From growing up in the small town of Mogok, Myanmar, to making her mark in Yangon, Singapore and now Thailand, she’s become a global force to be reckoned with. She’s not just an entrepreneur; she’s a powerhouse listed in Forbes 30 under 30 and the mind behind Icarus Media, a social enterprise reaching over 11 million people every month. In today’s episode, we’ll explore how she expanded her horizons beyond her hometown, steered her business through a military coup, and managed to stay sane and successful through it all.

A perfect match for this podcast: as we talk about the no-nonsense approach Marieke has to digitalization, not focussing on the next shiny invention, but on real life solutions that truly make people's life easier. And no, that is not always a fancy AI tool. Today in That One Thing: Marieke van Gent on Digital Transformation.

From growing up in the small town of Mogok, Myanmar, to making her mark in Yangon, Singapore and now Thailand, she’s become a global force to be reckoned with. She’s not just an entrepreneur; she’s a powerhouse listed in Forbes 30 under 30 and the mind behind Icarus Media, a social enterprise reaching over 11 million people every month. In today’s episode, we’ll explore how she expanded her horizons beyond her hometown, steered her business through a military coup, and managed to stay sane and successful through it all.

From growing up in the small town of Mogok, Myanmar, to making her mark in Yangon, Singapore and now Thailand, she’s become a global force to be reckoned with. She’s not just an entrepreneur; she’s a powerhouse listed in Forbes 30 under 30 and the mind behind Icarus Media, a social enterprise reaching over 11 million people every month. In today’s episode, we’ll explore how she expanded her horizons beyond her hometown, steered her business through a military coup, and managed to stay sane and successful through it all.

A starting entrepreneur, that I would say has had an entrepreneurial mindset for quite some time in her corporate career, since she co-founded the Agility Advisory practice for PwC in Australia. While learning some - sometimes harsh - lessons about leadership in that role, she further deepened her knowledge on what a good leader is when she was the Head of People design at Miro.

Today I talk with Kai. Someone that I believe can give us a realistic perspective on a business model that seems all the hype: being a youtuber. He tells us how the unglamorous truth is that his first video’s got only 6 or 7 views, and what it took for him to get to 20.000 subscribers AND we talk money. Can you live off your Youtube channel with 20.000 followers?

Together they built 6 ventures, across 9 countries in Asia raising several millions of funding. The problem? They always did this for other people, and were ready to take the step to become founders. They built their business on a realization they had during their jobs: every founder has 10 things they want to work on, and only time to execute 3 (if so much). I want to check with Koen and Lion if maybe some of the social media entrepreneurship stereotypes are true - AND we dive deep into the nuances of expanding a business into South-East Asia.

Today, we are talking about a thing that I think many entrepreneurs dream of one day being ready for: bringing your business across borders, in other words: International Expansion. What better way to learn than from someone that has done this twice, in 2 very different ways. Today we talk to Erwin Sikma, entrepreneur, interim CEO and management consultant.