We talk with the CTO of Kiva.org, Sam Mankiewicz about how digital goals are measured and used in the development process. Kiva.org, a leader in the micro finance world, has loaned over $60 million to date and they are still growing. With this growth come many challenges that must be balanced by the tech team to manage an aging platform with increasing demand for innovation and measurement.

Episode 20

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Speaker 1: Well, I’m incredibly excited today because I get to talk about metrics. And any day I can talk about metrics, that day is a happy day. Welcome to Episode 20. We are talking with Kiva actually and their CTO, Sam Minkwich (SP), I’ve known him for a while. I’ve loved Kiva for even longer. If you don’t know Kiva, please be sure after listening to this to go check them out. They’re offering an incredible platform that provides microloans to underdeveloped countries and people that are, you know, entrepreneurs there as well as small grants expanding into the U.S. and other regions. Alright, let’s go jump into this interview. And by the way, I had to fly to California for this one. So please enjoy it.

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Speaker 1: I’m here today at the Kiva offices, and I’m here with their brilliant CTO, Sam. Actually, can you just tell us what you do here?

Speaker 2: Sure. My name is Sam Minkwich (SP), I’m the CTO of Kiva.org. I’ve been with Kiva for over seven years now. And I’m responsible for the overall technology plan, lead the engineering and product development team here at Kiva. And sort of being one of the original technology member of the team, I’m also the institutional memory of how everything works and why did we exactly decide to build it this way five years ago now that it’s broken.

Speaker 1: So, “I’m here something breaks, let’s go to the internal repository which is, Sam.” But that is incredible to me because I understand it about Kiva. But could you actually tell us what does Kiva do in a nutshell and, you know, how does that relate to technology?

Speaker 2: Sure. So, Kiva is an online marketplace where anyone with as little as $25 can come online, find an entrepreneur or a borrower in the developing world that they wanna help support in their business, contribute online, and help see that business get the funding that it needs and might not otherwise have access to. And also, not only do you get your $25 back, most of the time, but you also get hear from the borrower and hear updates about the progress of their business.

Speaker 1: Pretty incredible stuff. And, you know, you’re coming up on 10 years of being around. You were in the game before it was cool, as it was the most cool, and now as people are, you know, taking more of a critical eye on it–I’m curious, what are the metrics overall that Kiva is looking at as, you know, as indicators of success?

Speaker 2: Yep. So, you know, Kiva first and foremost sees itself as a social enterprise. What we’re trying to do is give access to capital to people that don’t have it normally. And the best way to measure that is just, how many borrowers? How many people are getting access to that capital? And how much money are we able to put in their hands on any given basis. So, we just recently crossed the lifetime threshold of $600,000,000 in loans in our 10 year history. And we’re on pace for about $115,000,000 of loans to be made in 2014. And so that is millions of lenders that have helped fund loans for millions of borrowers all around t