An entrepreneur without borders

You can listen to this podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can also watch this conversation on YouTube. Read the full write up on Exporters without Borders’ Substack.

This interview was conducted by Saarthak Gupta of Exporters Without Borders (ESF), which incubates entrepreneurs to start new export industries in low and middle income countries. The video version of this podcast, an accompanying article, and their ongoing research are at exporterswithoutborders.com.

Thomas Kehler started his career teaching at a New England prep school, before he landed in Uganda, where he started guiding fishing tours of Lake Albert. Here he came to know a young Joseph Nye – later a key architect of US foreign policy – who got Thomas thinking about development economics, and how to have impact with his career.

In the decades to follow, Thomas would go on to start two export industries from close to nothing. Between them, Colombian cut flowers and Chilean farmed salmon are now worth ~$9 billion a year and employ over 300,000 people. On a combination of willpower and luck, he managed to solve one of the biggest open questions in development economics – how countries enter new industries, and capture the jobs that come with them – twice.

Something slightly different today, ahead of returning to normal scheduling soon!