. Room to Read ended up receiving $2.5 million in capital commitments in the 9 months after the Tsunami to cover the first 3 years of work in Sri Lanka.

• Allow your partners to be connected to the actual work.

The need for libraries in the developing world is almost endless. The struggle is to connect that need with donors who have the financial means to build those libraries. John Wood could have just asked potential donors to give money to Room to Read so that the organization could go out and build libraries. Instead, he asked donors to give $8,000 to sponsor an individual library.This approach creates a sense of “ownership” within your donor community. They see direct results. They know exactly where their funds are being applied. They can tell their friends they helped build a library in Vietnam, which creates a “word of mouth” buzz to draw in other potential donors.

Overall, this is a very motivating book and will encourage anyone who has a passion to do something great with their life.

Technorati Tags: Leaving Microsoft to Change the World, John Wood, Room to Read

BBC News highlights a growing trend of investors in the UK who are putting their funds into Islamic bank accounts to avoid having their funds re-invested into industries that are perceived as “unethical”.

According to the principles of Islamic Banking, all funds must be invested in industries Muslims consider ethical. Another important aspect of Islamic Banking is that funds are unable to earn interest.

Emma Dellaway, 25, from south London, likes to know that the money sitting in her current account is not doing harm.

“I have a guarantee that my money will not be used to invest in arms or tobacco,” she says.
Sharia law also forbids investment in alcohol, gambling and pornography…
“I see giving up interest the same as recycling, visiting a farmers market or using the Red American Express card.”
“Perhaps, though, if I had lots of money I would look at it differently and want interest.”

It is very interesting to see the growing number of consumers who are willing to pay more in order to receive a product or service that they perceive as “socially responsible”. Whether it is a (RED) iPod, a bottle of Ethos Water, or an Islamic bank account; there seems to be a growing interest in factors beyond just the “bottom line”.

Business as Missions companies should be leading the charge in this arena. If people are willing to forgo making interest on their funds in order to insure their investment causes no harm, then there is definitely room for BAM-related opportunities that are both profitable and socially responsible.

Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Prize winning founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, gave a a stimulating interview with Ode Magazine. In the interview, Yunus challenges the current thinking on how we are going to solve the problem of poverty:

“What all these pop stars and politicians want, is the usual recipe: charity. But charity is not the way to help people in need; it is not a healthy basis for a relationship between people. If you want to solve poverty, you have to put people in a position to build their own life. Unfortunately, this is not how the aid industry works. Western governments and development organizations think they need to offer permanent charity. As a result, they keep entire economies in poverty and families in an inhuman situation.
Poor people are not the authors of their poverty. Poverty is a creation of a complex system of conceptions, rules and attitudes we have thought up ourselves. Therefore, if you want to eradicate poverty you have to go back to the drawing board, discover where we have planted the seeds of poverty and make changes there.”

While there will always be need for “charity” (especially in more extreme situations, like that in Darfur), I have to agree with Yunus that the ultimate solution to Poverty will come from programs that do more than just throw money at a negative situation. There is great potential for business to be used to give the poor a “hand up” out of the poverty trap.

“So if you wanted to do something good for the world, you didn’t think of starting a company; after all, you weren’t interested in money. You signed up to work at a social service institution or became a researcher so you could develop medicines to cure people’s ills—and which, by the way, would lavishly line the pockets of others. But there is another, more challenging, way: via the business community. Because I believe there is no better way to combine your desire for a better world with effectiveness than through a company.”

There is a bright future for Business as Mission. For so long, Missions has focused solely on “charity”. We have thought that the best way for the Western Church to help those around the world is by giving money to programs that will help bring them out of poverty while sharing the Gospel with them.
We now have an additional path to helping the poor. Business as Mission offers long-term, sustainable development as well as providing an incredible platform to demonstrate the truths of Jesus Christ.

Technorati Tags: Muhammad Yunus, Grameen Bank, Poverty