RChain Asia’s Jonathan Kochmer is featured on the podcast, Decrypt Asia. In this first episode (of a series), Kochmer discusses his history in science (he helped create a new treatment for palliative care of mesothelioma), music, and technology—he was one of the first ten employees at Amazon. In an upcoming
One note: Jonathan does not agree with the banner on the site promoting him as a “builder of the internet.” That said, he’s done some rather important work, including helping shape what Amazon would become. He’s a fascinating storyteller, so I highly suggest this podcast.
Context on the content: when this interview was recorded, I had just a bit earlier given a presentation to the weekly Chiang Mai Digital Nomads Meetup hosted by Steve Ruggiero (hi Steve!), who is now with Yellow.com, a wonderful blockchain incubator project based in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and now going global. Check them out.
He insisted I talk about my history with startups, so I spent a few days diagnosing not what went wonderfully right with each, but, as cautionary tales, what went totes cattywumpus. I do of course recognize that I focused on a select subset of issues, but I feel they are often overlooked, and that startup fails are too often blamed on “market conditions”, “competitors” or other external scapegoats.
And no, I did NOT build the Internet, that was Al Gore! (but in fairness, he was in fact hugely important in writing and driving legislation for funding NSFNet etc., to build the Internet. Thanks, Al! Without Al Gore, here’s what your internet experience might now be like: https://sdf.org/ ).