Ep 80: Ee Ling Lim, Executive Director of Global Programs, 500 Global & Co-Founder of Smarter Me + Young Leaders Summit Asia

Ee Ling Lim leads the Global Programs team at 500 Global, overseeing the strategic development and implementation of programs for 500's network of startups all over the world. In her role, she also advises governments, corporations, and foundations in designing and developing startup ecosystems and innovation programs. Prior to 500 Global, Ee Ling was an Investment Banker with Bank of America Merrill Lynch and CIMB Investment Bank, executing M&A, equity and debt capital market transactions in Southeast Asia. Ee Ling is also the Co-Founder and CEO of Smarter Me, a K-12 edutech startup headquartered in Singapore, that equips primary and secondary school students with the skillset, mindset, and heartset to define their own success and happiness in the future. Through digital technology and entrepreneurship education, students develop mastery in problem-solving, critical-thinking, collaboration, and creativity. She also hosts Young Founders Summit Asia, a leading startup program in Asia that provides aspiring teenage founders with workshops and mentorship to launch impact-based startups. In this episode, we discussed Ee Ling’s journey as an entrepreneur - including why for the longest time, she never considered herself an entrepreneur and how that perception changed, and how she shares her struggles with her own daughters, including having to fire people. We also delved into the topic of youth entrepreneurship: whether children are too young to learn about entrepreneurship, what they care about, and setting up a DAO. Highlights: 3:13 Setting up her own preschool 4:43 Founding her first startup 7:49 The problem that Smarter Me is trying to solve 10:23 Determining the curriculum 12:08 Are children too young to learn about entrepreneurship? 14:49 Why Ee Ling wasn’t comfortable with calling herself an entrepreneur 17:10 Sharing her struggles with her girls 18:43 Young Founders Summit Asia 19:56 Organising the inaugural summit 28:53 What the youth care about most 30:30 Launching an NFT project with a DAO element 33:22 Managing the community 35:09 How funds in a DAO are managed 36:14 Biggest challenges 37:39 Why kids were writing off NFTs/DAOs 39:29 How to bring people from the Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 world 40:51 Great DAOs to look at 42:23 Being the Executive Directorof Global Programs at 500 Global 44:17 Main elements of a successful accelerator 45:23 How founders can make full use of accelerators 46:46 Going virtual 49:17 Having “People & Intention” as her 2022 driving words 52:40 How to be a good leader & lead others 📍Show notes: www.sothisismywhy.com/80 💌 Sign up for the weekly STIMY newsletter: https://sothisismywhy.ck.page/ebf231f605 🪙 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sothisismywhy