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!

📍Show notes: www.sothisismywhy.com/93 

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

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