Victor Cho

Hey there, I'm Victor Cho. I'm the CEO at Emovid, which is the platform of verified human communication that you're seeing in all of these CEO videos. I've also been a longtime technology exec and CEO of multiple businesses, including places like Evite and Ophodo Kodak Gallery. I just wanted to share three things that make me incredibly proud of this moment in American history, this 250th anniversary.

So for me, number one, this country was founded on this idea of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness for all people, regardless of station. That absolutely applies to me. I was born here in the States, but I was from a family that, of course, immigrated from South Korea, and we've traversed that entire spectrum. There were times when I would have been homeless on the streets if not for the generosity of some of our relatives, and I've gone all the way to becoming a CEO running billions of dollars of revenue. That would not have been possible in almost any other country, and so the fact that we have built an economic system that enables those principles is incredible.

Number two, there's a great phrase that says the role of government is not to confer those three rights. It's not to give people those rights or decide who gets them. It's to protect those rights, and America, of course, over the last 250 years has been the bastion of protecting democracy and those three things across the world. Now, the reason we've been able to do that is because we have, of course, the largest military on the planet, but the reason we have that, a lot of people don't think about this, it's because we have the best economic engine, the best business engine to create the largest economy. Those things go hand in hand. This is so impactful for me. Again, my parents from South Korea. South Korea as a country probably wouldn't exist if the U.S. had not intervened in the Korean War, and so that's incredible, right? It's an ethos that is not just for the country, but broadly spread across the world.

And then finally, the thing that makes me most excited, also a little bit scared, is this AI change. Of course, it's coming. It's going to be the biggest change in business ever from my perspective. But if you think about all of the American businesses that are in this country and all operating under this canopy of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, if that continues to be our guiding ethos in terms of how we bring AI into the world, it's going to come out much better. Think of the countries where they do not have that ethos and they're working on these technologies.

So those things make me incredibly proud. I hope you found this message interesting. I hope you spread Voices of 250 messages that you see far and wide. And of course, if you're a CEO or an executive, please partake, come to the site and record your own message and help celebrate this incredible anniversary. Thank you so much.