Back in two thousand four, a young guy called Colin Huang joined Google as a computer programmer. His timing couldn't have been better. He arrived at Google just a few months before it went public, which meant Colin was given stock in the company just as Google's value was about to surge. Three years later, colin stock was worth several million dollars. This young man from a Chinese family of very modest means was now a millionaire many times over. The thing is, if he had just stayed at Google, Colin would have been able to cash in on even more Google stock and gotten a lot richer. How does it feeled to leave that money on the day. It's not a very big decision for me. Actually, well it sounds like a big decision. But at least at that time, it was fairly easy for me. Not a lot of people would choose to walk away from so much money. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't. But Colin was confident that he was making the right choice because I think I will I will be rich, I think I will be well. I was fairly confident that I will be successful, So I think, um, the time is more priceless to me. Today we can tell you that Colin turned out to be right. He went on to create not just one, but four companies in China as the country's startup scene was taking off. He's become rich as a result, and he's just getting started. Hi am Akito, and I'm Peter Ahlstrong and I'm David Rambling. And this week on Decrypted, We're going to hear from Colin about his journey from the vegetable fields of rural Hanjo to the pinnacle of success in China's booming startup scene. China still has a reputation as a copycat. I Do is China's Google, Ali Baba is China's Amazon. Even the smartphone Mega show Me is mostly known as the local answer to Apple, but founders like Colin are shattering those old ideas. So far this year, China has created just as many billion dollar startups as the US. Will explore the role that Colin Huong and entrepreneurs like him could play in the next phase of the global tech industry. And with these new Chinese companies aspiring to global success, should Silicon Valley be worried about these upstart rivals? Stay with us? Okay set the scene for us here well, it was a beautiful sunny April day, perhaps the best time to visit. Shanghai is a population to more than twenty four million people, by some measures, the largest city in the world. It's a financial center and a transportation hub. Sitting at the mouth of the Yankee River. For centuries, it's been a critical port for trade between China and the rest of the world. Mm hmm. You know, like most Chinese cities these days, Shanghai is home to quite a few up and coming startups. And even though we still use this word start up to describe these companies, in reality, some of these are massive businesses, right, that's right. There's some enormous private companies in China. In fact, the seven most valuable startups according to the research firm CB Insights, four of those top seven are Chinese. Yeah, that's right. And you know some of them are gradually becoming household names outside of China. You know, Ali Babu is pretty well known um as the startup that succeeded, and you've also got the likes of Shami and you know, other companies like that, and you're seeing real innovations come out of China too. In particular, ten cent, which is probably a bit less well known outside of China than Ali Baba is. They've been able to pioneer their messaging service we Chat in a way that is beyond some of the things that we've seen in the West. It has payments included in it and all sorts of apps wrapped into the service. And on this particular trip, you guys went out to Shanghai to go visit Collin's latest company called pinn Dwo Dwell, that's right, it's PDD for short, as he likes to call it. This company is two years old and it's grown so fast that it's now the largest private e commerce company in China based on revenue volume. And David, what was it like inside their offices, Well, it's an interesting mix. Actually, you've got a lot of waterways to boost the fung sway of the place, but it's also head dick. You walk down corridor is filled with desks and on them up engineers typing away or sleeping on. Like most of the countries, engineers in China are not only demitted, but actually encouraged to take naps whenever they tie. Having a sum of cots inside rooms. Wow, and PDD must have a pretty impressive valuation at this point. Well, it's still a private company, so this is a valuation on paper. But investors valued the company at about one point five billion dollars after a recent fundraising round. That's more than ten million R and B. Yeah, and Colin says that gross merchandise volume, or g m V as it's called in the e commerce industry, has now reached about four billion rooming b per month. Rooming b is the Chinese currency. We want it to be something like an e commerce visual Facebook and Peter, what does he mean by that? PDD is sort of like a mash up between a social network and an online shopping app. A few companies have tried this before, mostly without very much success, And now pd D is really unlike any other company out there. Compared editors are either just doing e commerce, so for Ali Baba, for Taba, or for Amazon. There they're just