Dinner At Brian's

Wow.

Wow wow wow wow wow.

It's been a big week, and my head is spinning with ideas. I'm not even sure where to start.

Sunday night Fiona and I went to dinner at VEF founder Brian Lehnen's house. We were pretty nervous because we'd only talked to Brian a few times, and we wanted to make a good impression. We also had no idea what to expect. We didn't know who'd be there or anything.

Naturally, we started joking around during the train ride down to San Carlos. Being a veritable connoisseur of awkwardness, I tried to come up with uncomfortable scenarios. I told Fiona that as soon as I saw Brian I'd walk up to him and give him a huge hug - really tight - and not let go for 45 seconds. Just make it really long and weird.

Of course, I didn't do that at all. Brian met us at the train station and there was your usual round of handshaking and whatnot. Then the three of us piled into the car and went to his house.

We walked in the front door into a room full of people. One guy, whom I immediately recognized as the founder of Kiva, yelled "Jeremy! I feel like I know this guy!". Then he came over and gave me a hug! It was really funny and cool, although it wasn't as uncomfortably awkward as I would have liked.

Matt's wife Jessica also bounded over to us and freely dispensed some love. It was a great reception, and it made me feel right at home. I'd felt a real connection with Matt during our phone conversations, and it turned out I was right. These are our people.

Then we started talking with the other people who were there. One of them was a guy who I'm not going to name quite yet who's one of the higher-ups at an extremely large and well-known company. Hopefully Kiva will be partnering with this company, and if this happens it would be huge in both financial terms and in terms of legitimacy. But more on that in time.

The other guy who was there was an unassuming, cool looking guy named Carl. After some prodding by Jessica, Carl told us his story. In the early 90s he was a special-ed teacher for disabled kids. He wanted to try to get them using computers, but there wasn't really any software that was appropriate so he decided to make his own. He went and downloaded this new thing called "Java" that had just been pre-released, and it all snowballed from there. Soon he was getting emails from people asking him questions about the new programming language, and he'd answer them to the best of his ability, the whole time thinking "I wonder when they'll realize that I'm just a teacher". Eventually he wound up sitting at Sun Microsystem's headquarters with James Gosling (the inventor of Java - I've read his books!) who asked him what it would take for Carl to come work for Sun. Carl threw out a number (which he later learned was embarrassingly low) and they hired him on the spot. The rest, as they say, is history.

Fast forward 15 years to find Matt and Carl working together at TiVo. Matt recently quit to concentrate on Kiva full time, and Carl - one of the first Java programmers in the world - has also joined Kiva full time. Except Carl's going balls out and is moving to Africa to work from Tororo, Uganda! He's building a house on a big ranch (with running water and sewage!) for around $5,000. You can follow his adventures online at Carl's Big Adventure.

After a few cocktails, we sat down to dinner and Brian told us all kinds of crazy stories about traveling in Africa and what he's been through for the past twenty years with the Village Enterprise Fund. He's a pretty incredible guy, and I could've listened to him talk all night.

By the time we left Fiona and I were both feeling fantastic about everything. The energy around that dinner table was so strong it almost made my hair stand on end. It was the same feeling I used to have when I was at Number Six before the dot com crash - like you're standing on the edge of a world with endless possibilities where with the right amount of luck, patience and hard work anything can be accomplished.

These are exciting times, my friends!

Posted by flow Frazao on February 3, 2006 at 03:09 PM in America, Kiva/VEF | Permalink