Jack sits down in Panama City with Juan Kong, the co-founder and CEO of Marian Exchange, an investment app built to help Latinos generate long-term wealth by tokenizing real assets and connecting local banking rails with crypto infrastructure. He traces how organizing one of Panama’s first crypto conferences and seeing how many people remain unbanked, pushed him to design tools that make investing accessible. The conversation dives into his personal story of growing up Chinese in Panama and the U.S., never fully fitting in, battling depression, and realizing his superpower was connecting people across cultures. The two unpack, leaving a comfortable corporate job, launching a failed ticketing startup, and ultimately finding a better fit at the edge of Web3, where constant change matches his curiosity. They close on the inner game of entrepreneurship, habits, boundaries, imposter syndrome, meditation, even ayahuasca, and the core message that aligning your work with your true purpose and following your gut matters more than any external playbook.

https://www.mariex.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/juankong/

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Host: Jack Moran

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