Weh'yee Barkon
Millennial digital nomad
Weh'yee Barkon is a first-generation Liberian-American entrepreneur and former startup operator who runs Africa Rising, a recruitment firm connecting skilled African talent to global companies. He also builds on-the-ground businesses, including short-term rentals in Dakar, a poultry farm, and a butcher shop in Kigali, Rwanda. A millennial digital nomad, he traded a fast-rising San Francisco startup career for a borderless life built across Africa and beyond.
Reviewed July 2026Weh'yee Barkon is a first-generation Liberian-American entrepreneur and a millennial digital nomad. He was employee number seven at Revivn, a B2B enterprise electronics-recycling startup in San Francisco, where he managed West Coast, Denver, and Texas clients and helped the company grow from roughly one million to nearly seven million dollars in annual revenue. Constant travel and an unfulfilling climb wore on his health, so, single and without kids, he bought a one-way ticket from San Francisco to Casablanca and spent twelve months moving through eleven countries, much of it overland.
As a first-generation Liberian-American whose parents were born and raised in Liberia, Barkon used the year to rediscover his roots. He stretched about ten thousand dollars in savings through Workaway, farming for a month in the Sahara and hosting a hostel in Seville, before crossing into Senegal in 2019. There, helping a refugee family resell charcoal became the spark for Africa Rising, his recruitment firm connecting skilled African talent to global companies. He now pairs that online business with on-the-ground ventures, including four short-term rental apartments and a farm near Dakar and a butcher shop in Kigali, Rwanda.
Barkon joins Ryan Vet, a friend of more than two decades, for a conversation that starts as a travel story and turns into an argument about the future of work. The two millennials trace his path from a fast-rising startup to a borderless life, then dig into what changes when small teams gain real leverage. Barkon argues that a lean team of two to five people plus AI can now do what once took fifty, and that the return-to-office fight is the same push and pull that follows every period of change. His read is that the age of AI is sparking a renaissance of in-person connection, which is why he hedges online income with businesses rooted in the ground: rentals, a farm, and a butcher shop. Vet connects this to his own travel rule, learned in China in 2008, that you experience a place through its food, music, art, history, and ceremony rather than as a country club visitor.
Now you can have one, two, five people max and really create a nice business for yourself.
In the future, you don't necessarily need to exclusively spend the whole year in any one place if you don't want to.
People are always going to eat. People always need somewhere to sleep. People always need water.
Who is Weh'yee Barkon?
He is a first-generation Liberian-American entrepreneur and former startup operator who now runs Africa Rising, a recruitment firm connecting African talent to global companies, along with on-the-ground businesses in Dakar and Kigali.
What is Africa Rising?
It is Weh'yee's recruitment firm that connects skilled African professionals with global companies, which he frames as a win for the talent, the companies, and the continent.
What does this episode say about the future of work?
Weh'yee and Ryan argue that small AI-augmented teams can now do what large teams once did, that the return-to-office fight mirrors past periods of change, and that in-person, on-the-ground connection is becoming a competitive edge, not a relic.
How do you actually experience a culture when traveling?
Ryan offers a framework: go beyond the tourist surface and engage a place through its food, music, art, history, and ceremony.
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