Sophie Schmidt, founder and CEO of Rest of World, spoke to The Wall Street Journal about what inspired her to launch this publication and why the work of telling tech stories happening outside Silicon Valley is so critical right now.

“This is my life’s project,” Schmidt told the Journal. “There are three or four billion people who live in markets that are deemed not important enough to address, so there is just a huge gap in understanding what is going on in the rest of the world.”

Five months into its launch, Rest of World has published close to 100 stories from (and on) non-Western countries, bringing together writers and reporters from around the world.

“The rest of the world is very mobilized technologically and isn’t always taking the lead from the U.S. and the West anymore. The way TikTok has played out just underscores that point,” she said, referring to the popular Chinese-developed video-sharing app that the Trump administration has targeted. “Products and platforms aren’t being built with other parts of the world in mind, so people are taking these things and making them their own.”

You can read the full article here.