February 24, 2006

everybody wants love

everybody wants love.jpg

Rick Segal's new V.C. idea, as told by Shel:

He's a believer in micro financing and has become convinced that small investments spread over a large number of entrepreneurs with the right talent could be very lucrative for the right investors.

Posted by hugh macleod at February 24, 2006 11:38 PM | TrackBack
Comments

well done big guy

Posted by: Koob Japan at February 24, 2006 11:57 PM

And I will Blog for it!
http://theheadlemur.typepad.com/ravinglunacy/2006/02/will_blog_for_s.html

Posted by: alan herrell - the head lemur at February 25, 2006 12:06 AM

Everybody needs love.

Posted by: red_fox at February 26, 2006 1:25 PM

I commented on micro-finance over at ParkParadigm which has a series of posts on the same or related subject. As I said there, a colleague of mine took some time off to get involved in this same business, but here micro-loans to individuals in developing countries. The take-away from that was that the recovery rate on the micro-loans (how many people paid back) was extremely large - a lot larger than what one would intuitively expect.

Sometimes it doesn't take a lot of cash to prove a business, move it to a point where it will succeed or fail on its own merits. If you can find a motivated, talented individual with a craft or idea who will work their proverbials off to succeed and you like the business why would you not provide some level of finance?

The key - as said in the original article - a one off micro-finance exercise is a bet (and there is nothing wrong with that) but a series of micro-finance exercises is a portfolio investment (and there is nothing wrong with that either but you don't lose it all if one fails - indeed you may only need one success)

Hugh - now, can you match global microbrand with (global) microfinance .. ?

Trying to CoComment this but having problems :( Hope this doesn't appear twice!

Posted by: malcolm at February 27, 2006 9:37 AM