Ep 93.1: Raising North Korean Entrepreneurs | Geoffrey See (former Chairman, Choson Exchange&WEF Young Global Leader) - a podcast by Ling Yah

from 2023-12-13T20:10:48.723929

:: ::

North Korean women are entrepreneurs.

Not the first thing you might think of, but a reality that STIMY’s latest guest - Geoffrey See - knows very well.

So who is Geoffrey See?

Here’s a quick run down 👇🏻

Graduated from Yale University & the Wharton Business School;
Worked as a Bain consultant;
Co-founded Choson Exchange: a social enterprise that created the largest training program for female entrepreneurs in North Korea - which ended up being profiled in a Harvard Business School case study;
Helped launch a blockchain protocol that had a $2B coin cap at its cap;
Is a digital currency taskforce member and consumer protection report author at the World Economic Forum Global Council for Digital Currency Governance;
Is a Ethereum Foundation fellow and a Kauffman Fellow; and
Is now the CEO of Poko: a Y-Combinator backed startup focused on building DAOs to empower the next generation of investors, entrepreneurs and creators

In Part 1, we cover his childhood & experience building Choson Exchange.

Highlights:

3:22 A strange relationship with authority
5:28 Wharton Business School
8:15 First brush with North Korea
10:31 North Korean men in politics, women in business
11:17 What does “business” mean in North Korea?
14:51 Building partnerships with North Korean Universities
16:34 Overcoming paranoia
20:16 How to find champions
21:48 Doing due diligence on potential partners
23:48 What North Koreans thought of the “rule of law”
28:26 Choson Exchange’s financing model
30:06 Measuring impact
31:15 Keeping the faith
33:58 The people that helped Geoffrey the most (i.e. a former Foreign Minister, National Security Advisor to multiple South Korean Presidents & ex-Global Managing Director of McKinsey & Company)
37:05 Deciding to leave Choson Exchange
38:56 The difficulties of letting go

Once you’ve listened to Part 1, head over to Part 2 to learn about how Geoffrey entered the web3 space and what he’s doing with Poko!

💌 Weekly Newsletter on upcoming STIMY guests/interesting things to make you a more interesting people: https://sothisismywhy.ck.page/ebf231f605

🙊 Like STIMY? Buy us a ☕️?: https://beacons.ai/sothisismywhy

Further episodes of So This Is My Why

Further podcasts by Ling Yah

Website of Ling Yah