like a search engine, right. The search engine serve as a scenario where I user has a specific purpose or they're just in social networking. When you go to Facebook, a lot of times you're just brows You have nothing to do, You're just trying to waste your time. But Colin didn't get here overnight, and his journey to this point is so unlikely, it's pretty incredible that it happened at all. So I was born in Hanzo, but not in the in the center of the city. I was born on the moor of the city. And my parents are very normal people. They are both of the man factory workers. None of them finished junior high. I was pretty good at the math and I got a meadow from one of the Olympic competitions in mathematics. So I got a entrance to exam ticket to apply to the high school I eventually went to, which is Contro Foreign Language School, Hanto Foreign Language School. It's one of the most selective high schools in the whole province. At first, Colin didn't even want to go because the name of the school is says foreign language school, right. Because I was very u into mathematics and the physics and all those and so I was talent. My teachers say, and then my parents, I don't want to go to that school because I don't want to study English. Colin was only twelve at the time, and the president of the school persuaded him to go, so he went and it changed life, could open my eyes, right, a very different kind of um, different kind of families. And for instance, at that time, as I remember, the daughter of the mayor of the city at that time was in my class. Um, well for kids like Milly, but the mayor of city is a very big, big boss. Right. Changing schools was one of the early experiences that helped Colin grow more confident and evolved from the country kid to feeling more comfortable with the best, the brightest, and more importantly, the most powerful people in China. Colin went on to Zichang University and studied computer science. Then he made another move that changed his life. He applied to graduate school in the United States. And what were your first impressions when you went to you ask Wisconsin? You, Um, it was very cold. It's really cold, um, and the food is not so delicious. Other than that, it's pretty good. So now Colin is in his early twenties and he's at the University Wisconsin and Madison. At that time, Wisconsin ran one of the most well recognized computer science programs in the country. It was a prestigious place for Colin to study and it had the potential to open up a lot of doors for him. But Colin's biggest issue, at least at the beginning, was homesickness. Um, but the food was so you know, it's a big problem for me. I just cannot I missed the Chinese food at that moment. So I a half t a UM out of school so that I have extra money to go to the Chinas restaurant. Almost the average for every meal for anyone who didn't go to college in the US at T A short for teaching assistant. It's a way for students to earn a little extra money. Colin did internships and got to know perspective employers here. Turned at Microsoft in China and then at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Washington. He found out one important thing about the economics of working in the two countries. I think in my last year UM off my undergraduate UM, I went to Paging to be a visiting student or intern of Microsoft Research Asia. So yeah, so I did an interne there for like three years four months in Beijing. UM. At that time I think I got six thousand I m B a month, which is which is already more than the salary of my my mom um much more actually, UM. Then I went to Universal Wisconsin, and in the first summer in US, I went to Microsoft to Redmond, h and the salary was six thousand of U s STRs and the same person. You know, it's roughly seven times as much. Seven times yeah, seven times as much. At the time, it's actually eight times eight times as much. When he was getting ready to grab wait, Microsoft wanted to hire him, and so did a bunch of other top US tech companies. So my professor wrote me, I think like several letters too, like Oracle, Microsoft, im UM. So I got acceptance from from both three. So at this point, most people in colin situation would be over the moon. Choosing between three of the world's biggest, best tech companies. That's something that most engineers like him can only wish for. Colin did something that was really unexpected. He actually went to Google's website and he applied for a job. Remember at this time Google was just to start up with a few thousand employees. It had a promising product, and there was a lot of buzz around the company, but it was certainly no Microsoft. Microsoft was really famous at the time, right and um, and it's very established and if you want to get a green card, it's probably the best place to go. Um And but the thing is that after internal twice and like I spend more than half a year at the Microsoft right both both in China and US, I found that the company, it's a very good company. But it's just that I was a very too small part of that. Right, I had very little influenced on what's going on in Microsoft. And I can imagine who I will be like six years down the road. Collins says he always knew he eventually wanted to start his own company. I would