LinkedIn Guest Series - Lisa Gus is the CEO of WishKnish, a blockchain company providing the framework for financial inclusion, transparency and impact space. She's also one of the managing directors of VeeSee, a nonprofit offering legal and mental health aid, support framework, actionable data to affect policy change & due diligence into VC space to underserved entrepreneurs, especially women and people of color.
Recently, she had been made the Investment Lead for a Government Blockchain Association, a global nonprofit working to promote blockchain use in the public sector.
Segment 1
The show begins with the message of the week, “In a world of algorithms, hashtags and followers, know the importance of human connection.” Jeremiah introduces the guest, Alisa Gus, the first guest of the new LinkedIn Guest series. Alisa talks about her background, first coming to the United States from Uzbekistan twenty-seven years ago at twelve years old, growing up in Kentucky and moving to DC to raise her children, particularly for its stellar educational opportunities, which transitions into the two discussing raising their children in today’s scholastic systems.
Segment 2
This segment begins with Alisa speaking more on her education in Kentucky, getting her associates and shifting her focus to business, starting her career in marketing and meeting her husband, a developer, and becoming a producer on a show, moving into publication in 2011, and ended how she started working in the blockchain space. She talks about how she first got her start in publication in Virginia through savings and investments and the extended process of getting a book published and put into physical stores and online. She talks about the challenges of being a small business going against Amazon and how this led to the start of her blockchain business.
Segment 3
Elisa explains the concept of ‘blockchain’, going into how she started her business in 2016, learning the ins-and-outs of Reddit , how it was initially created to cut down on banking fees, and its purpose cutting out middlemen like Amazon, explaining ICOs, how it all comes down to who you choose to trust, and explaining how Bitcoin and cryptocurrency fits into the big picture with the process. She also speaks on why banks decided to stay out of this arena. Elisa then goes into how blockchaining can help burgeoning business minds and how its beneficial for people looking to do business internationally, and how the automation of WishKnish makes the sharing of data amongst traders much more proficient.
Segment 4
The final segment of the show begins with how blockchaining can potentially replace big fish like Amazon and Google and how their existing technology will be integrated gradually to make the shift between that technology and blockchaining much smoother for the average consumer. Elisa then talks about being the Manager Partner at the nonprofit, VeeSee, which supports female entrepreneurs in many areas like legally and mentally, Gus going into learning from an experience of getting hurt by trusting the wrong people, which gave her the initiative to support the cause in the first place, as well as the especially high rates of mental health issues reported from female entrepreneurs in particular.
