Last week, I had the opportunity to sit down with Jordan Kassalow, Graham Macmillan and Miriam Stone – three staff members at VisionSpring – to conduct a long-form interview. Formerly known as Scojo Foundation, VisionSpring is the pioneering base of the pyramid-focused enterprise working to provide access to eyeglasses in low-income communities around the world.

NextBillion.net readers will be familiar with VisionSpring's basic story; after all, our team published a What Works case study on the company back in 2007. We've followed their progress for a long time, up to and including their recent name change and announcement of a 5-year fundraising prospectus.

(Full disclosure: I work at Acumen Fund, which is an investor in VisionSpring.)

Rob Katz, NextBillion.net: How, when and why did you get involved with VisionSpring?

Jordan Kassalow, Chairman and Co-Founder, VisionSpring: It was very practical. I spotted a market failure in my blindness prevention work (I'm an optometrist and public health expert by trade.) For many years, my specialty was river blindness control, and when I worked in low-income communities, I saw more people coming to clinics because they couldn't see up close, while there were relatively few who were coming to us for river blindness. I saw this pattern regardless of whether I was working in Africa, Asia or Latin America. When you're working on blindness, the overall market relative to general eye care is small. The normal need for eyeglasses is strong, but underserved in the developing world. After many months, I finally realized that, if no one else is doing something about it, why can’t I?

(The interview continues past the break; click "Read More" to continue)