have about to choose something unknown, although it may become something worse, but it could be better because it's something else, all right. And right there that day collins decision in two thousand and four may have been the first time that Colin really showed that he was different. He didn't want security, he didn't chase after the green card in the high salary. He went after uncertainty. He went after risk. And it paid off. Oh, it paid off big. In the three years Colin was at Google, its share price went from about eighty five bucks a shared to more than five hundred dollars. His options were worth a fortune, so seven he was ready to strike out on his own. It's probably worth noting here for our listeners that China's had an uneven history with private enterprise. The Communist Party won control of the country after World War Two, and it socialized much of the economy. It wasn't until the economic reforms of Dum Shopping in the late nineies and the early nineties the entrepreneurs were finally encouraged to start businesses. He opened the door to a new era. The quote to get riches glorious. So it's really only one generation after China deregulated its economy that Colin Huong, at the age of seven, decides he's going to leave Google in the chance to make millions more if he stays to start his first company. We asked him why because of my father, I think um, although he's a he only probably spent two to three years in the primary school, but and he himself is not a successful business man, right, but he always wanted me to be a successful business man. Colin sold his first company after about three years. He went on to start two more companies with his partners, and those ventures did so well that he had enough money to stop working. At the time, I was not that old yet, right, So I was thinking what should I do? Right? Um, should I just go back to us and do a hedge found and um trying to be smart in the sevendary market, or or try to do something different or to wrong business which is more inferential or a different business model. The idea he eventually came up with is a combination of social networking and online commerce. A few companies have tried social e commerce, including Facebook and Twitter, but none of those experiments have really worked out very well. Well. I didn't know exactly how to do a social e commerce, but I just have a very strong feeling that with the booming of the social media, there got to be a commercial model, commercial model that can monday tize there's the social traffic. That's one kind of belief I had that at a time, and the set I'm thinking that, Um, I think if there is a social commerce or it comes model, that it comes model that leverage is the social media, then the team we had at the time is probably the one that is most competitive in that area. That's because Companies number two and three that Colin founded were a back end services company for retailers wanting to sell online and a gaming company. This new venture drew on the experience Colin had gained in both of those industries. He reads Try Capital in May of and launched the app a few months later. The pinj or Door app quickly proved pretty addictive. So David, how do people use the app? Most people use it within we Chat, which is the ubiquitous messaging service in China. You open up we Chat and you search for PDDs micro store and the home screen comes up. It's got tabs like food, clothes, and bedding. Once you pick a category, you get a vertical list of products that you can scroll through, say light cheese or apples in the fruit section. I'm looking at it now and I can see a whole bunch of weird looking tops and what looks to be some rip off Dora the Explorer slippers. The app has the feel of a game, colorful photos and hidden bargains. Deals change every day, and as you scroll through a category, the discount of prices shown below the image. For example, you click on an image of eight mangoes with the price tag of thirty four point eight. Then, but when you actually go through to it, if on the price is actually thirty nine u N If you buy it alone to get the discount, you actually have to find a friend to join in the purchase. But because you're already on we Chat, it's pretty quick to instantly pitch to others. The most successful result of there's a Design is that, um, a lot of people are sprouting words of PDD by themselves, right without to add a TV commercial. Oh, that's really something hard to achieve. PDD went from gross merchandise volume of about a hundred million reming B a month in early six to three billion by December. The company has now got over four billion RMB per month, or more than half a billion dollars in gm V. One of Colin's top priorities now is dealing with counterfeit products. China, of course, has a long history of fake goods being sold both online and offline, and about two hundred of Collins seven employees at PDD are working on quality control. These are workers dealing with customer complaints about fake and damage goods. But then PDD has to go to its merchants and persuade them to actually compensate customers. More difficult, it has to convince them to stop selling these goods all together. And what was the reaction, Like, oh, here's what Colin told us. And they even set people to the office just to like throughout our employees right like in the middle night and here the offices and you know all the building. Yeah. Um, and that's why you have the security guys. Yes, yes, yes, even like a slash and into the face itself some Mafar employees. So that's that's the things already happened. Um. Not only that they even um chase um our employees back to their homes, like even your hamjo and like when kind of threatened their their wife their wives and a kiss. Colin Huang and PDD are an example of how China's technology industry is changing. There's more venture capital money, more entrepreneurs, and more startups that work on real innovations. Ten years ago, when I started my first company, I think, ah, almost all the people are focusing on commercial success. H they don't really care. I do exactly the same thing. But now I think a small group of China's entrepreneurs are gradually, um, sort of care more about the things the Silicon Valley cares, which is the novelty of your idea, right, Um, the the creativeness and whether there's something cool or not right people will look at you, um, whether you're doing novel things, whether you're really contributing value to the society. Um, these things that gradually kind of uh growing. So, Peter, that's an amazing quote from Colin because he sounds just like everyone else and Silicon Valley here. What's your take on where China's tech industry is right now, where the ecosystem is for startups? Well, just the past few years, you've seen a real increase in the amount of venture capital money moving into these startups. Uh, And you've seen a lot of very big companies coming out of China. Some of the best known are d d for example, the ride hailing app, but there's also a whole series of other ones that are not as well known outside of China, David. For you, as a reporter covering the tech industry in Beijing, it must be a pretty exciting time. No, it is. Every single time I go out to me to start up. It's really interesting to see the little things of what they're doing. You know, if they're not if they're not sleeping on couches or you know, at their own desks. Then frankly by the Chinese standard. They're just not working hard enough. I went to one place, which actually the startup that does hot time job searches, and they actually had a small room right next to the CEO's office when they had three bunk bits for sales, stuff to sleep, and they worked too hard into the night. Earlier on in the show, we talked about how Colin isn't the only serial entrepreneur out there, that there now quite a few people in China who are on their second, third, fourth, maybe even fifth start up, like a lot of the famous founders here in Silicon Valley, UM, Peter and David, Can you talk about some of the other people who are like this in China. One of the other serial entrepreneurs is Late June. He's been involved in a number of startups, most recently uh show Me, the smartphone maker. Uh. It's been giving Apple and Samsung challenges within the country. It's been expanding outside of China, particularly in India, and now show Me is diversifying beyond smartphones into all sorts of other products. And you've also got ten Cents pony Ma. I mean, his main company is listed now, but it continues to be a factory of startups churning out new products and new services, some of them that copy each other every single day. With China's new push to innovate, I asked whether this is a threat to the US dominance of the technology industry. I want to say it's a threat. I wouldn't say it's a complimentary. It's just that like people are doing different things, and like we're trying to find the areas that we can do better. But Colin doesn't think there is an equivalent to PDD in either Shanghai or Silicon Valley. He's told some investors it's got the potential of drawing to become one of the biggest e commerce giants in China. Well, if it's as if it's only, um, hey, little dog, I shouldn't I shouldn't want him to be an elephant. Right, If by nature it's an elephant, then I shouldn't be satisfied or I shouldn't kind of trying to controuse the elephant to be a dog. Right. So if it's an all phant, then it has to grow to be elephant to be healthy. Right. So it's really a question of whether that e comments a very shop Facebook, how big it is, whoa I thought it was a mouse. Now Dan, I think it's a dog. Now I think it probably maybe it's an elephant, but I'm not sure. And that's it for this week's Decrypted. Thanks for listening. We'd love to hear what you thought of this episode. Record a voice message and send it to us at Decrypted at Bloomberg dot net or I'm on Twitter, it's at p Lstrom and you can reach me at David Ranting and I'm at Akita seven. If you haven't already, please subscribe right to our show on Apple Podcasts or your favorite app. While you're there, please leave us a rating and a review. It really helps more listeners find this show. This episode was produced by Pia gut Cary, Liz Smith, and Magnus Hendrickson. A big thanks to Robin and Jello, who edited the Prince story, David Ramilly and I wrote about Colin Wong and PDD. You can find it at Bloomberg dot com slash Tech. Alec McCabe is head of Bloomberg Podcast. We'll see you next week,

Back in two thousand four, a young guy called Colin Huang joined Google as a computer programmer. His timing couldn't have been better. He arrived at Google just a few months before it went public, which meant Colin was given stock in the company just as Google's value was about to surge. Three years later, colin stock was worth several million dollars. This young man from a Chinese family of very modest means was now a millionaire many times over. The thing is, if he had just stayed at Google, Colin would have been able to cash in on even more Google stock and gotten a lot richer. How does it feeled to leave that money on the day. It's not a very big decision for me. Actually, well it sounds like a big decision. But at least at that time, it was fairly easy for me. Not a lot of people would choose to walk away from so much money. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't. But Colin was confident that he was making the right choice because I think I will I will be rich, I think I will be well. I was fairly confident that I will be successful, So I think, um, the time is more priceless to me. Today we can tell you that Colin turned out to be right. He went on to create not just one, but four companies in China as the country's startup scene was taking off. He's become rich as a result, and he's just getting started. Hi am Akito, and I'm Peter Ahlstrong and I'm David Rambling. And this week on Decrypted, We're going to hear from Colin about his journey from the vegetable fields of rural Hanjo to the pinnacle of success in China's booming startup scene. China still has a reputation as a copycat. I Do is China's Google, Ali Baba is China's Amazon. Even the smartphone Mega show Me is mostly known as the local answer to Apple, but founders like Colin are shattering those old ideas. So far this year, China has created just as many billion dollar startups as the US. Will explore the role that Colin Huong and entrepreneurs like him could play in the next phase of the global tech industry. And with these new Chinese companies aspiring to global success, should Silicon Valley be worried about these upstart rivals? Stay with us? Okay set the scene for us here well, it was a beautiful sunny April day, perhaps the best time to visit. Shanghai is a population to more than twenty four million people, by some measures, the largest city in the world. It's a financial center and a transportation hub. Sitting at the mouth of the Yankee River. For centuries, it's been a critical port for trade between China and the rest of the world. Mm hmm. You know, like most Chinese cities these days, Shanghai is home to quite a few up and coming startups. And even though we still use this word start up to describe these companies, in reality, some of these are massive businesses, right, that's right. There's some enormous private companies in China. In fact, the seven most valuable startups according to the research firm CB Insights, four of those top seven are Chinese. Yeah, that's right. And you know some of them are gradually becoming household names outside of China. You know, Ali Babu is pretty well known um as the startup that succeeded, and you've also got the likes of Shami and you know, other companies like that, and you're seeing real innovations come out of China too. In particular, ten cent, which is probably a bit less well known outside of China than Ali Baba is. They've been able to pioneer their messaging service we Chat in a way that is beyond some of the things that we've seen in the West. It has payments included in it and all sorts of apps wrapped into the service. And on this particular trip, you guys went out to Shanghai to go visit Collin's latest company called pinn Dwo Dwell, that's right, it's PDD for short, as he likes to call it. This company is two years old and it's grown so fast that it's now the largest private e commerce company in China based on revenue volume. And David, what was it like inside their offices, Well, it's an interesting mix. Actually, you've got a lot of waterways to boost the fung sway of the place, but it's also head dick. You walk down corridor is filled with desks and on them up engineers typing away or sleeping on. Like most of the countries, engineers in China are not only demitted, but actually encouraged to take naps whenever they tie. Having a sum of cots inside rooms. Wow, and PDD must have a pretty impressive valuation at this point. Well, it's still a private company, so this is a valuation on paper. But investors valued the company at about one point five billion dollars after a recent fundraising round. That's more than ten million R and B. Yeah, and Colin says that gross merchandise volume, or g m V as it's called in the e commerce industry, has now reached about four billion rooming b per month. Rooming b is the Chinese currency. We want it to be something like an e commerce visual Facebook and Peter, what does he mean by that? PDD is sort of like a mash up between a social network and an online shopping app. A few companies have tried this before, mostly without very much success, And now pd D is really unlike any other company out there. Compared editors are either just doing e commerce, so for Ali Baba, for Taba, or for Amazon. There they're just like a search engine, right. The search engine serve as a scenario where I user has a specific purpose or they're just in social networking. When you go to Facebook, a lot of times you're just brows You have nothing to do, You're just trying to waste your time. But Colin didn't get here overnight, and his journey to this point is so unlikely, it's pretty incredible that it happened at all. So I was born in Hanzo, but not in the in the center of the city. I was born on the moor of the city. And my parents are very normal people. They are both of the man factory workers. None of them finished junior high. I was pretty good at the math and I got a meadow from one of the Olympic competitions in mathematics. So I got a entrance to exam ticket to apply to the high school I eventually went to, which is Contro Foreign Language School, Hanto Foreign Language School. It's one of the most selective high schools in the whole province. At first, Colin didn't even want to go because the name of the school is says foreign language school, right. Because I was very u into mathematics and the physics and all those and so I was talent. My teachers say, and then my parents, I don't want to go to that school because I don't want to study English. Colin was only twelve at the time, and the president of the school persuaded him to go, so he went and it changed life, could open my eyes, right, a very different kind of um, different kind of families. And for instance, at that time, as I remember, the daughter of the mayor of the city at that time was in my class. Um, well for kids like Milly, but the mayor of city is a very big, big boss. Right. Changing schools was one of the early experiences that helped Colin grow more confident and evolved from the country kid to feeling more comfortable with the best, the brightest, and more importantly, the most powerful people in China. Colin went on to Zichang University and studied computer science. Then he made another move that changed his life. He applied to graduate school in the United States. And what were your first impressions when you went to you ask Wisconsin? You, Um, it was very cold. It's really cold, um, and the food is not so delicious. Other than that, it's pretty good. So now Colin is in his early twenties and he's at the University Wisconsin and Madison. At that time, Wisconsin ran one of the most well recognized computer science programs in the country. It was a prestigious place for Colin to study and it had the potential to open up a lot of doors for him. But Colin's biggest issue, at least at the beginning, was homesickness. Um, but the food was so you know, it's a big problem for me. I just cannot I missed the Chinese food at that moment. So I a half t a UM out of school so that I have extra money to go to the Chinas restaurant. Almost the average for every meal for anyone who didn't go to college in the US at T A short for teaching assistant. It's a way for students to earn a little extra money. Colin did internships and got to know perspective employers here. Turned at Microsoft in China and then at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Washington. He found out one important thing about the economics of working in the two countries. I think in my last year UM off my undergraduate UM, I went to Paging to be a visiting student or intern of Microsoft Research Asia. So yeah, so I did an interne there for like three years four months in Beijing. UM. At that time I think I got six thousand I m B a month, which is which is already more than the salary of my my mom um much more actually, UM. Then I went to Universal Wisconsin, and in the first summer in US, I went to Microsoft to Redmond, h and the salary was six thousand of U s STRs and the same person. You know, it's roughly seven times as much. Seven times yeah, seven times as much. At the time, it's actually eight times eight times as much. When he was getting ready to grab wait, Microsoft wanted to hire him, and so did a bunch of other top US tech companies. So my professor wrote me, I think like several letters too, like Oracle, Microsoft, im UM. So I got acceptance from from both three. So at this point, most people in colin situation would be over the moon. Choosing between three of the world's biggest, best tech companies. That's something that most engineers like him can only wish for. Colin did something that was really unexpected. He actually went to Google's website and he applied for a job. Remember at this time Google was just to start up with a few thousand employees. It had a promising product, and there was a lot of buzz around the company, but it was certainly no Microsoft. Microsoft was really famous at the time, right and um, and it's very established and if you want to get a green card, it's probably the best place to go. Um And but the thing is that after internal twice and like I spend more than half a year at the Microsoft right both both in China and US, I found that the company, it's a very good company. But it's just that I was a very too small part of that. Right, I had very little influenced on what's going on in Microsoft. And I can imagine who I will be like six years down the road. Collins says he always knew he eventually wanted to start his own company. I would have about to choose something unknown, although it may become something worse, but it could be better because it's something else, all right. And right there that day collins decision in two thousand and four may have been the first time that Colin really showed that he was different. He didn't want security, he didn't chase after the green card in the high salary. He went after uncertainty. He went after risk. And it paid off. Oh, it paid off big. In the three years Colin was at Google, its share price went from about eighty five bucks a shared to more than five hundred dollars. His options were worth a fortune, so seven he was ready to strike out on his own. It's probably worth noting here for our listeners that China's had an uneven history with private enterprise. The Communist Party won control of the country after World War Two, and it socialized much of the economy. It wasn't until the economic reforms of Dum Shopping in the late nineies and the early nineties the entrepreneurs were finally encouraged to start businesses. He opened the door to a new era. The quote to get riches glorious. So it's really only one generation after China deregulated its economy that Colin Huong, at the age of seven, decides he's going to leave Google in the chance to make millions more if he stays to start his first company. We asked him why because of my father, I think um, although he's a he only probably spent two to three years in the primary school, but and he himself is not a successful business man, right, but he always wanted me to be a successful business man. Colin sold his first company after about three years. He went on to start two more companies with his partners, and those ventures did so well that he had enough money to stop working. At the time, I was not that old yet, right, So I was thinking what should I do? Right? Um, should I just go back to us and do a hedge found and um trying to be smart in the sevendary market, or or try to do something different or to wrong business which is more inferential or a different business model. The idea he eventually came up with is a combination of social networking and online commerce. A few companies have tried social e commerce, including Facebook and Twitter, but none of those experiments have really worked out very well. Well. I didn't know exactly how to do a social e commerce, but I just have a very strong feeling that with the booming of the social media, there got to be a commercial model, commercial model that can monday tize there's the social traffic. That's one kind of belief I had that at a time, and the set I'm thinking that, Um, I think if there is a social commerce or it comes model, that it comes model that leverage is the social media, then the team we had at the time is probably the one that is most competitive in that area. That's because Companies number two and three that Colin founded were a back end services company for retailers wanting to sell online and a gaming company. This new venture drew on the experience Colin had gained in both of those industries. He reads Try Capital in May of and launched the app a few months later. The pinj or Door app quickly proved pretty addictive. So David, how do people use the app? Most people use it within we Chat, which is the ubiquitous messaging service in China. You open up we Chat and you search for PDDs micro store and the home screen comes up. It's got tabs like food, clothes, and bedding. Once you pick a category, you get a vertical list of products that you can scroll through, say light cheese or apples in the fruit section. I'm looking at it now and I can see a whole bunch of weird looking tops and what looks to be some rip off Dora the Explorer slippers. The app has the feel of a game, colorful photos and hidden bargains. Deals change every day, and as you scroll through a category, the discount of prices shown below the image. For example, you click on an image of eight mangoes with the price tag of thirty four point eight. Then, but when you actually go through to it, if on the price is actually thirty nine u N If you buy it alone to get the discount, you actually have to find a friend to join in the purchase. But because you're already on we Chat, it's pretty quick to instantly pitch to others. The most successful result of there's a Design is that, um, a lot of people are sprouting words of PDD by themselves, right without to add a TV commercial. Oh, that's really something hard to achieve. PDD went from gross merchandise volume of about a hundred million reming B a month in early six to three billion by December. The company has now got over four billion RMB per month, or more than half a billion dollars in gm V. One of Colin's top priorities now is dealing with counterfeit products. China, of course, has a long history of fake goods being sold both online and offline, and about two hundred of Collins seven employees at PDD are working on quality control. These are workers dealing with customer complaints about fake and damage goods. But then PDD has to go to its merchants and persuade them to actually compensate customers. More difficult, it has to convince them to stop selling these goods all together. And what was the reaction, Like, oh, here's what Colin told us. And