Skip to Content

April Speakers Inspire Entrepreneurship Students
At the beginning of April, several dynamic speakers visited the Wake Forest University campus and discussed various entrepreneurial topics. Jessica Jackley Flannery, co-founder of Kiva, an international peer-to-peer lending site, was able to interact with both MBA students as well as undergraduates during her visit. Roberto Espinoza, Director of BPN América Central in Nicaragua discussed his work with Project Nicaragua, an ongoing entrepreneurial education program with Wake Forest MBA students. Tim Westergren, founder of PANDORA®, a free, personalized internet radio service, spoke on entrepreneurial opportunities in the music industry.

Kiva Co-Founder: Jessica Jackley Flannery
Jessica Jackley Flannery’s co-founding of Kiva grew out of her personal interest in alleviating poverty and empowering individuals around the globe. Kiva provides lenders the opportunity to read about the entrepreneur they lend to and to make loans for as little as $25 (the minimum loan on the site).

Image Flannery had studied philosophy, science, and poetry at Bucknell University, but was unsure of her career path upon her graduation. After leaving Bucknell, she moved to California and initially took a temporary administrative job at the Center for Social Innovation at Stanford University (Flannery would eventually complete her MBA at Stanford). While working at the center, she learned about microfinance and entrepreneurship in developing countries. She became so interested in the process that she quit her job at the Center and traveled to East Africa.

While Flannery was in Africa, she conducted interviews with over 150 entrepreneurs. She found the stories of these individuals extremely moving, and became, in her words, “obsessed” with the stories and sharing them with friends and family. Flannery wondered how she could share these stories with a larger, global audience. She started to develop the idea for a website that not only published the stories of these struggling entrepreneurs but also allowed individual lenders to chip in to help the entrepreneurs in their ventures.

Kiva began in March 2005, a year after Flannery’s first East Africa trip, by profiling seven entrepreneurs and posting them to a basic website in a Ugandan internet cafe. Kiva then took off through the blogosphere. In the fall of 2005, Kiva posted 12 new entrepreneurs, and Flannery entered the MBA program at Stanford. From there, 4-5 microfinance institutions joined the site, and from October 2005 through October 2006, Kiva raised and distributed over $500,000 in loans to micro-enterprises around the globe.

Kiva and Flannery are concerned with showcasing the human experience and the connection that Kiva builds. Flannery calls Kiva a “tool for connectivity.” While poverty alleviation is definitely one of Kiva’s many goals, Flannery is quick to point out that instilling dignity and mutual respect between lender and entrepreneur is the intangible goal of Kiva and just as important. “I like to think of my cousin,” Flannery says, “who has never been out of the state of Pennsylvania, thinking about a weaver in Cambodia that she has connected with through Kiva.”

More information about Kiva can be found on the website: www.kiva.org.

Roberto Espinoza: Director of BPN América Central, Project Nicaragua
Roberto Espinoza is the Director of BPN América Central in Nicaragua. The Business Professional Network (BPN) Foundation is an international non-profit organization founded in Berne, Switzerland that facilitates the development of small and medium size enterprises in developing countries. BPN América Central implements the BPN model in Nicaragua, offering training and coaching to create jobs. Espinoza also works regularly with Project Nicaragua, an entrepreneurship training workshop developed by MBA students in Wake Forest University’s Babcock Graduate School of Management. Espinoza spoke on the Wake Forest Campus on April 2, 2009.

Image Espinoza did not begin his career as an entrepreneur or in entrepreneurship education. His first degree is in engineering, which he completed after receiving a scholarship to study in Russia. After moving back to Nicaragua, he went back to university to complete a second degree in accounting. He now combines these background influences and applies these skills to his work for BPN and Project Nicaragua.

Espinoza originally worked for World Vision, and some of the BPN are customers from the World Vision Communities. However, Espinoza points out that, out of necessity, much of World Vision’s work is focused on the immediacy of helping the children. Children need food, clothes, and medical care now. “The parents of these children want to take responsibility for their children.” Espinoza’s work concentrates on a strategy for the parents to become employed or start their own businesses to provide for their families.

Espinoza’s work with the Nicaragua Project also focuses on entrepreneurship education, on training. Through this program, MBA students from Wake Forest University travel to Nicaragua and give workshops that teach prospective entrepreneurs about finance, human resources, marketing, and running a business. A large percentage of the people who participate do eventually need and request a loan, but the primary focus of the project is training and entrepreneurship education, stressing the importance of building a network, creating new jobs, and creating more workplaces.

The model for Project Nicaragua is unique in that it is not a typical training model. The program does not take the “sage on stage” approach. The project not only provides an experiential learning opportunity for MBA students, but also allows entrepreneurs in Nicaragua access to live consulting.

For more information on BPN América Central: http://en.bpn.ch/bpn_nica.html.

Tim Westergren: Founder of Pandora
On Tuesday, April 7, 2009, Tim Westergren, founder of the personalized internet radio service PANDORA® visited the Wake Forest University campus. The Entrepreneurship Society sponsored his talk “The Music Industry: Entrepreneurial Opportunities.”

Image Westergren graduated from Stanford in 1988 with a major in political science, but he really wanted to work in the music industry. Westergren’s first job out of college was as a nanny--he worked as a nanny for five years, during which he had the time to pursue his music career, playing piano and eventually working on composing music for commercials and film.

It was during his work as a composer that he developed the basis for Pandora’s playlists, which are based on musical similarity. Westergren would take a stack of CDs with him to meet with directors. He played the CDs for the directors while parts of the film ran. He found himself saying, “If you like this, then you might like this.” This process inspired Pandora’s personalized selection process, a kind of “musical Myers Briggs test” as Westergren refers to it.

Westergren’s enthusiasm for this process and the fact that he was living in Silicon Valley in 1999, surrounded by what he called “entrepreneurship euphoria,” led him to the idea of starting his own business. Westergren shared his idea for what he began calling a “music discovery engine” with a friend and college classmate and wrote a business plan. In March of 2000, during their angel investment round, they raised $1.5 million. However, this was mere weeks before the dot-com bubble burst, and the wave of controversy over Napster and filesharing was soon to follow. “We launched at the worst time,” he said. A year after the launch, the $1.5 million was gone.

Westergren and his staff began reevaluating and revising their business plan. What was gradually determined was that the musical selection/suggestion process they had designed was perfect for internet radio. Pandora would provide individualized streams for individual listeners. With the revised business plan, the company raised another $9 million by March 2004, and the Pandora website was launched in November of 2005. Pandora benefitted from huge viral growth, never requiring the company to use ads to get the word out about the new individualized service.

The story of Pandora’s beginnings and transformation illustrate some of the necessary components of the entrepreneur: willingness to take risks and the ability to change and adapt your business model.
 

Join our Mailing List

Enter your email address here to join our mailing list: