Today I wanted to highlight one success story which touched me.

Meet Esterlita, a 58 year old lady from the village of Malibangcao, Ozamiz City in the Philippines. At an age when many of us in this country might be thinking about slowing down or retiring even, Esterlita is busier than ever – with good reason, she has seven school-aged children to support.

Esterlita received a loan of $125 from Kiva to get her agricultural business, growing and selling coconuts and bananas, off the ground. Had she not been able to access a startup loan like this then Esterlita would not have been able to expand the business in the way she has which would have had an impact on her ability to support her family, Esterlita expanded her venture by planting and growing more coconuts and
bananas than ever before. By increasing her volumes, she now earns around 5,000PHP or approximately $115 per month which has allowed her to pay off her startup loan and more importantly she is now able to support herself and has dramatically improved the standard of living for her family.

If you want to find out more about Esterlita, you can see visit her page on Kiva.

I personally think it is fantastic to see a woman entrepreneur creating a profitable enterprise to lift themselves out of poverty. Really inspiring stuff I’m sure you’ll agree.

A guest post by Liz Goldman for Wonga.com – the UK short term loans provider and one of
the biggest corporate supporters of Kiva.

What’s your startup?

Luxuryhound. We encourage people to spoil their dogs. More specifically, we design and make designer dog accessories in Scotland, mostly from leathers and tweeds, but we also have a more urban line of sparkly crystal collars.

Who/what inspired you to go down this road?

Even though I’m not a Paris Hilton type, I had a ‘handbag’ dog, and I took her everywhere with me; she really was a sort of substitute child. I then started noticing that I was part of a global trend of people anthropomophising their pets (and thereby spending more money on them) and yet, at the time, there wasn’t much out there that I thought was special. I was actually pushed to start the company when the recession carried away a lot of the design work in Scotland and I had to figure out something else to do.

What’s the next big challenge or hurdle that the company has to overcome?

I’ve been building my brand online, but in order to make the leap to larger sales I need to start selling wholesale. Shops like Harrods and Saks Fifth Avenue are in my sights, but my biggest hurdle is how shy I am about direct sales. When I talk to people about my products I know I convey passion and integrity; it’s just making the initial cold contact that terrifies me!

I’m also very interested in exporting to the BRIC countries, as they have a growing appetite for luxury goods AND their dog ownership is growing quickly, but I need to make the right contacts.

In three sentences, what’s the personal dream?

The worst thing I can think of is being bored. When I was younger I probably thought the dream life was to live in the lap of luxury and not have to work, but I now know that I have to keep busy learning and creating to be happy. I could imagine being a serial entrepreneur in completely different arenas.

If your life had a theme song, what would it be?

‘Sisters are doin’ it for themselves’…!!

What are you secretly an expert at?

Er, picking my nose? Oh, is that not a secret?

If your school friends had to pick a ‘Most Likely’ for you, what would it have been?

I’m pretty sure most people who knew me when I was in school thought I was going to be a performer — actor, singer, etc. At uni I focused on more prosaic/ intellectual pursuits, but I still love to get up and make a fool of myself in front of loads of people. I suppose that sounds bizarre after I’ve just mentioned how scared of cold-calling I am, but somehow they are quite different to me.

What lesson do you wish you’d been taught before you started all this?

I don’t you think you can be ‘taught’ lessons; you have to learn them. I read all sorts of business books, then went out and made the exact mistakes I’d told myself I wasn’t going to. Specifically: a. I should have kept a day job for a long time, and b. I should have gotten at least one product to market much sooner than I did. You can make up all sorts of excuses why you’re not ready, but until you get to market you have no idea what will sell.

I do think that one of the most under-appreciated problems of being a sole-founder start-up is loneliness: when you don’t talk to another person all day life can get a little too close to ‘Fight Club’ for comfort.

What’s the strangest advice you’ve received?

A scary guy in the New York subway yelled at me to not ever eat ice cream (note that there was no ice cream in sight at the time). He was probably right, though.

If someone wants to get on your good side, what would they need to do?

Good old-fashioned Scottish wit works well with me, but then it needs to be backed up with kindness. Or, you could just get me a deal with Harrods.

Is there anything you’d like to hear from people about?

Yeah! Two things: 1. If you have any contacts at high-end retail stores, both here and abroad, that might be likely to carry my products, let me know and 2. I’m now looking for interns to help with SEO, social media, and a-b testing the website.

Catch Luxuryhound over at www.luxuryhound.com!

If you work long hours in a job that doesn’t fulfill you, if you have ideas for starting your own business and aren’t afraid to relocate to make it happen –  then this could be the an opportunity you can’t afford to miss.

They’re looking for aspirational families who have the assets and the attitude to grasp new opportunities – to radically change their career, their home and with that, their standard of living.

Their team of experts will value your life – everything from your house to your car to your Jimmy Choos. They’ll reveal how much it’s actually worth and how you can spend that money to start a whole new happier lifestyle for you and your family. Not only will you be presented with these plans, you will also get the opportunity to really experience what making these life changes would be like.

If this sounds like you and you’d like more information on how to get involved then please contact Helen Soothill on hsoothill@truenorth.tv or0113 394 5497.

There are nine slots for attendees to present along whatever theme they like (as long as it involves WordPress) and take questions from the floor.

This is the second in a series of planned one-day events, following on from Blacknight WordUp Edinburgh 2011, which will take place across Scotland in the next 12 months.

http://wordup.wpscotland.org/glasgow2012/

Another article fished on Hacker News. Rob discusses how term sheet negotiations is one of his tools to “read” his future partners in which his fund might invest. He argues that those who make his life difficult early on, for instance when negotiating a term sheet, probably will be those who will make it difficult later on. This of course is a view from the venture capital side.

Via: PermanentRecord

Zach Holman, from GitHub, on slide design for people with a non design background. Slides he made to support one of his talks were submitted to Hackers News. To Zach’s surprise, they quickly gained popularity for their design. He then followed up with a short article on his personal blog covering his guidelines when it comes to designing a set of slides.

Via: Zackholman.com

• There are over 150 companies hiring at SiliconMilkRoundabout this weekend with over 500 technical jobs up for grabs at London start ups (with salaries from £20k to £100k

• There are 3,134 Graduate technical jobs available in the UK and over 1,000 in London currently listed on Adzuna.co.uk, the UK’s most comprehensive job search engine.

• The average Banking IT salary is £57k which is 19% higher than the average tech start up salary. Tech startups offer greater job satisfaction and the upside of options, but this salary gap is what the start hiring community is up against.

• 23% of start ups currently hiring in London are offering stock to graduate tech employees; 0% of banks hiring graduates are offering stock.

• Despite their age, workhorse languages such as C and C++ continue to remain at the top end of the software development landscape in terms of use and job potential. That being said, Ruby, Hadoop and HTML5 are the fastest growing “in demand” tech skills with employer demand up 70%+ year on year for all of these search terms

• Graduate Mobile developers can demand a premium, with the average graduate salary for iPhone developers at £34k and Android developers at £35k, 20% higher than the average graduate tech job.

• Despite what appears to be an abundance of tech jobs in the UK, 13.1% of computer science graduates remain unemployed (source: HESA). 7,000+ computer scientists graduated this summer from University in the UK.

Miicard is is about creating a system of trust online amongst people, and between people and businesses, to improve the safety and convenience of our online transactions.

As a beta tester, you can set up your public identity through your online bank account and have that verified. In return, you get 6 months free service when it launches.

More details available at: http://www.miicard.com/blog/201110/beta-testers-wanted-digital-passport-miicard

Also, you can check out a recent video demo of miicard at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTyDCGyZQAE