42Geeks' Mission, Lessons from Building Multiple Startups, and How to Build a Startup Ecosystem

Enterprise Explores 42Geeks, the 3rd venture of PJ boy Chok Ooi, and the mission of his new business. We also explore his journey of building multiple Silicon Valley startups, and the lessons and mistakes he learnt along the way, including rookie mistakes from his first exit.

Chok’s Silicon Valley journey took flight after being laid off by Goldman Sachs during the Global Financial Crisis when Sam Altman (yes that Sam Altman) hired him at Loopt back in 2008. Today he is building 42Geeks, an organization with a mission to foster cross-border tech collaborations & investments through the global Geeks Tour, and they were in town last week as they toured Southeast Asia, specifically Jakarta, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and now the BFM Studio.

Between then and 42Geeks, Chok started and built Agility.io, a global product design and software development company that works with 300+ startups and Fortune 500 companies to design and build game-changing technology and solutions, and also Kenzie Academy, an online tech and coding school headquartered in Indianapolis, which was later acquired by Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) in March 2021.

Prior to Agility.io and Kenzie, Chok was CTO at SF-based Azap Mobile, Senior Software Engineer at Loopt (acquired by GreenDot), and Lead Engineer at Selerity (acquired by Dealogic).