Yes, we just asked you for money. A loan actually. But not a big loan, just a small one, like say, the cost of your lunch today. Why? Because if all of you gave us your lunch money for a day, we’d have enough to do something kinda huge. Like help make our grassfed bison available to more people. If you’re already in, use this link to go directly to The Honest Bison Kiva Zip Loan.  For the rest of you, let’s back up a bit first.

What makes a business grow?

Thanks to all of your support, The Honest Bison has been steadily growing over the last year. In order for a small business like ours to continue growing, we have to consider 3 key things:

1. Do we have a quality product that customers need or want?

2. Do we have a strong founder with a cohesive team and the support of a community?

3. Do we have the necessary capital to expand and maintain our extremely high standards?

There’s no question that we have 1 and 2 down pat. Every review, photo and comment we get is about how incredible our grassfed bison tastes and how good people feel when when they eat it. And nothing makes us happier than hearing that.

Which brings us to #3: Capital. In order for a business to expand, capital is needed. When The Honest Bison was still a mere thought in my head,  I had enough personal capital to test out the plausibility of my idea. I did a ton of research, took classes, built an infrastructure and tested both the product and the business model in a select market.  Now that The Honest Bison is successfully feeding thousands of customers, my focus has became “How do I scale this business up to meet the growing demand for healthy, grassfed bison?” Capital. (There’s that word again.) However, in today’s financial system raising money can be difficult, especially when the business idea is unfamiliar. So I turned to some smart people who I knew could help.

Enter Kiva Zip

Kiva Zip allows small business owners to crowd source 0% interest micro-loans in order to expand their businesses. Unlike Kickstarter (where you donate money in exchange for future goods), Kiva Zip is a loan. So every cent you give us, you get back. And in order to help the business owner, the loan is repaid without any interest. Did we mention that Kiva Zip is a non-profit organization so all the money goes directly to the business owner? For more about how Kiva Zip works, watch this video.

https://youtu.be/SKTiDrV1bYo

I first learned about Kiva Zip through my friends at Slow Money Southern California as well as fellow Los Angeles-based, food entrepreneur Jennifer Piette, who founded Out of the Box Collective. Her past success with Kiva Zip and her growing business showed me just how powerful the support of a community committed to improving our food system could be. (Of course, I helped her out by contributing to her loan!)

Here is another video about the power of Kiva Zip and how they’re helping small business owners around the world.

https://youtu.be/yzWOIF4lBGg

So back to the whole “asking you for money” thing. Today I want to reach out to you, our community, and ask that you please consider supporting our Kiva Zip Loan. How much you decide to loan us is completely up to you. It could literally be your lunch money or you could decide to contribute more. Regardless of the amount, you will get it all back – plus the warm and fuzzies that come from helping someone out. Our goal is simply to make healthy food you can trust accessible to more people. We promise to put it your money to good use. And in the long run, your belly will benefit from our success!

You can find our loan right here: The Honest Bison Kip Zip Loan

THANK YOU!

Sean Lenihan

Founder, The Honest Bison

One more video for the road: A cool animation that illustrates the rise of Kiva.