they even set people to the office just to like throughout our employees right like in the middle night and here the offices and you know all the building. Yeah. Um, and that's why you have the security guys. Yes, yes, yes, even like a slash and into the face itself some Mafar employees. So that's that's the things already happened. Um. Not only that they even um chase um our employees back to their homes, like even your hamjo and like when kind of threatened their their wife their wives and a kiss. Colin Huang and PDD are an example of how China's technology industry is changing. There's more venture capital money, more entrepreneurs, and more startups that work on real innovations. Ten years ago, when I started my first company, I think, ah, almost all the people are focusing on commercial success. H they don't really care. I do exactly the same thing. But now I think a small group of China's entrepreneurs are gradually, um, sort of care more about the things the Silicon Valley cares, which is the novelty of your idea, right, Um, the the creativeness and whether there's something cool or not right people will look at you, um, whether you're doing novel things, whether you're really contributing value to the society. Um, these things that gradually kind of uh growing. So, Peter, that's an amazing quote from Colin because he sounds just like everyone else and Silicon Valley here. What's your take on where China's tech industry is right now, where the ecosystem is for startups? Well, just the past few years, you've seen a real increase in the amount of venture capital money moving into these startups. Uh, And you've seen a lot of very big companies coming out of China. Some of the best known are d d for example, the ride hailing app, but there's also a whole series of other ones that are not as well known outside of China, David. For you, as a reporter covering the tech industry in Beijing, it must be a pretty exciting time. No, it is. Every single time I go out to me to start up. It's really interesting to see the little things of what they're doing. You know, if they're not if they're not sleeping on couches or you know, at their own desks. Then frankly by the Chinese standard. They're just not working hard enough. I went to one place, which actually the startup that does hot time job searches, and they actually had a small room right next to the CEO's office when they had three bunk bits for sales, stuff to sleep, and they worked too hard into the night. Earlier on in the show, we talked about how Colin isn't the only serial entrepreneur out there, that there now quite a few people in China who are on their second, third, fourth, maybe even fifth start up, like a lot of the famous founders here in Silicon Valley, UM, Peter and David, Can you talk about some of the other people who are like this in China. One of the other serial entrepreneurs is Late June. He's been involved in a number of startups, most recently uh show Me, the smartphone maker. Uh. It's been giving Apple and Samsung challenges within the country. It's been expanding outside of China, particularly in India, and now show Me is diversifying beyond smartphones into all sorts of other products. And you've also got ten Cents pony Ma. I mean, his main company is listed now, but it continues to be a factory of startups churning out new products and new services, some of them that copy each other every single day. With China's new push to innovate, I asked whether this is a threat to the US dominance of the technology industry. I want to say it's a threat. I wouldn't say it's a complimentary. It's just that like people are doing different things, and like we're trying to find the areas that we can do better. But Colin doesn't think there is an equivalent to PDD in either Shanghai or Silicon Valley. He's told some investors it's got the potential of drawing to become one of the biggest e commerce giants in China. Well, if it's as if it's only, um, hey, little dog, I shouldn't I shouldn't want him to be an elephant. Right, If by nature it's an elephant, then I shouldn't be satisfied or I shouldn't kind of trying to controuse the elephant to be a dog. Right. So if it's an all phant, then it has to grow to be elephant to be healthy. Right. So it's really a question of whether that e comments a very shop Facebook, how big it is, whoa I thought it was a mouse. Now Dan, I think it's a dog. Now I think it probably maybe it's an elephant, but I'm not sure. And that's it for this week's Decrypted. Thanks for listening. We'd love to hear what you thought of this episode. Record a voice message and send it to us at Decrypted at Bloomberg dot net or I'm on Twitter, it's at p Lstrom and you can reach me at David Ranting and I'm at Akita seven. If you haven't already, please subscribe right to our show on Apple Podcasts or your favorite app. While you're there, please leave us a rating and a review. It really helps more listeners find this show. This episode was produced by Pia gut Cary, Liz Smith, and Magnus Hendrickson. A big thanks to Robin and Jello, who edited the Prince story, David Ramilly and I wrote about Colin Wong and PDD. You can find it at Bloomberg dot com slash Tech. Alec McCabe is head of Bloomberg Podcast. We'll see you next week,